From the WSJ Opinion Archives
THE REAL WORLD
Where Is Ms. Cho?
Iraq isn't the only country making a mockery of the U.N.
A few weeks ago, seven North Korean defectors went to the Foreign Ministry in Beijing to ask China to honor their right--theoretically guaranteed by the United Nations--to be designated and protected as refugees. Before they left, the four men and three women posed in a hotel room for a group photo. They held a white banner, bearing their desperate request in big blue Korean characters: "Recognize us as political refugees." Eyewitness accounts report a brief struggle in front of the ministry, as Chinese guards arrested all seven, bundled them into vans and drove off. That was Aug. 26. China has provided no news of them since.
Their story should not be allowed to vanish. Their approach to the Foreign Ministry took great courage. It was not only a last-ditch attempt to gain asylum but a daring attempt to draw the world's attention to the hideous predicament in which they and their fellow North Korean refugees find themselves. They rank among the world's most utterly dispossessed people.
Fleeing famine and the tyranny of Kim Jong Il's communist regime, roughly a quarter of a million North Koreans have made a run for what they hope might be a lesser evil, China. But there, instead of safe haven or even safe passage to a more hospitable nation, they find themselves persecuted and hunted down. If captured, they are sent back to terrible punishment in North Korea, simply for committing the "crime" of having tried to escape.
A few score of these defectors have gained asylum in South Korea and other places, by way of storming embassies and consulates in China. But compared with the huge number still on the run, pathetically few have been saved. Crashing the gates of foreign legations is horribly risky, with the approaches heavily guarded by Chinese security agents. Success is further contingent on getting enough world attention to embarrass Beijing into letting asylum-seekers leave the country, on the pretext of medical problems or some such. China has so far refused to recognize North Korean defectors for what they are: refugees. That would imply a set of rights that China prefers not to respect.
In coming out of hiding in China and directly approaching the authorities to ask for refugee status, these seven defectors were specifically inviting China to comply with accepted rules of international conduct. They were following the procedure prescribed by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.
Baldly rejecting their approach puts China in flagrant violation of its U.N. agreements, as Beijing, with its seat on the U.N. Security Council, has every reason to know. Compared with the mess in the Middle East, that might seem a small matter. China's government, after all, has quite a record of jailing and murdering its own citizens. So why care how Beijing treats North Koreans?
Yet by winking at China's gross disregard for decent conduct in international affairs, the free world invites further disrespect by China and other despotic regimes. Beyond that, it is degrading to our own moral character to know that China is abusing people we have all agreed to protect, but then just let the matter slide.
At the very least, it is grotesque that the U.N. permits China to go right on enjoying a seat on the governing body of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees. As spelled out by the UNHCR, a basic requirement for membership in this select, executive committee is that nations thus honored must "have a demonstrated interest in and devotion to the solution of the refugee problem." Keeping China on board goes some distance toward turning the UNHCR itself into a joke.
"When you see the erosion of things that you believed in, it is frustrating," one longtime UNHCR staffer tells me. China is not remotely living up to even its most minimal obligations as signatory to the U.N.'s 1951 convention and 1967 additional protocol on refugee policy, which promise "that no Contracting State shall expel or return ("refouler") a refugee against his or her will, in any manner whatsoever, to a territory where he or she fears persecution."
No one by now could seriously dispute that defectors from North Korea, facing return, have a well-founded fear of persecution. Ruud Lubbers, who heads the UNHCR, confirmed to me this week that the mere act of fleeing North Korea effectively turns these people into refugees, because "when they are sent back afterwards they are in real trouble in their country" and "will be treated harshly." But rather than raise a public protest, he said, "we have to do for humanitarian purposes things that we can do."
Which, in the current circumstance, amount to basically nothing. China's clear commitment is not to its respectable facade at the U.N., but to a nasty bilateral protocol signed in 1986 between Beijing and Pyongyang, a copy of which a member of Congress recently obtained. Under the heading of "developing the friendly cooperation between the public security and state security agencies of both countries," this protocol makes no mention whatsoever of refugees. Instead, it provides for the systematic return of citizens of either country who without official permission have crossed the shared border. This protocol further promises the repatriation of any "antirevolutionary element attempting destructive activities"--which by Beijing's lights seems to include North Koreans applying for asylum.
There is also a provision for the return of corpses. This, presumably, came in handy last spring, when according to a story now circulating in the Korean community, a North Korean defector, Sohn In Kuk, was beaten to death inside China by North Korean agents who had come to retrieve a batch of arrested defectors at a Chinese border station. I cannot confirm the story. What I can confirm is that when I called the UNHCR in Geneva, to ask who might be in a position to look into this account, I was told there was effectively nothing the UNHCR could do. China does not allow the UNHCR's Beijing office access to the border areas. That, incidentally, is another violation of the 1951 refugee convention, which requires that "contracting States undertake to cooperate with the office of the UNHCR."
One of the seven defectors arrested at the Foreign Ministry last month, 27-year-old Cho Sung-hye, spelled out the peril she faced in the application she tried to give to the Chinese authorities, a copy of which she provided to the press just before her arrest. Ms. Cho wrote that she had escaped the so-called Democratic People's Republic of Korea "in search of freedom" and if returned, "I will certainly be executed in accordance with Article 47 of the DPRK penal code." In the photograph, Ms. Cho, wearing a checkered shirt, her hair pulled back, holds up a corner of the banner asking for refugee status. Like the rest of the group, she does not smile. She stares straight at the camera, her face tight with fear and resolve.
The UNHCR's executive committee is next due to meet at the end of this month, with China, as usual, included. The truth is that despite all the U.N. conventions and grand talk, world officialdom provides no champion whatever for Ms. Cho.
Congress has been pondering ways to help the North Korean refugees, but nothing of heft has so far emerged. The UNHCR impotently consents to having its Beijing office guarded by Chinese security agents against the very refugees it is supposed to be helping. The only real assistance comes from private sources. And this week the most vocal advocate of the North Korean refugee cause, German doctor Norbert Vollertsen, received a warning from the German government that there was credible information that "North Korean/Chinese agents" will try to kill him.
The chief culprit in all of this is North Korea, with China running a close second. But in doing nothing to uphold its own rules to protect refugees, the U.N. is by now complicit. So are the governments of the U.N.'s member nations, which have so far chosen to look the other way. Something must change. A good start would be for U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan to stand up in public and ask China: What happened to the seven refugees who came to the Beijing Foreign Ministry? Where is Ms. Cho?
Ms. Rosett is a member of The Wall Street Journal's editorial board. Her column appears Wednesdays here and in The Wall Street Journal Europe.
