China's Repatriation of Refugees to North Korean Holocaust
In the 1940s, Hitler's Nazis killed people in concentration camps with gas chambers and used them as guinea pigs in chemical warfare experiments. We call the horrors of the their atrocities, the "Holocaust."
As it turns out, one country has been killing people in concentration camps with gas chambers and using them as guinea pigs in chemical warfare experiments for the past 50 years. That country is Kim Jong-il's North Korea and many of the people to be killed have been, and are still being supplied by the government of China.
When North Koreans flee to China to escape Kim Jong-il's repression and starvation, many of them become Christian after meeting local Christians. At that point, they can no longer return to North Korea, at least not openly, since Kim Jong-il's regime sends Christians to its concentration camps that maintain an estimated population of 200,000 political prisoners, 10-20% of whom are killed annually through forced labor and starvation, torture, summary executions and chemical warfare experiments in gas chambers (http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-7096673757347175289). In the past 50 years, North Korea has killed 1 to 2 million political prisoners, including an untold number of Christians, in these concentration camps alone.
This is news to us because we only began to learn about it when the recent famines in North Korea sharply increased the number of defectors, among whom were a few former concentration camp guards and a rare escapee or two. But the Chinese government has been aware of it all along, yet continues to arrest and repatriate these refugees to the North Korean regime.
China's arrest and repatriation of the North Korean refugees violates the international law, which China signed, that explicitly forbids repatriating refugees who will be threatened, let alone killed, in the country from which they escaped (see "Article 33" of http://www.ohchr.org/english/law/refugees.htm). This international law requires China to allow the United Nations to help and resettle these refugees in other countries, yet China blocks the UN from even getting near them.
Meanwhile, 70-90% of the women among the North Korean refugees in China are being raped and sold into sexual slavery by the Chinese locals. Instead of arresting and prosecuting the rapists and the sexual traffickers, the Chinese government arrests their victims and repatriates them to the North Korean regime, which sends them to its "re-education" labor camps.
The women who have become pregnant from their ordeals suffer even more. When their pregnancy is discovered, the North Korean agents kill the mixed-race fetus through injections or beatings, while full-term mothers are induced to deliver and then watch their babies being killed (http://www.northkoreanchristians.com/profile-infanticide.html). The Chinese government is well aware of this as well, yet continues to repatriate these women.
In its defense, the Chinese government states that it has asked the North Korean regime to stop killing and harming the refugees it repatriates. Well, it's very nice of China to ask but until North Korea actually listens, China is required by the international law it signed, as well as common sense, to stop sending innocent people to their death.
Our Request to China:
1. Stop arresting and repatriating the North Korean refugees.
2. Allow the UN to help and resettle them in other countries.
3. Stop the rape and sexual trafficking of the women among these refugees.
4. Use political and economic leverage with Kim Jong-il to pressure him to shut his concentration camps and to stop killing his people.
Relevant Links:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-7096673757347175289
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I4B5wypBaJM&mode=related&search=
http://internationalrelations.house.gov/archives/109/soo102705.pdf
http://www.ohchr.org
http://www.northkoreanchristians.com
http://www.chosunjournal.com