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| The National Human Rights Commission / Yonhap |
The state human rights watchdog has recommended the government take steps to provide vegetarian inmates at correctional institutions with proper vegetarian meals, officials said Tuesday.
The National Human Rights Commission made the recommendation last month, urging the justice minister to revise the relevant law or come up with a new policy to ensure the provision of vegetarian meals and expand the list of vegetarian foods allowed for purchase in prison.
The recommendation came after a friend of an inmate filed a petition accusing a detention center of infringing upon the freedom of conscience of his strictly vegan friend by not providing vegan meals and rejecting the inmate's request for permission to buy brown rice.
The chief of the facility countered that best efforts were made to help the inmate, including the provision of an increased amount of existing non-meat side dishes for the inmate, but the request for permission to purchase brown rice was rejected because the item is not included in the list of foods allowed for purchase under the current regulations, according to the commission.
Though the commission dismissed the petition on the grounds that the inmate has not suffered any diet-related health problem from the prison term, it issued the recommendation urging the justice minister to "ensure inmates with faith in vegetarianism have their human dignity, freedom of conscience and rights to health guaranteed."
"The lives of inmates who refuse meat and live on vegetarian diets could be devastated while they could also fall ill and eventually be forced to give up their beliefs if their beliefs are not respected," the commission said, adding this would run against the Constitution and international human rights standards. (Yonhap)
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