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North Korean refugees get
harsh treatment on return
By Bill Gertz, The Washington
Times, January 27, 2004
An increasing number of North Korean
refugees are fleeing to China, where they are detained
and sent back to face harsh treatment in their home
country, according to a human rights activist from the
region.
Tim Peters, a South Korea-based Christian activist who
is part of a network of aid groups helping North Koreans
in China, also said the United Nations refugee relief
group in China is ignoring the plight of the fleeing
North Koreans.
Mr. Peters, founder of the group Helping Hands Korea,
said officials from the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees
(UNHCR) office in Beijing have been banned from traveling
to the Chinese-North Korean border, where they could
assist the refugees.
The U.N. organization has the legal power under international
law to help the fleeing North Koreans, but has failed
to take action, Mr. Peters said. "What is happening
with the UNHCR is beyond disgusting," Mr. Peters
said. "They've allowed the government to keep them
cooped up in a compound in Beijing. "They have
the title, the mission and the mandate," Mr. Peters
said. "And yet they seem more than happy just sitting
on their hands."
Mr. Peters said the United States — both the Bush
administration and Congress — should pressure
China and the UNHCR into "helping these forgotten
people." Joung-ah Ghedini, a UNHCR spokeswoman
in Washington, said China is not honoring a 1995 agreement
that allows the UNHCR to help the fleeing North Koreans.
"We have not been able to access the border areas
despite the agreement," she said. "The issue
has been brought up numerous times with the Chinese."
Beijing has ignored the refugee problem by claiming
that those fleeing are not properly classified as refugees.
Miss Ghedini said, however, there are refugees in the
area. "It is a difficult situation," she said.
"And there are refugees there that need our protection
and assistance."
Mr. Peters said many of the aid workers helping North
Koreans who flee to China are Christians. "Most
are strongly motivated by their Christian faith, he
said.
At least five aid workers have been imprisoned in recent
months, including Choi Bong-il, a South Korean recently
sentenced to nine years in a Chinese labor camp.
To discourage the aid workers, China's government recently
announced it would pay bounties to Chinese residents
in northeastern China who inform on them. North Koreans
who are sent back by the Chinese are questioned upon
their return about whether they had contact in China
with Christians, Mr. Peters said.
If they answer yes, he said, the repatriated North Koreans
are then sent to prison camps for "incorrigibles"
— labor camps designed to kill those categorized
as unreformable under the communist system.
Reports from humanitarian groups indicate that North
Koreans, many of them starving because of the North's
collapsed economy, are coming across the Chinese border
in increasing numbers.
Several thousand North Koreans flee each year to China.
They then are sent back under an agreement with the
Pyongyang government.
In one recent case, more than a hundred North Koreans
crossed the border and were picked up and placed in
a detention camp by Chinese authorities, Mr. Peters
said.
The refugee flow increases during the winter when the
Yalu and Tumen rivers that delineate the North Korea-China
border freeze over.
A report made public last week by Amnesty International
stated that starving North Koreans have been executed
for stealing food and have died of malnutrition in labor
camps.
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