Rights Groups Check Deportation Claims/ENG

China sends backs nine North Korean defectors, according to South Korean reports.

Human rights groups are striving to confirm reports Thursday that China had deported nine North Korean defectors even though they risked facing harsh punishments, including execution, at home.

They were particularly concerned whether the nine were from a group of about 30 North Korean defectors who were reportedly caught by Chinese authorities this month and were awaiting repatriation.

"We have some information that nine defectors have been forcibly repatriated to China, and we are finding out whether they are part of the same group of about 30 defectors who were detained recently," said Greg Scarlatoiu, the executive director of the Washington-based Committee for Human Rights in North Korea.

South Korea's Yonhap news agency reported Thursday that the nine were repatriated over the weekend despite pleas by Seoul to China not to send North Korean defectors back to the hardline communist country accused of blatant human rights violations.

"My brother in North Korea called me, and said that my female cousin who crossed into China in late February was caught and sent back to North Korea," a North Korean defector told Yonhap, asking not to be named.

She said that along with her cousin, eight other North Korean defectors were also caught by Chinese police and repatriated to their homeland.

U.N. meeting
South Korea has said that it plans to raise China's forcible repatriation of North Korean defectors at a U.N. Human Rights Council meeting in Switzerland next week.

Human rights activists say returnees face severe punishment or even the death sentence.

"If returned to North Korea, illegal border crossers typically face arbitrary detention, torture and other ill-treatment, and forced labor. They are also at risk of enforced disappearance in North Korea," rights group Amnesty International said.

Although China is a state party to the U.N. Refugee Convention, it has prevented the U.N. refugee agency, the UNHCR, from gaining access to North Koreans in China.

International law prohibits the forcible return either directly or indirectly of any individuals to a country where they are at risk of persecution, torture or other ill-treatment, or death.

'Economic reasons'
China argues that the North Koreans crossed the border for "economic reasons."

Scarlatoiu said China's claim does not hold water.

"China claims that North Korean refugees are exclusive economic migrants and thus does not grant them refugee status. However, even if North Korea's endemic economic crisis may be one of the reasons of defection, its causes are political and not exclusively economic," he explained.

"Moreover, if forcibly repatriated, North Korean refugees in China face harsh punishment. So, once in China, they automatically become refugee sur place [refugee on site] and should be granted refugee status."

Tens of thousands of North Korean defectors are believed to be hiding in China, hoping to travel especially to Southeast Asian nations before resettling in South Korea, home to more than 23,000 North Korean defectors.

Reported by RFA's Korean service. Written in English by Parameswaran Ponnudurai.