NHRC Issues Recommendation to Speaker of the National Assembly to Enact Special Commission and to Minister of National Defense to Institutionalize Prevention of Military Deaths
The National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) will issue a recommendation to the Speaker of the National Assembly to establish a special truth commission authorized to investigate suspicious military deaths, and to the Minister of National Defense to set in place a system to prevent recurrence of death from suspicious causes in the military.
As of September 2003, the NHRC has received 54 petitions relating to suspicious military deaths. The military’s internal investigations into many of these cases had either been closed or were still ongoing, and many cases exceeded the 1-year time limit from “cause of complaint” to “NHRC petition” and thus fell beyond NHRC jurisdiction per the complaint rejection clause in the NHRC Act (article 32: 1: 4~5).
However, after 1998, “suicide” rose to exceed 40% of military deaths. In 2000, the suicide proportion hit 50%. The proportion of cases where “cause” for suicide was found to be “actions deflating troop morale (rule infractions, including officers hitting soldiers, etc.)” and military base-level internal frictions have risen. Last, doubts or suspicions relating to such deaths have not ebbed. Because of these facts, the NHRC sees the military death issue as a grave human rights issue.
Thus, the NHRC held a policy debate on military deaths in November 2003, gathering experts to draw consensus. After a comprehensive review, the NHRC identified the lack of impartiality in internal inspections and the lack of expertise on the part of military investigators as two key issues. For the former, lack of impartiality is institutionally rooted: (1) investigating officers are not independent of commanding officers, (2) there are no significant investigative efforts to shed light on the motivation for suicide or other causal factors, and (3) “regulations on preserving military security” are cited as the reason for non-transparency of both the investigation process and conclusions drawn on the basis of these internal probes.
On the expertise issue, (1) the site (of the death) is not cordoned off to protect integrity of evidence, (2) the investigation does not synthesize other data—such as interviews with the deceased’s peers, the deceased’s personal information, or data collected from the site—but rather, investigation conclusions often rely solely on the impression given by the autopsy, and (3) the lack of specialized knowledge or experience on the part of the military investigators have damaged investigation credibility. In particular, (4) military regulations demand that within 24 hours of a death, a report on cause of death (provisional conclusions) and death classification be given to the Chief of Staff of each armed forces division, and within 7 days, a written report must be submitted; thus, the MP responsible for the initial investigation has about 12 to 18 hours to draw a conclusion. Such pressing time constraints further decrease the level of expertise with which an internal investigation can be conducted.
Thus, the NHRC recommended that the Minister of National Defense increase the level of impartiality with which internal military investigations are conducted by: (1) eliminating the regulatory provisions giving commanding officers supervisory and commanding authority over military investigators, (2) reforming internal rules to empower military investigators to actually exercise investigative authority, (3) applying the regulation on military security with flexibility to allow the deceased’s family access to information on the investigation, (4) establishing a principle of including a civilian autopsy expert during autopsy, and (5) guaranteeing, as much as possible to the deceased’s families and legal counsel, the right to read and photocopy documents related to the death.
The Commission also recommended that measures for raising the level of investigative expertise: (1) raising the level of individual expertise of those responsible for the primary investigation, (2) enacting a “Guidelines on Investigating Military Deaths” mandating thorough investigations, and (3) conducting substantial training for investigative bodies as well as general officers and soldiers on the guidelines.
Finally, the Commission recommended that the National Assembly enact a special law to create and empower a temporary special commission entrusted with uncovering the truth behind suspicious military deaths because of intrinsic limitations the Ministry of National Defense’s internal “Special Commission for Civilian-Requested Investigation into Military Deaths” face in terms of carrying out objective and impartial investigation, and because the establishment of an impartial third-party organ is needed to find the truth behind suspicious military death cases and to restore honor to such deceased soldiers’ families.
The NHRC will continue to review human rights policies for prevention of suspicious military deaths, to issue recommendations for reforming flaws in both civilian and military laws and institutions, and to conduct sustained monitoring on the issue.
