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“People die or get injured due to mine collapses, but a lot of people also die because of disease and malnutrition,” the source said, adding, “In the first quarter of this year, [the prison] cremated over 200 prisoners that died from accidents, diseases, and malnutrition.”
There have also been instances where prisoners died while being physically assaulted by management officers in the camps.
“There have been about 16 cases of managers killing prisoners by beating them to death with whips or the butt plate of their rifle, or by punishing them by stepping on their neck with their boot,” the source said. “However, they record these cases as ‘accidental deaths’ in their reports.” The source said that camp managers frequently conceal prisoner deaths resulting from assault.
Meanwhile, the handling of corpses of prisoners who have died from accidents or disease is also conducted in a haphazard manner.
“Prisoners are more susceptible to diseases,” the source said. “The ridiculously low food provisions lead to malnutrition, and group confinement in small cells and shared spaces weakens their immunity… When the managers send a prisoner to a ‘sick room’ because he is close to death, he will come out as a corpse within two or three days.”
According to the source, prison authorities “take the dead prisoners’ bodies – usually about ten in the summer and a few dozen in the winter – and burn them all together in a secluded mountain valley. Then they just leave the ashes there.”
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