24 Chinese Embassies face protests for repatriating North Korean defectors
Human rights activists in 24 cities around the world protested outside Chinese embassies on Friday and delivered petitions calling on the Chinese government to stop killing North Korean defectors by repatriating them back to their home country.
It is an offense punishable by death or imprisonment for North Korean citizens to defect from the country and the oppressive Kim regime, and the Chinese government helps facilitate North Korea’s crimes against humanity by refusing to grant North Korean defectors refugee status. By sending thousands of them back to North Korea, China knows full well that they will be tortured, forced to do hard labor and even killed in political prison camps.
In 2014, a 400-page United Nations report extensively detailed the widespread torture and abuse that North Korea is responsible for and found that China is violating its responsibility under international human rights and refugee laws.
Organized by the North Korea Freedom Coalition, demonstrations and candlelight vigils to honor those defectors who have been killed or imprisoned were held outside Chinese embassies in two dozen cities around the world including Washington, D.C., Chicago, San Francisco, Toronto, Berlin, Paris, Seoul, London, Helsinki and others as a part of the annual Save North Koreans Day.
Activists urged China to “stop killing North Koreans, and accused China’s president, Xi Jinping, of standing “side by side” with North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un in “genocide.” Along with the demonstrations, activists delivered petitions calling on the Chinese government to stand with the persecuted North Korean families.
“It is not becoming of a big country that China claims itself to be,” Jai Poong Ryu, a professor at Loyola University of Maryland and CEO of One Korea Foundation, said. “It’s odd that China is going against the United Nations resolution that it led others to sign. It’s violating its own principles instead,” Ryu added.
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This entry was posted in China, Humanitarian Aid and Relief, North Korean refugee, Prison Camps by Grant Montgomery.