LiNK Members Arrested in China

One Free Korea has a must read posting about the arrest of Liberty in North Korea (LiNK) members by Chinese authorities who were helping refugees escape from North Korea via China.  In addition to their arrests six North Korean refugees were also arrested that will surely be executed once returned to North Korea:

China’s treatment of the North Koreans violates the International Convention Regarding the Status of Refugees, to which it is a party and which bars "refoulement," or the repatriation of refugees to places where their lives or freedom would be in jeopardy. North Koreans who are sent home by Beijing face execution or a term in one of Kim Jong Il’s prison camps, which can amount to a death sentence.

The six refugees in jail in Shenyang include two orphan boys, ages 16 and 17; a 22-year-old woman; and three women in their 40s. One of the older women is the mother of a 19-year-old who made it to safety in the U.S. consulate last year and is awaiting resettlement in the U.S. along with two orphan boys — if China lets them leave. One of the women has relatives in Hawaii; another has family in South Korea.

Here is a sample of what One Free Korea has posted in response to these arrests:

(China’s abuse and repatriation of these refugees is a flagrant violation of the 1951 U.N. Convention on Refugees, which China signed, but of course, China really doesn’t care, and neither does the U.N., nor do the hypocrites who comprise the majority of the Human Rights Industry.  Ditto the “managed famine” that killed two million North Koreans during its largest-ever arms binge.)

Why the crackdown?  Because the food situation in North Korea is deteriorating fast, Kim Jong Il’s regime is under an increasingly effective financial attack from the United States Treasury Department, and the Chinese are doing everything they can to preserve their North Korean puppet and partial colony.  They may also be seeking to slave-catch their way to a refugee-free Olympics by 2008. 

As sad as that may be, this does remove one agonizing question from the shoulders of activists who had adopted a less confrontational approach with China for fear that we’d see just this result.  China is testing the world’s reaction, and I share China’s confidence that Ban Ki Moon and the U.N. won’t do anything particularly effective to interfere.

Make sure you read the rest of the posting.

Will the UN do anything?  I seriously doubt it when the United Nations Human Rights Council includes nations such as China, Cuba, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, and Russia just to name a few globally known human rights violators.  The United Nations is never short on condemning the US for the Gitmo Prison while continuing to keep their heads in the sand over the massive human rights violations going on every day in North Korea and the Chinese complicity in ensuring that it continues to happen.  The UN at least wrote a naughty letter last month to North Korea maybe they can at least send another one this month requesting that China free the six refugees and live up to their human rights obligations since they are a member of the UN Human Rights Council.  Then again this is the reason China is on the Human Rights Council to begin with, so they can prevent writing letters to themselves over human rights abuses.