Demonstration on August 20th: Please Join Us

This is a Saturday, at 2 p.m. The Chinese Embassy is at 2300 Connecticut Avenue in Washington, D.C. The sponsor is the North Korean Freedom Coalition. This is in coordination with the Korean American Church Coalition’s prayer vigil, scheduled for Sunday, August 21.

The subject of the protest will be China’s forced repatriation of North Korean refugees back to North Korea, sometimes with cables through their noses. Past Chinese treatment of these refugees has also included using electric cattle prods on women and kids, dragging mothers and children out of foreign embassies, and the suppression of hunger strikes by desperate refugees in China’s detention camps. All of this directly violates the U.N. Convention on Refugees, which China has signed. China dubiously claims that the refugees, who number between 50,000 and 300,000, are “economic migrants.” Those repatriated can expect to be sent to North Korea’s gargantuan and terminally harsh gulags, or to face a firing squad. The latter option is especially likely for refugees who are suspected of being Christians. Either way, the result is likely to be fatal. If the refugee is a pregnant woman, the North Korean guards are likely to perform a forced abortion or kill her baby after it is born.

Since the real gulags aren’t getting the attention they deserve, we’re doing what we can to fill the void. Please join us, particularly if you represent a church, synagogue, or political or social organization.

Reminder: Don’t miss Freedom House’s July 19th North Korea Conference at Washington’s Mayflower Hotel. Natan Sharansky–Soviet dissident, prisoner of conscience, and author–will come to speak, and the event will be broadcast into North Korea via the Voice of America and Radio Free Asia. Internationally renowned human rights activist Dr. Norbert Vollertsen is also expected to attend.