As if we hadn’t heard enough repellent reports about the UN these days, Claudia Rosett has news today about their wretched treatment of refugees from that giant insane asylum known as North Korea.
The situation, by U.N. lights, is of course complex. For more than a decade, North Koreans have been fleeing their country by the only avenue even partly open to them–past the northern border patrols, into China. An estimated 300,000 North Koreans are in hiding in China today. They have a well-founded fear of persecution, should they be sent back. Testimony has stacked up high and wide–much of it over the past four years, on Mr. Lubbers’s watch– that if returned these refugees would likely end up starved or worked to death in the labor camps of Kim Jong Il. Some are murdered outright. One recent dispatch from a South Korean private aid group, the Headquarters for the Protection of North Korean Defectors, reports that according to sources inside North Korea the regime there just last month executed some 60 North Korean would-be defectors sent back by China, killing at least eight in public, in the northern city of Chongjin–to deter others from making a run for it.
Such would-be refugees have been dying faceless, nameless and scarcely even remarked upon by the world community. But these were human beings. They had faces and names. From what we know of conditions in North Korean detention centers, it’s a good bet they were freezing, famished and quite possibly tortured in the hours before they were then murdered in public due to the combined and systematic state policies of China and North Korea.
Where is the U.N. in all this? Under the U.N. Refugee Convention–which Beijing has signed and the UNHCR, with its $1.1 billion budget, is supposed to administer–these North Koreans refugees had rights. The convention promised them not a return to their deaths, but at least safe transit through China to a place of asylum.
The UNHCR keeps an office in Beijing, with a budget this year totaling $4.4 million, to which asylum seekers have no access. Four years ago, a family of North Korean refugees actually stormed the premises and gained asylum after threatening to eat rat poison from their pockets if forced back out onto the street. Since then, the UNHCR has allowed China’s security agents to better defend the compound against further visits by the people the UNHCR is supposedly in China to protect.
The horrifying thing about all this is that it is not even faintly surprising at this point.
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15 Comments
1. Billy Hank:Seems like the only “refugees” the UNHCR is interested in are the “palestinians.” Consider Rawanda, Darfur, etc.
Feb 23, 2005 - 8:28 am 2. Rick Ballard:Gee, and here I was, infected with mindless enthusiasm for the tremendous opportunities that lay with dealing with Asia. I suppose I’ve just got to cast aside my western prejudices concerning human rights and justice. Certainly, the UN has.
Btw, Roger, Does this report achieve the rather high level of transparency that you seek? It’s a shame that Ms. Rosett couldn’t have tied in a few comments concerning the fantastic job the UNHRC has done in Palestine in aiding the training of splodeydopes. The UN certainily has a world wide impact.
Feb 23, 2005 - 8:37 am 3. Morgan:Note to Kim Jong Il:
When the people of your country will risk their lives to get to rural China, it is time to consider change.
**************
Is there political hay to be made by granting political asylum to refugees from North Korea? No? Well, then the UN has no reason to get involved.
The UN is primarily a tool for furthering the political objectives of those who control it. Apparently those objectives do not include embarassing North Korea.
Feb 23, 2005 - 9:09 am 4. Sandy P:Must have stability above all, after all.
That is the most important thing.
Feb 23, 2005 - 9:18 am 5. Silicon valley Jim:Just to put that 300,000 number in some perspective: North Korea’s population is approximately 25 million. More than 1% of its population is hiding in China. Looked at another way, it’s the equivalent of the population of Los Angeles leaving the United States. How many more have managed to escape to other countries, and how many more yet have been prevented from escaping?
Feb 23, 2005 - 9:25 am 6. rastajenk:I still contend that Ruud Lubbers is so diabolically named that he couldn’t be anything but an international villain of the highest order.
Feb 23, 2005 - 10:37 am 7. Knucklehead:Rastajenk,
“Ruud Lubbers” qualifies as one of those things you just can’t make up, doesn’t it. Even the worst James Bond movie couldn’t have conjured up that name for some villain engaged in evil sexcapades. Maybe the whole thing, the entire world, really is some demented soul’s evil conspiracy. It had to be Karl Rove who named the guy - had to be.
Feb 23, 2005 - 11:17 am 8. Matt Evans:*The horrifying thing about all this is that it is not even faintly surprising at this point.*
The truly horrifying thing is that the US bears the financial burden for the UN’s continued incompentence.
Feb 23, 2005 - 11:31 am 9. chuck:I’d feel much better about dealing with North Korea if there were more support for us in South Korea. I don’t know how things stand at the moment, but various news reports (I know, I know) have given me the impression we are pretty unpopular there.
Expecting the UN to deal with this is expecting too much. Why should China care? It seems to me that the South Koreans need to start pushing on this issue and give these refugees somewhere to go.
Feb 23, 2005 - 12:55 pm 10. mythusmage:Here’s a post from a fellow who recently comment at my blog. It speaks of illegal immigration from China into Russia, which might be orchestrated by China.
That opens up a possibilty. Beijing could encourage North Korean refugees to move to Siberia. Russia really doesn’t have the resources needed to keep them out, and is well on her way to loosing any real control of Siberia period. China could do a number of things this way. Move the Koreans out of her territory, keep them safe from Kim Jung il, and make conditions more favorable to her eventual take-over of Siberia.
For the refugees, it would mean a chance at a better life.
Just a thought.
Feb 23, 2005 - 1:36 pm 11. Knucklehead:mythusmage,
Serbian Chinese?!?. Man, I really need to start paying more attention to this world. When the heck did the Chinese set up shop in Serbia? That danged Jenjiss Kahn probably did it. Him or Bush.
Just kidding, of course. I’m in one of my moods. And these are not chemically induced so I should probably worry.
Feb 23, 2005 - 2:16 pm 12. Final Historian:Here is a pdf showing there to be around 2.5 million Chinese in the Russian Far East alone.
http://www.csis.org/ruseura/ponars/policymemos/pm_0319.pdf
Check near the end for that info.
Feb 23, 2005 - 2:32 pm 13. Terrye:I have heard that the young South Koreans consider the US to be the enemy and not the north, after all they say we are the same people.
If they are the same people then I suggest they take care of their brothers and sisters to the north. But since the US has to defend them even while they are insulting us I guess it is too much to expect them to do much of anything about this.
The north is run by a madman and the South does not want the financial responsibility of reunification, but they don’t want Seoul nuked either. Quite a quandry for them.
Feb 23, 2005 - 2:50 pm 14. Morgan:Here’s a RAND report on South Korean attitudes towards the US
Feb 23, 2005 - 3:53 pm 15. someone:Morgan, thanks for the report. Looks like the idiotarians successfully took over their school (esp. university) system.
Feb 23, 2005 - 9:30 pm