U.N. Commission should find China responsible for crimes against humanity, too.

China is denying reports that it arrested 15 North Korean refugees near Kunming. According to the Chosun Ilbo, the refugees have been moved to areas near the North Korean border. Some may have been repatriated already, along with other refugees rounded up near Shenyang. If so, their fate inside North Korea is grim.

As the Chinese government already knows, and has for years.

I don’t know what, exactly, I should read from the fact that North Korea is loudly calling for China to return its escaped subjects. Ordinarily, North Korea doesn’t even have to ask. Perhaps China is unusually concerned about damage to its image, although there’s little evidence to suggest that right now.

It does, however, leads me to wonder what the U.N. Commission of Inquiry will have to say about China’s repatriation of North Korean refugees, now that we know that the COI will find that North Korea committed crimes against humanity.

China’s complicity, of course, is what locks the gate to the prison state. Declaring North Korea’s responsibility is an overdue first step, but if the COI is willing to something brave and potentially useful, it should also find China responsible for crimes against humanity, for violating its own obligations under the Refugee Convention.

The COI’s findings may well lead to charges before the International Criminal Court. Family members of Korean War abductees are taking North Korea to the ICC for unlawful detention. Certainly China has repatriated some of these very South Koreans to the North. Abductee family members and the family members of other North Korean refugees have just as good a basis to sue China before the ICC.