Good afternoon.
Thank you, Chair and members of the Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration, for undertaking this important study on how Canada can best support vulnerable groups in hard-to-access regions and for examining how Canada can accelerate the asylum applications of Yazidi victims of genocide and other vulnerable peoples.
As a member in the other house, I am honoured to have this opportunity to speak to the recent report entitled “The Forgotten Many: Human Rights and North Korean Defectors” that the Standing Senate Committee on Human Rights tabled, which highlights the plight of North Korean defectors and their perilous journey to freedom.
The United Nations Human Rights Council's report of the Commission of Inquiry on Human Rights in the Democratic People's Republic of Korea concluded that the violations of human rights constitute crimes against humanity. The gravity, scale, and nature of these violations reveal a state that does not have any parallel in the contemporary world. Living conditions have deteriorated to extreme levels of deprivation in which the rights to food, health, and other essential needs are categorically denied. Any North Koreans who have successfully defected have done so for their survival, and until they have secured refuge in a safe country, their lives and the lives of possibly three generations of family members remain at serious risk if they are caught in China for illegally crossing the border, or in other countries of Southeast Asia, if and when they are repatriated to North Korea.
Despite international pressure on the North Korean regime with the release of the UN commission of inquiry report, North Korea continues to adamantly refuse to co-operate with the UN and other international human rights monitors. This includes denying access for the UNHCR special rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the DPRK.
In the Senate report, we carefully examined the issue of North Korean defectors, who are one of the most vulnerable groups of the world and who are in hard-to-reach places for Canadian officials, to offer solutions and recommendations the Government of Canada can seriously consider to help such desperate and vulnerable people. Having reviewed the Hansard of the Yazidi genocide motion debated in the House on June 9 and the June 15, 2016, UN Human Rights Council report entitled “'They Came to Destroy': ISIS Crimes Against the Yazidis” confirming the genocide of the Yazidi people, I commend this committee in adopting the order of reference that is the basis of this current study. It is my sincere hope that my testimony about our Senate committee's report and the proposed solutions to help North Korean defectors will in fact be equally useful in helping more Yazidi victims and other vulnerable peoples find refuge in Canada.
The Senate Standing Committee on Human Rights began our study with the personal and compelling testimony of a North Korean defector named Hyeonseo Lee, who witnessed her first public execution at the age of seven and authored the book The Girl With Seven Names: A North Korean Defector's Story. Of particular note from her testimony is that approximately 70% to 80% of the defectors escaping North Korea are women. She stated that women are subjected to horrible abuse along their journey to freedom, which is most often through China. Many female defectors become sex slaves or wives of Chinese men after they are captured, and sadly, some have even been willingly sold as prizes in order to earn money or to help their desperate families at home. Women are treated like merchandise and sold like slaves for as little as $80, depending on their age and appearance.
Our study reported that pregnant women who are repatriated and are unable to prove that their child has a North Korean father may be forced to have abortions. Even more horrific and terrifying were cases we heard of mothers being forced to drown their newborn children in buckets. Children who are brought to North Korea from China are not recognized as citizens of China and are not accepted as citizens in North Korea, resulting in stateless children with no protection, no rights, and no benefits whatsoever.
According to the executive director of the HanVoice support association, Chris Kim, in the early 1990s North Korean refugees had three main escape routes out of China: via the Mongolian border; claiming asylum at foreign diplomatic missions in China; and via routes through Southeast Asia, which typically included Thailand. China has effectively shut down the first two options, leaving southeast Asian countries like Thailand as the only remaining path to freedom.
Currently, in the Southeast Asia region, Thailand is the only country that does not repatriate North Korean defectors back to the DPRK once caught for illegal entry. In Thailand, defectors are held in detention centres and await processing of exit visas from the Thai government to go to South Korea or, after a much longer period, to go to the United States as authorized by the North Korean Human Rights Act, which will be further explained.
We heard during our Senate study that the current North Korean regime has tightened security along the China-DPRK border to avoid further defections of not only DPRK citizens, but also, increasingly, the country's security border guards. We also learned that North Korean defectors, once they escape the DPRK with their lives, are suspended in a legal conundrum. South Korea's constitution identifies all persons living on the Korean Peninsula as South Korean nationals. By the virtue of this fact, there's a perceived durable solution that all North Korean defectors in a Thai detention centre can go to South Korea.
However, in certain circumstances, and with clear reason, there are defectors who fear returning to the very peninsula where they risked everything, including their lives, to escape. Their dread is not a reflection on South Korea's failure to protect defectors or settle them in South Korea but on the close proximity of South Korea to its northern half and the trauma that certain defectors must endure for being so close to the place of their suffering. This legal conundrum puts North Korean defectors in a precarious space, suspended in a category of their own, be it being stateless in China or ineligible to be designated as UN refugees to access the international asylum system.
In 2004 the United States implemented the North Korean Human Rights Act, which recognized the legal gap by providing humanitarian assistance to North Koreans inside North Korea; providing grants to private non-profit organizations to promote human rights, democracy, rule of law, and the development of a market economy in North Korea; increasing the availability of information inside North Korea; and providing humanitarian and legal assistance to North Koreans who have fled North Korea.
After receiving written submissions from the Council for Human Rights in North Korea and the Canadian Federation of North—