North Korea Releases Human Rights Report About Themselves
The Elderly
The Law of the DPRK on Protection of the Elderly was adopted by Decree No. 2214 of the Presidium of the Supreme People’s Assembly on 26 April 2007 and was amended and supplemented twice. Under this Law, the rights and interests of the elderly are guaranteed and their desire to lead a fruitful and happy life in mentally and physically good health is fully met.
If you are poor you have no chance of beating famine and hardship so you won’t get to be old in the first place. So I guess the only old people in North Korea are in the higher echelons of society, and maybe they are looked after well.
Political Rights
The views on the political rights defined in the international human rights laws are different from one State to the other and so are the levels of its realization. However, it is a common view of all states that the political rights are the most important rights to be given priority by the national and international laws… Thanks to the policy and legal and systematic measures of the DPRK Government which regards the political rights as the main rights, people are enjoying genuine political freedom and rights as the masters of the state and society.
The right to vote or to be elected is one of the most important basic human rights and major form of exercise of sovereignty of a state. In the international arena of today where the democracy is advocated, the state provision of the citizens’ right to vote or to be elected becomes a decisive factor in the evaluation of human rights situation of the state. It is an obligation of each and every state to provide legal guarantee for unhindered and unconditional participation and free expression of one’s opinion in the election. Of course, those who were deprived of the right to vote by the judgment of the court and mentally deranged persons are generally not given the right to vote or to be elected and many countries accepts this exception.
The right to vote and the right to be elected? JOKES! If one family has been in power for generations you can fairly safely assume that the people haven’t had a say, and you can certainly extrapolate that your average Joe hasn’t got much of a shot at the throne.
When the good people of NK do get to vote the turnout is near 100% – it was 99.97% in March 2014 (according to official records). Approval of the Democratic Front’s candidates is virtually unanimous. Hmmm… I smell a rat… Voters must cross the name of the politician they don’t want to win off their ballot paper. This crossing off is done in full view of officials and therefore a very risky thing to do.
