China has subjected hundreds of North Koreans to atrocities in the last year by forcibly returning them home. The North Korean government believes that religion, especially Christianity, is the greatest threat to its power, experts said at a recent US hearing.
Christian Daily International reports that torture, sexual violence, enslavement and murder await those repatriated from China to detention centres in North Korea.
‘Any religious belief, and Christianity in particular, as well as South Korea, constitute the only challenges to Supreme Leader Kim Jong Un’s absolute monopoly on power,’ Greg Scarlatoiu, executive director of the non-governmental Committee for Human Rights in North Korea (HRNK), said at a hearing of the US Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF). ‘Christianity offers an alternative way of life that delegitimises tyranny and transcends oppression.’
Hundreds of North Koreans have been forcibly repatriated from China since last year despite the known risks they face upon their return, said Hanna Song, executive director of the Database Center for North Korean Human Rights (NKDB), at the hearing.
‘Upon returning back into North Korea, one of the first questions they are asked is whether they have met a missionary in China,’ Song said. ‘This question is not merely a formality. The answer determines the severity of punishment they will endure. If an individual admits to or is found to have had contact with a missionary, particularly one affiliated with Christianity, they’re often subject to the harshest forms of torture and imprisonment.’
When North Koreans are forcibly returned, they find that encounters they had with religious figures while in China can mark them for life, ‘turning an already dire situation into one of extreme suffering,’ she said. ‘The international community must urgently act to address these forced repatriations and the inhumane consequences awaiting those sent to North Korea.’
