Incurable Ills of Human Rights Violation

 2022.8.22.

http://www.mfa.gov.kp/view/article/15642

The Home Office of the United Kingdom has recently announced that, during the second quarter of this year, the number of the victims of contemporary forms of slavery such as human trafficking and forced labor reached 4 171 in the country, breaking the all-time record.

It is said to be an enormous number as it is more than 1.5 times high against the last year’s record of 2 727, the highest in history at that time.

Human rights organizations express serious concern over the rapid increase in the number of the victims of contemporary forms of slavery and strongly demand that the government take immediate measures.

This is not all.

The British Court of Appeal, after hearing a drug trafficking case of two Vietnamese boys in the U.K., gave a unilateral sentence without taking into account the possibility that the boys might have been victims of child trafficking. With regard to this, the European Court of Human Rights issued in February last year a written order to the British Court of Appeal to pay ￡22 000 per person in compensation for human rights violation.

Meanwhile, the British newspaper “The Guardian” exposed the fact that Ukrainians are forced into “contemporary slave labor” in British farms as they work their fingers to the bone under threats and humiliation without receiving any medical services.

It is none other than the U.K. that shamelessly launched a killing competition tempting soldiers from the special unit of “paratroops” to kill not only the prisoners of war but also innocent citizens in a merciless way during their stationing in Afghanistan.

At this very moment, hundreds of young people are subjected to body-search in the nude by policemen; criminals are cruelly tortured in solitary confinement; London’s public transportation is turned into a “hotbed of harassing” women; and all other kinds of human rights violations are taking place one after another in the U.K. causing anxiety among people.

It is extremely hypocritical of the U.K. to pretend to be a “country of advanced human rights” and find fault with the human rights situation in other countries, far from dealing with the dismal human rights violation crimes rampant in its own country in a proper way.

The U.K. would be well-advised to examine the dismal record of human rights violation piling up in its own country before blaming and admonishing the others without any reason.

 

Choe Hyon Do

Researcher of Korea-Europe Association