This resolution calls for the international community to demand that North Korea dismantle its labor camp system and for North Korea to cease human rights abuses and release political prisoners.
[Congressional Bills 116th Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
[H. Res. 141 Introduced in House (IH)]
<DOC>
116th CONGRESS
1st Session
H. RES. 141
Calling upon the leadership of the Government of the Democratic
People's Republic of Korea to dismantle its labor camp system, and for
other purposes.
_______________________________________________________________________
IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
February 22, 2019
Mr. Conaway (for himself and Mr. Connolly) submitted the following
resolution; which was referred to the Committee on Foreign Affairs
_______________________________________________________________________
RESOLUTION
Calling upon the leadership of the Government of the Democratic
People's Republic of Korea to dismantle its labor camp system, and for
other purposes.
Whereas the public has long been aware of the labor camp system in the
Democratic People's Republic of Korea (North Korea) through continuous
eye-witness and survivor accounts, and now-publicly available satellite
technology;
Whereas, according to The Hidden Gulag IV report, North Korea runs two kinds of
prison camps, the kwan-li-so and the kyo-hwa-so, as well as ``various
types of short-term forced labour detention facilities'';
Whereas the most heinous camps, the kwan-li-so, are known as Prison Camp 14, 15,
16, 18, and 25 which contain roughly 80,000 to 120,000 political
prisoners;
Whereas the Inquiry on Crimes Against Humanity in North Korea Political Prisons
Report of 2017 states that ``hundreds of thousands of inmates are
estimated to have died'';
Whereas from 1981 to 2013, an estimated 400,000 people out of 500,000 imprisoned
were killed in these labor camps;
Whereas persons who are sent to these labor camps are forcibly disappeared and
intended to die;
Whereas the United Nations Commission of Inquiry on Human Rights in the
Democratic People's Republic of Korea found, ``the inmate population has
been gradually eliminated through deliberate starvation, forced labour,
executions, torture, rape and the denial of reproductive rights enforced
through punishment, forced abortion and infanticide'';
Whereas up to three generations of a ``violator's'' family will be sent to the
labor camps even if no ``wrongdoing'' is found;
Whereas, according to the Inquiry on Crimes Against Humanity in North Korea
Political Prisons Report of 2017, the Government of North Korea
regularly and routinely commits crimes against humanity, including
murder, extermination, enslavement, forcible transfer, imprisonment,
torture, sexual violence, persecution, enforced disappearances, and
other inhumane acts;
Whereas, according to the best available evidence, some specific crimes
identified by the Inquiry are--
(1) ``Christians are heavily persecuted and receive especially harsh
treatment in prison camps, with one former prison guard testifying that
`Christians were reactionaries and there were lots of instructions . . . to
wipe out the seed of reactionaries''';
(2) multiple witnesses watched prisoners tortured and killed on account
of their religious affiliation;
(3) a prisoner was raped by a security officer, after which the officer
stuck a wooden stick inside her vagina and beat her lower body, resulting
in her death within a week of the rape;
(4) an abortion was induced by three men standing on a wooden plank
placed on a pregnant prisoner's stomach;
(5) another witness lost consciousness after enduring a beating
designed to trigger premature labor, with prison officials killing her baby
before she could regain consciousness;
(6) rape victims who feared being killed after becoming pregnant
engaged in self-induced abortions by eating dirt and poisoning themselves
with flower roots;
(7) other rape victims self-induced abortions by inserting a rubber
tube in their vaginas;
(8) rape of teenage girls and their subsequent attempts to commit
suicide by jumping in the Daedonggang River were so common that prison
guards were deployed to the river to thwart them;
(9) four pregnant women were executed for protesting the fact guards
forced them to run down a mountain in a failed effort to induce
miscarriages;
(10) twelve prisoners were shot and killed in the commotion that ensued
after the execution of the four pregnant women referenced in paragraph (9)
and a former prison guard witnessed a prisoner's newborn baby, most likely
fathered by a high-ranking official, fed to guard dogs and killed;
(11) female prisoners suspected of being impregnated by non-Korean men
(namely Chinese men) are subjected to especially harsh treatment, with one
witness describing a prisoner being injected with a labor-inducing drug and
having to watch as a guard suffocated her newborn to death with a wet
towel;
(12) a former North Korean army nurse testified that she saw multiple
abortions performed by injecting Ravenol (a motor oil) into the wombs of
pregnant women and that babies born three to four months premature were
``wrapped in newspapers and put in a bucket until buried'' behind the
detention center;
(13) deliberate starvation, malnutrition and overwork are extremely
common, resulting in the deaths of countless prisoners;
(14) at one prison camp, 1,500 to 2,000 prisoners, mostly children, are
believed to have died each year from malnutrition, while many other
prisoners were beaten to death for failing to meet production quotas;
(15) starving prisoners are regularly executed when caught scavenging
for food;
(16) at one prison camp, starving prisoners who were found digging up
edible plants on a mountainside were shot to death;
(17) at another camp, a witness saw a fellow inmate executed for
stealing potatoes, while in a separate camp a witness described the
execution of numerous prisoners caught scavenging for leftover food in
prison guards' quarters;
(18) a prisoner was beaten to death for hiding stolen corn in his
mouth;
(19) public executions by firing squads or other means are common,
especially for prisoners caught attempting to escape;
(20) the existence of mass graves is well documented, including
detailed descriptions of mass burial sites at or near prison camps, as well
as testimony about bodies being ``dumped'' on mountainsides near prison
camps;
(21) an undisclosed location near a prison camp was regularly used for
nighttime executions, with gunshots clearly audible;
(22) at a 1990 prison riot, approximately 1,500 prisoners were shot and
killed, their bodies discarded in a closed mine;
(23) in order to satisfy production quotas, inmates--including
teenagers--were forced to perform fifteen to sixteen hours of hard labor
per day;
(24) one witness was forced to perform hard labor (carrying logs) when
he was nine years old;
(25) at one mine in particular, prisoners were forced to work 20 hours
per day, with a witness testifying that approximately 200 prisoners died
each year at that mine alone;
(26) a soldier supervising a forced labor site at a political prison
rolled a log down a steep mountainside, killing ten prisoners as they were
carrying logs up the mountain;
(27) the bodies of some prisoners who died as a result of forced labor
or torture were thrown into the cells of prisoners in solitary confinement
and later strung on barbed-wire fences where they were eaten by crows;
(28) one witness described a torture chamber with blood and flesh on
the walls and decaying corpses of past victims placed in the chamber in
order to instill fear in the next prisoner;
(29) psychological abuse in political prisons is pervasive, with
gruesome acts, including executions, carried out in plain view of fellow
prisoners in order to terrorize them; and
(30) torture is a routine feature of life in political prisons, with a
2014 report by Amnesty International concluding that ``North Korea's prison
camps are very possibly home to some of the most appalling torture in the
world'';
Whereas officials of the Government of North Korea continually deny the
existence of the labor camps;
Whereas the Inquiry on Crimes Against Humanity in North Korea Political Prisons
Report of 2017 found that North Korea's labor camp system ``has no
parallel in the world today''; and
Whereas the United Nations Commission of Inquiry on Human Rights in the
Democratic People's Republic of Korea found that the government
continually commits crimes against humanity and will not cease,
``because the policies, institutions, and patterns of impunity that lie
at their root remain in place'': Now, therefore, be it
Resolved, That the House of Representatives--
(1) calls upon the international community to--
(A) demand the Democratic People's Republic of
Korea (North Korea) dismantle its labor camp system;
(B) create a special tribunal with jurisdiction to
investigate and remedy crimes against humanity
committed by the Government of North Korea;
(C) issue targeted sanctions against those
individuals who have committed such crimes against
humanity; and
(D) ban import of goods made by prisoners in the
North Korean labor camp system;
(2) calls on the leadership of the Government of North
Korea to--
(A) immediately cease human rights abuses;
(B) release the roughly 80,000-120,000 political
prisoners;
(C) halt the ongoing arrests of North Koreans on
political and religious grounds;
(D) allow the International Committee of the Red
Cross entry into the camps to assist with the release
and rehabilitation of prisoners;
(E) allow entry to the United Nations High
Commissioner for Human Rights and the United Nations
Special Rapporteur on Human Rights in North Korea to
monitor the situation and assist with the
rehabilitation; and
(F) comply with international standards of food
distribution and monitoring and allow full access to
international humanitarian agencies; and
(3) calls on the United States Government to--
(A) continue to pursue any additional sanctions to
the extent possible against those individuals
responsible for the North Korean labor camp system,
including individuals administering such labor camps;
and
(B) continue to raise awareness in the
international community of the labor camps and the
continuing atrocious crimes being committed in the
labor camps.
<all>
Introduced in House
Introduced in House
Referred to the House Committee on Foreign Affairs.
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