NOKO BIBLE HORROR

Tot gets life term

A 2-year-old North Korean was sentenced to life in prison after officials found a Bible in the toddler’s parents’ possession, as the totalitarian regime continues to “execute” and “torture” religious worshippers.

As many as 70,000 Christians are imprisoned in North Korea, according to a new International Religious Freedom Report by the US State Department.

The findings underscored the brutal punitive measures routinely doled out by Supreme Leader Kim Jungun.

People caught with a copy of the Bible in North Korea face the death penalty, while their families — including children — are sentenced to life in prison.

The report highlighted the 2009 imprisonment of a family based on their religious practices and parents’ possession of a Bible.

The entire family, including a 2-year-old, were sentenced to life in prison camps.

“The right to freedom of thought, conscience, and religion [in the DPRK] also continues to be denied, with no alternative belief systems tolerated by the authorities,” UN Secretary General António Guterres said last July.

Guterres wrote how the situation in North Korea has not changed since a 2014 human rights report, which found that authorities “almost completely denied the rights to freedom of thought, conscience, and religion” and found that the government frequently committed violations of human rights that constituted crimes against humanity.

The 2022 report found that the North Korean government has continued to “execute, torture, arrest and physically abuse people for their religious activities.”

Pandemic-era COVID-19 restrictions on travel also reduced information available about conditions, prompting the State Department to work with nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), human rights groups and the UN to confirm claims of abuse.

While a small number of officially registered religious institutions exist in North Korea, including churches, they operate under strict state control and function largely as showpieces for foreign tourists, officials say.

Multiple abuses

In October 2021, NGO Korea Future released a report detailing the religious freedom abuses after interviewing 244 victims.

Of the victims interviewed, 91 adhered to Christianity.

The victims ranged in age from just 2 years old to over 80 years old, and women and girls made up more than 70 percent of the documented victims.

The report found that the North Korean government charged individuals with engaging in religious practices, conducting religious activities in China, possessing religious items, having contact with religious persons, and sharing religious beliefs.

As a result, people were arrested, placed into detention, forced labor and tortured.