Commission Under Fire for Human Rights Infringement
By Bae Ji-sook
Staff Reporter
The National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) is under fire for releasing a video clip showing a corrections officer hitting an inmate. Civic groups and experts said releasing identifiable images of a perpetrator without judicial process could constitute human rights infringement.
On Monday, the commission sent a surveillance video clip to reporters by e-mail showing a staff member at Anyang correctional office beating an inmate for several seconds. It asked the reporters and others to decide whether the scene involved human rights infringement or not. They said that though advice was given to the correctional facility to punish him, they simply rejected it.
This is the first time the organization has released such video evidence to the public. The commission said that Article 50 of the Human Rights Law allows the commission to release investigation results.
In the 50-second video, an officer is shown talking to an inmate sitting on a table, then he suddenly grabs his neck and hits him in the face. Another officer later removes the beaten man from the room.
However, the video release resulted in controversy. They said what the officer did was obviously wrong, but the commission has also infringed on the human rights of the officer. ``The case is an obvious crime and the commission should have submitted the matter to the prosecution. Its reaction was emotional and lacked tact,'' a human rights activist said.
The NHRC is famous for defending the rights of the perpetrators during the investigation and imprisonment process, but critics said the organization had not taken the officer's rights into account.
Some experts speculated that the president's advisory body is trying to discipline correctional facilities.
This is not the first time the commission has advised prisons on behalf of inmate's with less than favorable results. While other organizations resulted in an 86 percent acceptance rate of advice given, these facilities recorded only 78 percent.
The Ministry of Justice said usually the inmates or their families make a petition to the NHRC simply because their requests are not answered. A ministry spokesman said, ``The case was studied thoroughly by our office staff and was deemed a minor issue,'' he said.
The prison's spokesperson said the commission should have first consulted them before releasing the video, and the action was too self-justified.