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20 December 2022
An Amsterdam-based nongovernmental organization (NGO) has filed an appeal against Dutch prosecutors for dropping charges against two shipbuilding companies accused of employing North Korean workers.
According to La Strada, the two Dutch companies — which it did not name — “are suspected to have acquired ships from Polish shipyards while being aware that these ships were constructed at wharves employing North Korean workers,” the NGO said in a written statement on Friday.
The NGO said these workers labored under “inhumane, exploitative conditions that are in clear violation of international labor laws.” But Dutch prosecutors dismissed the case last year due to lack of evidence, La Strada said.
The group’s lawyers maintained, however, that “the Public Prosecution did acknowledge the systematic exploitation of North Korean workers in Poland by companies supplying to the Dutch shipbuilding industry and that all elements of the description of the crime of human trafficking [were] met.”
La Strada suggested the firms in question “knew or reasonably could have known” about the plight of the DPRK workers but continued ordering parts from the shipyard regardless.
North Korea is known to send large scores of workers abroad, often to work in labor-intensive industries like construction, logging or textile production. Workers are under strict surveillance and much of their income goes directly to the North Korean government.
A 2016 research paper by Leiden University professor Remco Breuker and labor law expert Imke van Gardingen first highlighted the abuse of North Korean laborers working in the European Union, bringing renewed attention to what had been one of North Korea’s most lucrative pipelines for earning foreign cash.
Hiring North Korean workers violates U.N. Security Council (UNSC) Resolution 2397 passed in 2017, which bans North Koreans from working abroad in an attempt to cut off a source of funding for Pyongyang’s weapons programs.
But in spite of U.N. sanctions, a “significant” number of North Korean workers remains stranded abroad because of the DPRK’s self-imposed COVID-19 border restrictions.
In 2018, a North Korean laborer filed a criminal complaint against a Dutch firm after facing “years of slave-like conditions” at the firm’s parts client, Polish company Crist S.A. It’s unclear what happened to the case and whether La Strada’s concerns the same company.
Dutch firm Damen Shipyards, a client of Crist until 2016, issued a statement the same year denying allegations of wrongdoing first suggested by press reports. “Before 2016, Damen Shipyards was not aware of the presence of North Korean workers at the [Crist] shipyard” Damen stated.
A documentary published in 2018 included interviews with North Korean workers in Poland alleging they had worked 60 hours a week for two and a half years without seeing their families, and that they had little freedom of movement.
While there is only “a limited chance that the public prosecution will still investigate the case,” La Strada said the recent complaint against prosecutors is “potentially ground-breaking” as it highlights “significant gaps in labor protections within the European Union and the lack of remedies available to affected workers of forced labor.”
A Dutch court will now assess the complaint, and a judge can decide whether to order prosecutors to reinvestiage.#
