SW News: Religious persecution continues unabated in North Korea, says a recent report brought out by the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF). In the report documenting religious freedom violations in North Korea, there are details of how innocent people are tortured and killed for secretly practising Christianity.

The report says “North Koreans experience the denial of the right to religious freedom from birth. Moreover, if found practicing or have any inclination to faith or religion, they will be subjected to “ongoing, egregious, and systematic torture and human rights violations perpetrated and overseen by North Korean government organizations.”

The USCIRF is an independent, bipartisan federal government entity established by the US Congress to monitor, analyze, and report on religious freedom abroad. In its report, it has documented accounts of religious persecution from North Korean defectors who are survivors, witnesses, and perpetrators of these violations.

In North Korea, a person suspected of religious adherence undergoes torture and other cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment. This includes “physical beating; positional torture; deprivation of food, water, and sleep; verbal abuse; contaminated and polluted food; body cavity searches and forced nudity; the use of open toilets; hanging torture (also known as ‘Pigeon Torture’); and exposure to extreme violence inflicted upon fellow prisoners,” reports USCIRF.

The report also accounts for several instances of execution of Christians. In 2011, a woman named Kwon Eun Som and her grandchild were executed by a firing squad for practising Christianity. The execution was done in secrecy as only a few security and law enforcement officials were present during the shooting. The report also mentions how six people who secretly practised Christianity were killed in 2015. Another 40 people were sent to the North Korean political prison camp for life.

“The campaign to exterminate all Christian adherents and institutions in North Korea has been brutally effective, and continues through the work of the Ministry of State Security, networks of informants that stretch into China, the presence of ‘no-exit’ political prison camps, executions, and an educational and organizational system that deters adherence through schools, workplaces, and neighborhoods,” states the report.