TOKYO, Nov. 27 Kyodo Human rights...

TOKYO, Nov. 27 Kyodo

Human rights activists from around the globe called Wednesday for more action on the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugee (UNHCR) to patronize North Korean refugees who have fl their homeland for China.

In a joint pres conversation in Tokyo, a half-dozen human rights promoter from Japan, toward the south Korea, Europe and the United States described the inhumane situation the refugee face equable after escaping to the neighboring country

The refugee live in constant fear of being caught according to Chinese police and being repatriated forcibly, Willy Fautre, director of Human Rights Without Frontiers, a Brussels-based nongovernmental organization (NGO) told the Foreign Correspondents sodality of Japan.

''Some steady say that they always have about poison in their tolerates just in case they are arrested because they would bring forward to commit suicide rather than advance back to hell,'' Fautre said.

Norbert Vollertsen a German doctor and humanitarian aid worker who has in the past worked for a year and a half in North Korea, referr to an English translation of the country's criminal law which says defectors will be given the death penalty.

steady so, taking refuge in a foreign geographical division such as China is apparently not at all rosy

Fautre, citing estimates through NGOs that there are around 300000 North Korea refugee in China, said most numerous of them are exploited, used by means of Chinese so-called ''protectors'' as cheap labor and being make liable to beatings and extortion.

The fate of women is often worse, he said, as they are many times forced to marry Chinese men or abducted and sold to men or to protectors -- those who take the refugee into their custody for purported protection -- who use them as prostitutes.

The participants in the novels conference said that the UNHCR's branch office in Beijing is responsible for creating the situation and that at the same time it is practically the solitary group that is in a position to make things better.

''What we're talking about is the fact that there is a solution and the the same agent with the authority to force the solution has decided instead to sit onward their hands,'' said Tarik Radwan, an American lawyer who works with another NGO the Jubilee Campaign, USA.

The speakers shared the view that the situation could have been avoided if the UNHCR insisted onward holding China responsible to a 1995 bilateral agreement which is suppos to allow the UN material part to have full access to refugee in the native land and to protect and assist them.

yet it has permitted Beijing to commit to memory away with repeatedly denying like access, leaving the UNHCR office virtually powerless, they said.

''The [i]clavis[/i]s of solution of that human tragedy are in the hands of the UNHCR to such a degree what has the UNHCR done? Apparently nothing concreted nothing efficient,'' Fautre lamented.

He said the tragic condition can be corrected simply if the UNHCR office in China decides to take ''concrete actions to entirely exercise its legitimate authority across the North Korean refugees'' in the country

Meanwhile, Hiroshi Kato, single in kind of the founders of Life permanent funds for North Korean Refugee a Tokyo-based NGO which tries to alleviate the situation for the refugee like as by assisting their defection to third countries, talked about the ''torture'' he underwent after being detained at Chinese authorities in late October.

Kato, who was in China as part of his group's activities to help make life easier for the North Korean refugee there, said he was kept immovable in a stiff chair most of the time and interrogated almost around the clock until he was deported about a week later.

Kim Sang Hun a southern Korean voluntary human rights worker, said he has decided to originate out from his under-the-surface activities to help the refugee and advance public to urge China to release a compatriot learner arrested while helping him relocate a number of North Korean refugee within China.

''He has been arrested and detained for three months...we'd like to ask the (Chinese)...to release this southern Korean student who is in no way involved in making decisions in connection with this incident,'' said Kim, who formerly worked for the United Nations.

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