Mick Hartley

Nothing we didn't know already, but it's interesting that it's a UN human rights investigator who's saying this:

The people of North Korea are subjected to "intolerable suffering" including starvation, torture and almost universal spying, a U.N. investigator said on Monday in one of the toughest reports presented to a U.N. forum.

Thai jurist Vitit Muntarbhorn told the world body's Human Rights Council that the situation in the communist-ruled country was "dire and desperate" with the population living in fear and pressed to inform on each other.

"The country is under one-party rule. At the pinnacle there is an oppressive regime, bent on personal survival, under which the ordinary people of the land undergo intolerable and interminable sufferings," he said.

Diplomats said his comments and an accompanying report, although similar in their conclusions to studies of North Korea from independent rights groups, were among the most critical on one country ever presented to a U.N. forum.

Muntarbhorn, formally a special rapporteur for the Council which is not obliged to act on his recommendations, said the North Korean government's abuse of its citizens should be addressed by the entire global community.

"There are widespread, systematic and reprehensible human rights violations of a long-standing and insidious nature which demand international attention and commitments nationally and internationally to help improve the situation," he said.

His remarks appeared largely addressed to the developing country majority on the 47-nation Council which has generally sought to avoid serious formal condemnations of governments of non-Western nations for rights abuses.

They don't have such a problem with some nations, though…

Although North Korea and the military government in Myanmar have been the subject of relatively mild resolutions in the past, the Council — where Islamic countries have a strong voice — has issued five condemnations of Israel.