Bangkok Post: Thai Military Gov’t Orders ‘Offensive’ Against N. Korean Refugees

Thanks to a reader for forwarding this. 

Chiang Rai _ Immigration authorities in the North are going on the offensive to try to stem the influx of North Korean migrants by tipping off China where the migrants are hiding before they enter Thailand illegally. Pol Col Jessada Yaisoon, the immigration checkpoint chief for Mae Sai district, said immigration officers would use more pro-active measures which necessitate approaching China, the ”upstream country” of the problem. The government has been alarmed by the mounting number of North Korean migrants who have sneaked into Thailand, which they use as a springboard to third countries, mostly South Korea.

After leaving North Korea, the migrants go into hiding in China before travelling by boat to and then Thailand where they are met by brokers in Chiang Rai who provide them with lodging. The migrants then give themselves up to police and seek asylum in third countries.

Just to give you and idea of the  lengths to which these people are going to escape North Korea, here’s a map of the region.  Here’s a map of Thailand; Nong Khai is another refugee hot spot.

Prime Minister Surayud Chulanont has ordered the marine task force responsible for security along the Mekong river in Chiang Rai to map out a special operation plan to deter North Koreans from taking refuge in Thailand.

Task force chief Capt Sompong Nakthong said the prime minister’s order assigned his task force as the main unit in pushing back North Korean migrants.

The task force would locate the border areas where North Korean migrants ”come ashore” and where they are picked up by brokers. That information, as well as detailed measures for deterring the migrants, will be submitted to the prime minister later.

Capt Sompong said the gangs that helped smuggle in North Korean migrants were well-organised with connections with multi-national human trafficking networks firmly established in neighbouring countries.

Here is a  Time Magazine profile of the Reverend Tim Peters, who leads one of those “gangs.”  Tim is a friend,  and one of the finest, most unselfish human beings I’ve ever met (you can contribute to his organization, Helping Hands Korea, here).  He was recently shown in this CNN documentary  while trying to help get North Korean refugees  into the U.S. and South Korean embassies in Bangkok.  Both embassies refused to provide any assistance, which is scandalous, and which was, in the case of the U.S. Embassy, is illegal — a blatant violation of Section  303 of the North Korean Human Rights Act of 2004, codified at 22 U.S.C. sec. 7843.  It is a defiance of binding federal statue that is breathtaking for its sheer lawless arrogance, and  our acceptance of token numbers of refugees  cannot be regarded as a serious effort to address that defiance.

Pol Col Jessada Yasoon, head of the Mae Sai district immigration police, said authorities would contact their counterparts in China and supply them with information to track North Korean migrants while they are still on Chinese soil.Police have obtained details from arrested migrants concerning their whereabouts in China and what activities were involved in making their journey, he said.

He added that his office may also present Chinese authorities with a list of individuals suspected to be members of human-smuggling gangs.

Pol Col Jessada said the solution to the illegal entry problem may lie in serious suppression of the network of brokers.

According to statistics from Chiang Rai’s immigration authorities, 48 North Korean migrants were arrested in 2004, 100 in 2005 and up to 321 this year.

And why?  Because the North Korean government’s starvation of its own people, which this must-read  report recently called a “crime against humanity,” is ignored by most international news media.  North Korea, which has been cleansing its countryside of  politically suspect families for years now,  was thus able to reject interrnational food aid without much more than a peep from the World Food Program  or the big names of  the Human Rights Industry,  who were too preoccupied with fictitious gulags to  concern itself with  the real ones.

Repatriation Means Torture and Genocide

As early as 2003, the New York Times reported that China sends North Korean refugees back across the border “strung together with a wire through their noses.”  The Times of London recently carried another report  describing similar treatment:

THE North Korean refugee had one request for her captors before the young Chinese soldiers led her back across the steel-girdered bridge on the Yalu River that divides two “socialist allies”.

“She asked for a comb and some water because she said that if she was going to die she could not face going to heaven looking as dirty and dishevelled as this,” recounted a relative of one soldier who was there.

What happened next is testimony to the rising disgust in Chinese military ranks as Beijing posts more troops to the border amid a crisis with North Korea over its regime’s plan to stage a nuclear test.

The soldiers, who later told family members of the incident, marched the woman, who was about 30, to the mid-point of the bridge. North Korean guards were waiting. They signed papers for receipt of the woman, who kept her dignity until that moment. Then, in front of the Chinese troops, one seized her and another speared her hand — the soft part between thumb and forefinger — with the point of a sharpened steel cable, which he twisted into a leash.

“She screamed just like a pig when we kill it at home in the village,” the soldier later told his relative. “Then they dragged her away.

These people, on the other hand, are the lucky ones.  They got out alive.  Others just like them won’t.  Pay special attention to this baby’s face.  North Korean police murder babies like her by stomping on their necks, smothering them, or leaving them outside to die of exposure.  Why?  Because babies born to refugee women are presumed “racially impure.”  That’s the meaning of “never again” in  places Kofi Annan‘s U.N. chose not to see.

U.N. Impotence

It’s especially reprehensible for Thailand to do this, given that the U.N. Special Rapporteur on Human Rights in North Korea, Vitit Muntarbhorn, is one of Thailand’s leading legal scholars.  At long last, in 2005, declared North Korean refugees to be just that, and called on China to stop its repatriations.  The General Assembly relied  those reports  in passing this resolution, in November of 2006.  Among other things, that resolution condemned China (no, not by name, of course) for its flagrantly unlawful repatriations of these people to North Korean gulags.  Now, Thailand is looking less like  a democracy interrupted, and more like Southeast Asia’s newest ruthless dictatorship.

Another way to look at this?  As a perfect illustration of the U.N.’s impotence.  For years, the UNHCR has failed to give North Korean refugees any effective assistance while China blocked it from visiting areas near the North Korean border.  Ditto the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights.  (Congress should seriously consider withholding U.S. funds from the UNHCR and UNHCHR if neither will do its job.)

It will assuredly  be a cold August day in Chiang Rai before I make plans to vacation there, and I would encourage everyone to let the Thai Embassy hear us.   Making one’s country an accessory to infanticide is simply  evil.