WASHINGTON (AFP) — The United States lashed out Wednesday at North Korea's "horrendous" human rights record and said the international community must be "blunt" to make the hardline communist state change its ways.
The strong words by Washington came as North Korea prepared to start disabling Thursday its nuclear facilities for the first time as part of a multilateral deal.
"The human rights situation for North Koreans in North Korea and those who have fled (to China) has not improved markedly, it remains horrendous," said Mark Lagon, the State Department's director of the office to monitor and combat human trafficking.
"For those reasons, we can't be satisfied with how we in the international community are doing. Clearly we need to do more," he said at a congressional hearing on human trafficking in China.
"If you want a prescription of what we should do from this point forward -- 'we must be frank and blunt with the North Korean authorities about their human rights record, which is abysmal," Lagon said.
Tens of thousands of North Koreans, fleeing hunger or repression at home, have travelled across the border to China in recent years.
But China has an agreement with its close ally to repatriate them as economic migrants, a policy strongly criticized by refugee aid and human rights groups.
Returnees can face harsh punishment including jail terms and forced labour and even death, according to rights groups.
Lagon chided China for forcibly returning the refugees back to North Korea and flouting its international obligations.
"A core principle of an effective anti-trafficking strategy is the protection of victims. Unfortunately, China classifies North Korean refugees as 'economic migrants' and forcibly returns them to the DPRK (North Korea) where, in all likelihood, they will be severely punished or even executed for escaping," he said.
"The PRC (China) stands by this policy, and has shown no resolve in treating North Korean victims in line with international agreements to which it is a signatory."
He said China's "poor transparency" and the political sensitivity of the issue hampered US efforts to effectively advocate for change on this issue.
North Korean women crossing the border into China are generally "most vulnerable" to trafficking given their illegal status in China and their inability to return home, he said.
Amnesty International said it had documented cases of North Korean women being lured from their homes and trafficked as "sex slaves" into China, where they are sold as brides in forced marriages.
"This is a disturbing development and the United Nations and China have failed to step up to the plate," said T. Kumar, Amnesty's Asia-Pacific advocacy chief in Washington.
He challenged the United States to push China to resolve the North Korean refugee problem in the same way it had pursued in trying to end the reclusive state's nuclear weapons drive.
Pyongyang has pledged to start nuclear disablement November 1 and complete the process by the end of the year, in line with a deadline set under a landmark six-nation accord brokered in February.
Lagon admitted that Washington gave greater priority to the nuclear arms problem.
"I must be plain that the United States had prioritized the concern about the North Korean nuclear program -- that should be clear from US policy," he said.
Also at the hearing, Rebiya Kadeer, the exiled leader of China's Uighur Muslims, accused Beijing of "large scale forced transfer" of her compatriots -- young, unmarried and mostly teenage women -- from the Xinjiang autonomous region to work in factories in the country's eastern provinces.
She accused the Chinese government of "ethnic marginalization" of Uighurs and called on Washington to send a investigation team to the factories to probe the conditions under which the Uighurs were subject to.
In one factory in Qingdao province, Kadeer said, the Uighur women could take their shower only "once every 10 days with 50 women crowded into one public shower room."
"Basically the young Uighur women are used as cheap slave labor," she said.
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