From the North Korea Freedom Coalition (via):
Wherever you are in the world on Thursday, September 22, 2011, please join the International Protest to Save North Korean Refugees slated for 12:00 noon by participating with one of the thirteen countries and twenty-four cities where events will occur. Country and city coordinators are delivering petitions at 12:00 noon to the Chinese embassies calling upon them to end their policy of forcibly repatriating North Korean refugees back to North Korea to face torture, imprisonment and even public execution.
We are simply calling upon China to abide by its international treaty commitments and allow the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees to be able to carry out their mission to help refugees. China's policy has caused this crisis and led to these refugees to be in extreme danger while threatening to arrest and jail those who try to help them. Just this week it was reported that a South Korean missionary died under suspicious circumstances and another human rights worker was poisoned -- what they had in common is they were both in China trying to help North Korean refugees and it is believed they were targeted by North Korean agents who are free to operate in the China....
China's policy has led to extreme danger for the refugees and those who try to help them. It has led to the exploitation of North Korean women with over 80% victims of human traffickers. It has led to "stateless" children, North Korean orphans, having to hide in shelters terrified of repatriation to North Korea, living with no access to medical care and education, and those children are the fortunate ones....
This is a crisis that could be solved overnight if China would simply follow international law and allow the UNHCR to do their job. This international protest is necessary because China has not responded to repeated requests by the governments of South Korea and the United States and the UNHCR to end the forceful repatriation of North Korean refugees.
The London coordinator is Kim Joo-il. The Chinese Embassy is on Portland Place.
Whatever cynical reasons China may have for its policy of forced repatriation, one major factor must be the realisation that should the North Korean refugees be treated decently, according to UNHCR guidelines, the trickle of defectors over the Tumen and Yalu rivers between the two countries could very well turn into a flood - rather like the flood of refugees which precipitated the collapse of the Iron Curtain in 1989. An excellent prospect, of course, but not perhaps the kind of scenario to be welcomed by the Chinese leaders in Beijing.
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