China slammed over "grave" crisis facing NKorean refugees
WASHINGTON (AFP) — China came under pressure Tuesday to stop repatriating North Korean refugees after a new study highlighted concerns they were severely punished and faced possible death on their return home.
Those who confessed to religious belief faced the harshest penalties, according to the study "Prison Without Bars" by the independent US Commission on International Religious Freedom.
The 48-page report offered a rare window into religious freedom conditions inside the hardline nuclear-armed communist state, based on interviews with 32 North Korean refugees and six former security agents from the reclusive state.
Refugees said that merely owning a Bible could lead to arrests, disappearances and even deaths of those repatriated, who were treated "just like animals."
"Its up to the condition of the guards. Because killing a prisoner will do no harm for them," one interviewee said.
Another refugee, identified only as interviewee 39, claimed that "a person was shot to death" on a riverside in Hoeryeong, a North Korea city along the border with China, for accepting a Bible from South Korean priests.
The commission, which acts as the religious freedom watchdog, lamented "the grave situation" facing the repatriated North Koreans and called for global action to contain the crisis.
It said there was sufficient evidence to make a case that North Koreans in China should qualify as refugees under the relevant international standards.
Up to 300,000 North Korean refugees are believed to have fled to China, which terms them economic migrants and forcibly repatriates them back.
"Clearly, religious freedom and other human rights conditions in North Korea remain among the world's most repressive," the commission's chairman, Michael Cromartie, said as he presented the report in Congress.
"There continues to be a pressing need on the international level for further, more effective action that addresses the ongoing repression of religious freedom and other human rights in North Korea and the problems of North Korean refugees in China," he said.
Beijing's continued repatriation of North Korean refugees despite reports about their victimization on their return "highlighted China's role as the great enabler of human rights abuses," Republican Senator Sam Brownback charged at the report's launching.
"There is a dismal record of China in Tibet, there is a dismal record of China in Darfur, there is a dismal record of China in the treatment of North Korean refugees," he said, calling on Beijing to stop the "abuses."
Brownback accused China of defying its own agreement with the United Nations by refusing to give the office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees access to the North Korean refugees, who had to "face death and imprisonment" on their repatriation.
Refugees quoted in the report also said they witnessed the sale of North Korean women refugees to syndicates in China.
"It is just like trading goods. Because (North Korean women) dont speak Chinese, they are sold and treated like slaves," one interviewee said.
The report said that contrary to Beijing's claims, repatriated North Koreans faced "severe persecution" if found to have converted to Christianity or had contact with South Korean Christians or churches while in China.
It said that the Kim Jong-Il administration branded any new religious activity as "a security threat to be combated at all costs."
As a result, the report said, stringent security measures had been enacted to stop the spread of religion, mostly Protestantism, through cross-border contacts with China.
Former North Korean security agents interviewed testified to increased police infiltration of churches in China and setting up of mock prayer meetings to entrap new converts in North Korea.
