A/HRC/25/CRP.1 Detention Centre in Hyesan, Ryanggang Province. In detention, the agents took turns beating him with a piece of wood. He lost his teeth in the lower jaw. The witness managed to escape and was later told by a contact in the SSD that he would have been executed if he had stayed.223 • Another witness recalled a man being arrested for the use of a Chinese mobile phone and involvement in smuggling activities in 2006. He was interrogated by the SSD and severely tortured, resulting in head injuries and fractured bones. The victim was released without further punishment following the payment of a substantial bribe.224 221. The Commission finds that the DPRK strictly controls the information and opinions that reach the population through media as a necessary precursor to indoctrinating the population. No local private media is allowed to exist in the DPRK. The state media is subject to central level direction and strict censorship to further the objectives of the state and the Party. The DPRK further cracks down systematically on any attempts or enterprise which might allow foreign influences into the country, whether through telecommunications or information technology. 3. Suppression of freedom of expression and opinion through surveillance and violence 222. Intensive state indoctrination occurs in an environment where the exercise of the right to express facts and opinions critical of the state or its official ideology is not tolerated. One submission received by the Commission highlighted that, [L]ack of freedom of expression does not only mean a prohibition of certain things. It rather means that everybody has to talk and behave in a certain manner. If, for example, a DPRK citizen who participates in a mass gathering fails to shout “man se” (“May he live 10,000 years!”) and to applaud at the appearance of the “Dear respected Marshall” Kim Jong Un, he might be denounced and punished.225 223. Among the long list of offenses allegedly committed by Jang Song-thaek, uncle to Kim Jong-un, who was executed in December 2013, was “unwillingly standing up from his seat and half-heartedly clapping” when Kim Jong-un was elected vice-chair of the Central Military Commission of the Workers’ Party of Korea and announced at the Party’s Third Conference.226 224. A witness related to the Commission how he was discouraged since his youth by his parents from aspiring to become a writer as no one could write freely.227 In the DPRK, one can only write about matters which put Kim Il-sung, Kim Jong-il and the Workers’ Party of Korea in a good light. Writers who write beyond this remit were liable to be arrested and treated as political criminals.228 • At the Seoul Public Hearing, Mr Jang Hae-sung told the Commission: “My friends, people who used to be writers … [w]e are never allowed to write our ideas, our thoughts … for example, this writer, he slipped when he was talking to someone else. He was drunk at the time, he slipped and he said that writers are never 223 224 225 226 227 228 62 TBG004. TJH022, TJH023. Submission to the Commission: SUB060. “Traitor Jang Song Thaek Executed”, KCNA, 13 December 2013. Available from http://www.kcna.co.jp/item/2013/201312/news13/20131213-05ee.html. TAP009. TAP009.