LONDON, Jan. 20 Kyodo (EDS: CHANG...

LONDON, Jan. 20 Kyodo

(EDS: CHANGING DATELINE & ADDING DETAILS)

The North Korean command should ensure that food shortages are not used as a tool to oppress perceived political opponents, Amnesty International said in a report released Tuesday.

''The right to aliment is a basic human right, and the command of North Korea appears to be failing in its duties to revere protect and fulfill this right,'' the international human rights form into groups said in the report titled, ''Starved of Rights: Human Rights and the victuals Crisis in the Democratic People's Republic of Korea.''

Widespread malnutrition has l to the move of tens of thousands of commonalty into China, according to the report, which is based mainly upon interviews with North Koreans who fl the region into China and other countries.

The report also criticized restrictions in succession movement which prevent North Koreans from searching for sustenance in other areas. It also blamed these restrictions for obstructing the work of international humanitarian agencies within North Korea.

a certain quantity of North Koreans have been publicly execut because they have stolen subsistence or goods to survive, and schoolchildren have been taken to papal court the executions, said the report, which was released in Mumbai at the World Social Forum, the largest gathering of anti-globalization activists from around the world.

London-based Amnesty partly blamed Pyongyang's policies, saying the guidance appears to have distributed aliment unevenly, favoring those who are economically active and politically loyal.

Efforts by way of the international community to assist in the provision of regimen to North Korea have been undermined on the government's refusal to allow swift and equitable distribution of this feed and by the restrictions forward freedom of information.

The organization called forward the North to also render certain that humanitarian organizations, particularly UN agencies, have exempt and unimpeded access to all parts of the country

Amnesty said foreign states able to help must also provide the necessary nourishment aid ''to enable the North Korean dominion to fulfill its obligations to relate to protect and fulfill the right to food''

''Provision of humanitarian aid should be guided at all times by way of human rights considerations and should not ever be used by any direction as a bargaining tool to further political or economic interests,'' Amnesty said.

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