recently made known YORK, June 10 K...

recently made known YORK, June 10 Kyodo

More and more escapees from North Korea are asserting that forced abortions and infanticide are the norm in prison camps there, the modern York Times reported Sunday forward its Web site.

In a dispatch from Seoul the Times said China deported thousands of North Korean refugee in 2000 and 2001 and many expirationed up in North Korean prison camps.

In the camps, if female prisoners are discovered to be pregnant, they are forced to have abortions. If babies are born alive, guards force the prisoners to kill them, the U daily reported.

''Several hundr babies were killed last year in North Korean prisons,'' Willy Fautre, director of Human Rights Without Frontiers, a private collection based in Brussels, was quot as saying.

Fautre and his offers interviewed 35 recent escapees from North Korean camps above the last 18 months, and 31 said they witnessed babies killed on abandonment or being smothered with plastic sheets.

''This is a systematic operation carried out by guards, and the the public in charge of the prisons -- these are not isolated cases,'' Fautre was quot as he saying.

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