S. Korea human rights body urges probe of abuse of vagrants
SEOUL, Korea, Republic Of — A South Korean commission on Thursday urged lawmakers to investigate the enslavement and mistreatment of thousands of people at a vagrants’ facility during the 1970s and ’80s.
The country’s dictators ordered roundups to “purify” the streets, sending the homeless, disabled and children to facilities where they were detained and forced to work.
No one has been held accountable for the hundreds of deaths, rapes and beatings The Associated Press documented at the now-closed Brothers Home, a huge mountainside compound in the port city of Busan that had the largest of dozens of those facilities. The AP report in 2016 was based on hundreds of exclusive documents and dozens of interviews with officials and former detainees.
The National Human Rights Commission on Thursday recommended lawmakers pass a special law to initiate an investigation and also called for the government to sign and ratify a United Nations convention against forced disappearance.