This is the fourth in a series of articles highlighting China’s repatriation of North Korean defectors and the ordeal they have to go through if they are sent back to their homeland.― ED.
By Kang Hyun-kyung
A U.S. activist, who has fought for North Korean refugees’ human rights, claimed Sunday that China is prolonging the crisis, urging the rising power to stop repatriating them.
Suzzane Scholte, chairwoman of the North Korean Freedom Coalition and also president of the non-profit Defense Forum Foundation, called China’s treatment of the refugees “inhumane and cruel.”
“Chinese authorities are complicit in the pre-meditated murder of North Korean refugees who were trying to escape to South Korea because China marks their interrogation papers so that Pyongyang knows who was trying to flee to the South,” Scholte said in an email interview with The Korea Times.
Scholte has been active in raising awareness of North Korean refugees and the inhumane treatment they receive if they are sent back to their home country.
She and her fellow activists have launched a letter-writing campaign asking individuals and organizations to appeal directly to Chinese President Hu Jintao not to repatriate these North Korean refugees but work with South Korea to see they are safely resettled.
On Thursday, they launched a protest at the Chinese Embassy in Washington D.C. dramatizing the life or death situation for North Korean defectors.
Scholte is scheduled to testify at the U.S. Congressional hearing on China’s repatriation of North Korean refugees slated for Monday (local time).
The activist said she will make a strong case for a coordinated international response to China’s repatriation of North Korean refugees during the hearing as they will face death if they are sent home.
“I will be pointing out that China is prolonging this refugee crisis because North Koreans do not want to flee their homeland, but they are doing it out of desperation because of conditions in North Korea,” she said. “Ironically, China has been trying to get North Korea to undertake reforms to improve conditions, but forcing North Koreans back to the impoverished country relieves Kim Jong-un of taking action to improve conditions in North Korea that will make the citizens not want to flee.”
International pressure on China is mounting over its repatriation of North Koreans. Nonetheless, it showed no signs of rethinking the policy. Beijing reportedly called on Seoul Korea not to make the refugees an international issue.
China is holding some 30 North Korean refugees and is poised to send them back to their homeland.
On Friday, Rep. Park Sun-young of the minor Liberty Forward Party, who had staged an 11-day hunger strike against the repatriation of defectors in front of the Chinese Embassy in Seoul, said four additional North Koreans were caught by the Chinese authorities last week.
In a press release, Park, who was taken to a hospital that day after collapsing, said the four North Koreans are a 20-month-old infant, his parents and a man in his 20s.
Survivors of repatriation said they went through torture and other sorts of inhumane treatment after being sent back to the “Hermit Kingdom.”
Earlier, new North Korean leader Kim Jong-un was quoted as having said that the entire families of a defector through three generations will be executed, hinting defectors will receive harsher treatment.
“China’s repatriation policy is causing this crisis ― allowing North Korean agents to roam freely in China assassinating humanitarian workers and hunting down refugees but not allowing the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees access to them,” Scholte said. “The international community must call upon China to stop this barbaric, inhumane and cruel treatment of refugees and get it to abide by its international treaty commitments.”
The activist said she and her colleagues will continue to raise awareness of China’s repatriation policy through all means possible including testifying at the U.S. Congress.