The head of the United Nations food program was in Beijing last week, pleading for China's help to prevent more death and famine in North Korea. Facing a funding deficit, the world body has suspended humanitarian assistance to 3 million North Koreans in the western part of the country. More aid cuts may come.
Emergency shipments of Chinese grain could ease the crisis. But to stabilize the situation on its border, China must also address the rights of thousands of North Koreans who have fled into China.
In a new report to be released on Tuesday, Human Rights Watch has documented the refugee crisis and its human toll. A former detainee in a North Korean logging camp described how prisoners survived, catching rats using shoes as traps, then roasting and eating them secretly.
The embarrassing rush of North Koreans into diplomatic compounds in China beginning last March provoked the Chinese authorities to tighten border security, to search for North Koreans in hiding and to go after those suspected of helping them.
Hiding in villages among Chinese citizens of Korean descent, North Korean asylum seekers are victimized twice. Once they make it into China, they are highly vulnerable to abuse, extortion and exploitation. Desperate women sell sexual services through prostitution or arranged marriage. Or they are sold or abducted into sexual slavery. Some are beaten by violent Chinese husbands after seeking shelter with church groups who tell them marriage is the only way to avoid detection.
At any moment, North Koreans risk being picked up by Chinese authorities and returned to North Korea under the terms of a secret 1986 agreement between Beijing and Pyongyang. Yet under the UN Refugee Convention, to which it is a party, China is obligated not to push back asylum seekers in danger of persecution. In North Korea, anyone leaving the country without authorization is subject to three years in a labor camp, or even the death penalty.
A comprehensive strategy is needed to address the human rights disaster in North Korea and the impact on neighboring countries. North Koreans are entitled to leave their homeland under the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Pyongyang must immediately cease punishing those who flee and also stop persecuting their family members.
China should halt the forcible return of North Koreans, and begin a high-level dialogue with the UN High Commissioner for Refugees to establish a screening mechanism for asylum seekers.
Countries that hold bilateral talks with China including the United States, Japan, the United Kingdomand Australia should raise this issue with Beijing. As an interim step, Beijing should be urged to grant all North Koreans an indefinite humanitarian status and allow aid groups to operate in border areas without intimidation or arrest.
Addressing the refugee crisis must be part of a broader strategy to bring North Korea out of its isolation. Giving humanitarian aid is one answer. Exposing North Korea's human rights violations, now largely hidden, should also be a priority.
Mike Jendrzejczyk is Washington D.C. Director of Human Rights Watch's Asia Division.
