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Unusual Cruelty - North Koreans in China

One of our readers kindly signaled the article below to us. This tragic violation of Chinese law, international law and basic human rights demonstrates that the inhuman and unsustainable situation in China was actually worsened by the Olympics, and will continue to worsen.

Unusual Cruelty
China forcibly repatriates North Korean women living with Chinese men, even if they have children.
The suffering this policy causes goes largely unreported

Kay Seok
The Guardian
23 May 2008

Little is known about children in China who lose their mothers not to a natural disaster, but to Chinese policy. But if the Chinese government but to respected its laws and the international treaties it ratified, separation, sometimes lifelong, mothers and children could be avoided.

Children born in China of a Chinese father and North Korean mother are entitled to Chinese nationality. But, if registered, their mothers risk arrest and repatriation. If they are not registered, they are denied a legal identity and education. In China, all children are entitled to nine years of education regardless of legal status. But schools demand verification. (If born in North Korea, they have no claims to Chinese nationality.)

China has been repatriating many North Korean women, including those with children. Most had escaped a famine that killed about one million during the '90s. The Chinese government insists they are economic migrants, but leaving North Korea without permission is a crime. The repatriated are subjected to interrogation, mistreatment, torture, and prison. Risk of persecution means that China is obliged to offer them shelter and protection according to the 1951 Refugee Convention. Their deportation violates China's legal obligations towards them as refugees, separating mothers and children, sometimes for life.

"People said the police would come and get all North Koreans before the Olympic Games," said the father of a stateless child. "We decided it's best for the child's mother to leave." The last he heard she was in Bangkok waiting to seek asylum in South Korea. But he was able to register his daughter.

"There are two things I pray for - for my son to have hukou, and for me not to be repatriated," said one of the many refugees in China.

Read the full article at:

guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/may/23/unusualcruelty

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