North Korea commits crimes against humanity upon its citizens, which simply assault the conscience, and China acts as an accomplice. Despite the deplorable living conditions and human rights abuses in North Korea, China’s longstanding policy has been to deport citizens of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) who illegally cross the border; upon repatriation, refugees invariably face torture and the possibility of death.
China’s morally depraved policy is outlined in a new document by the UN: the 2014 report of the Commission of Inquiry on Human Rights in the DPRK (North Korea) indicates that when refugees are repatriated by China back to North Korea, officials “systematically subject them to persecution, torture, prolonged arbitrary detention and, in some cases, sexual violence, including during invasive body searches. Repatriated women who are pregnant are regularly subjected to forced abortions, and babies born to repatriated women are often killed.”
One cannot help but shutter at the similarities between North Korea’s prison camps and the concentration camps of the Holocaust; Human Rights Watch reports that over 200,000 North Koreans, including children, are imprisoned in camps where many perish from forced labor, inadequate food and abuse by guards. In the DPRK, there is no independent media, religious freedom or freedom of travel. The majority of citizens are prohibited for traveling outside their city, let alone the country itself. Ludicrous economic policies based on Juche (self-reliance) have persistently subjected North Koreans to famine and malnutrition.Arbitrary arrest, lack of due process, and torture are insidious and widespread. The state completely denies its citizens the right to freedom of thought, expression, association, and the ability to access information.
According to the 2012 report by the Democracy Index, which evaluates and rates countries based upon their electoral process and pluralism, civil liberties, functioning of government, political participation and political culture, North Korea was ranked 167th and fell in dead last for being the worst human rights abuser and least democratic country in the world.
According to the 2014 report from the UN, the majority of the refugees who are escaping to China are women, including many who are coerced into sexual slavery and pornography. If China repatriates a pregnant woman, North Korea either forces the woman to undertake an abortion, or if the baby is born, the baby is killed; the regime assumes that the father is Chinese and thus conducts this evil procedure in order to ensure the “purity” of Korea’s citizens.
Despite being a signatory to the International Refugee Convention, China consistently denies refugee status to the fleeing North Koreans, whose only crime is the pursuit of a better life free from the appalling living conditions and human rights abuses committed by the DPRK’s regime. Furthermore, China actively tracks down the North Koreans who hide there, similar to what the Gestapo did to the Jews during the Holocaust, and sends them back to North Korea at night on discreet buses. Although China tries to justify this immigration policy by claiming that these persons are simply economic migrants, similar to the Mexicans who cross the border into the U.S., this justification is absolutely absurd. Deported Mexicans do not face prison camps, tortures, forced abortions and public executions when they return home. According to Foreign Policy, China has even sent Americans and its own citizens to jail for helping the North Koreans.
Clearly, China has a morally reprehensible policy of aggressively repatriating hungry and freedom-deprived North Koreans. In the words of Michael Kirby, the chairman of the UN sponsored report, China may be “aiding and abetting crimes against humanity” by forcibly sending back North Korean refugees to their native soil and by allowing North Korean security agents to operate within China.
Despite the globally unparalleled human rights abuses committed by the regimes of Kim Il Sung, Kim Jong Il, and now Kim Jong Un, China maintains a rigid policy of sending back North Korean refugees to their repressive country, where they face years of torture and neglect in prison camps, forced abortions and public executions.
China must immediately reverse this policy if it hopes to be respected in the international community.