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February 05, 2005
UN Grants NoKo Defectors Refugee Status
This article really surprised me. The United Nations, by declaring North Korean defectors refugees, bars China from sending them back to North Korea. This is a big development:
The designation will be made in a report by the United Nations Special Rapporteur on North Korea, Professor Vitit Muntarbhorn, to be presented at the U.N. Human Rights Commission in Geneva, Switzerland, in March, says Jubilee Campaign USA, according to the Assist News Service.On the same day, the North Korean government threatens to turn US bases into a "Sea of Fire." The South Korean government responded by issuing a white paper describing the US response:Muntarbhorn was appointed in July 2004 with a mandate to investigate and report on human rights violations in North Korea and begin a dialogue with its government.
Jubilee Campaign's Ann Buwalda said that for the past three years, her group has been pressing the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees to give refugee protection to North Koreans who are fleeing their homeland, which suffers famine and political repression under the harsh dictatorship of Kim Jong Il.
Buwalda said China, a signatory to the 1951 Convention and 1967 Protocol relating to the status of refugees, has "persistently sought" to characterize all North Koreans fleeing into its territory as "economic migrants."
By so doing, she said, China can justify breaking the treaty's requirement that the North Koreans not be sent home.
The U.S. would dispatch 690,000 troops and 2,000 warplanes in the event of a serious conflict.
"The United States has a plan to send more than 40 percent of its entire Navy, more than half of its Air Force and more than 70 percent of its Marine Corps to defend South Korea," the white paper said. "This shows the United States is firmly determined in its will to help defend the Korean peninsula."It mentioned 160 vessels and 1,600 additional aircraft would augment the troops and fighter jets.
Updated for the first time in four years, the brief now calls North Korea a "direct military threat," instead of the South's "main enemy," which it had been using for the past decade.
Posted by Aaron at February 5, 2005 05:41 PM
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Comments
If Truman had let MacArthur go over the 38th we would not be having this conversation.
Posted by: DoctorDentons at February 5, 2005 08:33 PM