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NHRCK Calls for Effort to Find Ways to Prevent Suicides and Beatings of Combat/Auxiliary Police
Date : 2007.03.29 00:00:00
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The National Human Rights Commission of Korea (NHRCK) announced the findings of its ex officio investigations, current status investigations, and relevant meetings concerning the routine human rights abuses committed against combat/auxiliary policemen on February 27. They have been subjected to beatings and other cruel acts, and they have shown a high suicide rate. Based on its findings, the Commission recognized that the human rights conditions of combat/auxiliary policemen could hardly be redressed without fundamentally addressing the unreasonable systems and practices that spark the human rights abuses against them. The Commission formulated a comprehensive institutional improvement plan for combat/auxiliary policemen and recommended that the commissioner general of the National Police Agency implement the plan. The Commission also decided to make such recommendation to the minister of planning and budget and the minister of national defense (related parties) as well, based on the determination that proactive government-wide budgetary support and cooperation are necessary to ensure effective, good-faith implementation of said recommendation.
Major details of the improvement recommendation include (i) establishment of measures to prevent excessive dispatches and working hours; (ii) formulation of effective controls for those persons who are inappropriate for and who can hardly adapt themselves to service as police; (iii) establishment of measures to improve undemocratic and human rights-unfriendly barracks life; (iv) formulation of methods to enhance internal and external systems to prevent human rights violations and provide necessary relief; (v) bolstering of human rights education and implementation of a required system; (vi) establishment of measures to improve the medical system for combat/auxiliary policemen to guarantee their substantive right to medical services; (vii) proactive improvement of poor living facilities including barracks facilities for combat/auxiliary police; (viii) establishment of measures to seek qualitative improvement of the meals of combat/auxiliary police and to adjust their transportation expenses to a realistic level; (ix) increasing legal liability by bringing criminal charges against those who perpetrate beatings and other cruel acts; and (x) rational improvement of the disciplinary mechanism including abolishment of the guardhouse system.
A string of suicides has been committed by combat/auxiliary policemen. On February 25, a combat policeman who had been transferred to a Daegu police office one month before killed himself by jumping from the 4th floor auditorium of the police office. He stated in a note that life in his unit was too severe on him. On March 3, a combat policeman associated with the Jeju Coastal Guard Corps on leave to mark his 100th day in service hanged himself in a Seoul subway station restroom. These are tragic events at the state level, going beyond the problems of those who committed suicide. There are sufficient grounds to suspect existence of fundamental problems with the combat/auxiliary police management system. The Commission is deeply concerned about this situation.
The Commission believes that the root of these problems is relevant organizations’ failure to conduct fundamental reviews of institutional and environmental factors. Then tend to resolve outstanding issues in very superficial ways, such as punishing the persons involved, while playing off problems as the personal problems of the combat/auxiliary policemen concerned and internal problems of their units. Hence, the Commission analyzed problems with the human rights status and institutional environment of combat/auxiliary policemen and recommended execution of area-by-area institutional improvement plans since proactive steps for institutional improvement need to be taken, although belatedly, at the government level.
In discussing possible approaches to improve the human rights status of combat/auxiliary policemen, the NHRCK concluded that ways to seek human rights improvement regarding demonstration control and handling should not be neglected. The number of combat/auxiliary policemen who suffer injuries and diseases due to involvement in demonstrations has been increasing year after year. The burden and pressure arising from violent demonstration suppression is emerging as a new factor of human rights violations. Considering that the Joint Civilian-Government Committee for Peaceful Demonstration co-chaired by the prime minister and the representative of civilian groups is in operation within the government, the NHRCK expects that substantive methods to improve the human rights status of combat/auxiliary police in connection with demonstrations will be formulated in the near future. From a long-term standpoint, the NHRCK will closely monitor the latest position of the government to abolish the system of alternative services as combat/auxiliary policemen.
