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China Offers Bounty on N. Korean Refugees - Activist New York Times, July 12, 2002 SEOUL (Reuters) - China is offering bounty payments to citizens who denounce North Korean refugees and the missionaries and aid workers helping them seek asylum in foreign embassies, a human rights activist said on Friday. China has allowed 64 North Koreans to fly to South Korea via a third country since March despite an agreement with North Korea to repatriate them, but has hardened its stance since the asylum bids at South Korea's consulate began in May. American Timothy Peters, who has been in China helping the refugees, told a seminar in South Korea's capital Seoul that the Chinese authorities were offering bounty payments to encourage its citizens to spot the North Koreans. ``Any Chinese citizen who is willing to give information as to an individual, foreign or domestic, who is helping North Korean refugees, is given a bounty of 10 times the amount for giving information on North Korean refugees -- the equivalent of $700,'' Peters said. ``Refugees, in addition to being detained, are now interrogated, and in some cases tortured in order to reveal who has helped them in China,'' he added. Peters, who has testified to the U.S. Senate about the refugees' plight, said some 200 foreign missionaries were currently detained in China accused of aiding North Korean refugees. South Korean diplomats said China was known to have arrested at least three foreigners for helping migrants from the famine-stricken North amid widespread official suspicion that foreign groups are guiding asylum seekers and providing them with false documents. One of the three, South Korean Chun Ki-won, went on trial in the northern region of Inner Mongolia earlier this week. A court official said he did not know when a verdict would be announced. Chun was detained in March for trying to help 15 North Koreans escape to Mongolia, a way station on the road to their final destination, South Korea. Peters, who worked with Chun in China, accused the Chinese government of abusing the missionary while he was in detention awaiting trial. ``He has been given the equivalent of one piece of coarse wheat bread per day, he's been deprived of sleep...he's been forced to clean all prison toilets,'' Peters said. Seoul's National Intelligence Service says 138 North Korean defectors have arrived in South Korea this year. Last year, a record 583 Northerners defected to the South. A total of 2,000 North Korean defectors have now settled in the South. North and South Korea remain technically at war. The 1950-53 Korean conflict ended in an armed truce that has never been replaced with a peace treaty. |
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