Worldwide Protest Draws Attention to Plight of North Korean Refugees

Joining a one-day worldwide protest, human rights activists in Los Angeles rallied outside the Chinese Consulate in Los Angeles on Wednesday to denounce Beijing’s policy of repatriating North Korean refugees.

“People who have escaped North Korea to seek food and shelter are forcibly taken back to North Korea, where they are thrown into jail, starved -- sometimes are killed,” said Koreatown attorney William O. Kil. “If China wants to earn respect as a world leader, it has to earn the respect by upholding human rights and value for human lives.”

About 100 protesters, holding bilingual placards, chanted, “No Olympics in China in 2008” and “Comply with U.N. International Refugee Treaty.” Then they submitted a petition to the consulate general through a receptionist.

Similar protests were held Wednesday in Washington, D.C.; San Francisco; Toronto, Canada; the Philippines; South Korea; Japan; and countries in Europe, according to Suzanne Scholte, a spokeswoman for the International Campaign to Block the Repatriation of North Korean Refugees, a coalition of human rights groups.

In Washington, eight senators and congressmen issued statements condemning China’s policy.

Rep. Thomas G. Tancredo (R-Colo.) said he would introduce a resolution when Congress convenes in January calling on the International Olympic Committee to change the venue of the 2008 Olympics.

“We are all aware of China’s forced repatriation of North Korean refugees and seizing of humanitarian workers, despite China’s knowledge that these refugees face imprisonment, torture and even possibly execution upon their return to North Korea,” Tancredo said in a statement.

“The International Olympic Committee should change the venue of the 2008 Olympics to Toronto unless China halts its violent persecution of North Korean refugees, releases humanitarian workers that it has jailed, and ends its one-child policy that results in forced abortions and sterilization,” he said.

Sun Weide, a spokesman for the Chinese Embassy in Washington, said China considers North Koreans who crossed the border into China illegal immigrants.

“They are not refugees,” he said. “They went to China and stayed in China illegally for economic reasons. Our position has been always to proceed from the fundamental interest of maintaining stability on the Korean peninsula as well as in the Asia Pacific region.”

The Rev. Douglas Shin of Los Angeles, who is working with refugees in Seoul, estimates that at least 100 North Koreans are repatriated every week. Some weeks, the number reaches 500, he said.