China complicit in Nork brutrality

Washington Times:

China is partially to blame for North Korea's human rights violations because of its policy of sending North Korean refugees back to the isolated communist dictatorship, members of a congressional panel said Thursday.

"What China is doing ... is brutal," said Rep. Frank R. Wolf, Virginia Republican and co-chairman of the Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission, at Thursday's hearing at the Rayburn House Office Building. "This administration has lost its voice. It's silent on these issues."

While Beijing has long been North Korea's sole source of outside diplomatic support, the repatriation policy makes China's complicity deeper, said Rep. Christopher H. Smith, New Jersey Republican.

Mr. Smith recommended that China be placed on the State Department's list of "Tier 3 Countries" on matters of human trafficking. A nation in that category "does not fully comply with the minimum standards [to fight trafficking] and is not making significant efforts to do so," which would enable the U.S. to place economic sanctions on China, which is currently on the "Tier 2" watch list.

Because, among other reasons, the Chinese government offers bounties of up to $1,400 to families who report North Korean defectors, about 90 percent are caught, Mr. Smith said.

Nongovernmental organizations want to bring North Korea to trial for crimes against humanity in the International Criminal Court, said Rep. Jim McGovern, Massachusetts Democrat and the commission's other co-chairman.

Graphic pictures drawn by an unnamed North Korean defector were used to demonstrate the atrocities North Korea performs against its citizens who have been deported by the Chinese government.

Among other things, the pictures showed a prisoner being forced to pick through a cow's manure to find kernels of corn, a prisoner being hung upside down and kicked in the stomach by a guard, and a pregnant woman having a wooden board placed across her body while two other prisoners jumped on either side of the board to force an abortion.

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China probably fears that a failure to return the defectors will result in even more defectors. That maybe true, but it is hardly an excuse for being an accessory to wanton brutality. It is hard to imagine a worse fate than being a North Korean returned to the terror state after escaping.