GENEVA, Switzerland, Sept. 17 (UPI) -- Survivors of North Korean prisons spoke of "unspeakable atrocities" in interviews, said a U.N. official probing rights abuse in the Communist country.
"What we have seen and heard so far – the specificity, detail and shocking character of the personal testimony – appears without doubt to demand follow-up action by the world community, and accountability on the part of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (official name of North Korea)," Michael Kirby, who headed the commission, told the U.N. Human Right Council in Geneva.
The probe so far by the three-member Commission of Inquiry on Human Rights in North Korea included gathering testimony from former exiles and prisoners at recent public hearings in South Korea and Japan. The investigation continues.
A news release issued in Geneva said the probe indicated a large-scale pattern of abuse that may constitute systematic and gross human rights violations in North Korea.
Kirby said the alleged abuses ranged from abductions, torture to arbitrary detention in prison camps marked by deliberate starvation and "unspeakable atrocities."
"We heard from ordinary people who faced torture and imprisonment for doing nothing more than watching foreign soap operas or holding a religious belief," he told the 47-member Human Rights Council.
The three-member commission, whose final report will be due next March, also stressed it will investigate to what extent any violations may amount to crimes against humanity.
"As the Human Rights Council requested us to do, we will focus our inquiry on ensuring accountability, including with regard to potential crimes against humanity," Kirby said.
Kirby said the commission had invited North Korean authorities to take part in the public hearings in Seoul, but received no reply. North Korea also did not permit the commission to enter the country.
"Instead, its official news agency attacked the testimony we heard as 'slander' against the DPRK, put forward by 'human scum,'" Kirby said.
The BBC said North Korea denied the findings. So Se Pyong, North Korean ambassador in Geneva, told the council the evidence was "fabricated and invented by forces hostile" to the country, the report said.
Kirby told BBC World TV the commission had received testimony from people who had been born into the prison camps because their family members were already there.
"They had to live on rodents, grasshoppers, lizards and on grass and they were subject to cruelty," he said.
