U.N. BETRAYS KOREAN REFUGEES

Good viewpoint on North Korean Refugees from this Wall Street Journal columnist.

Two Refugee Stories
A Turkish hero vs. U.N. goats.

BY CLAUDIA ROSETT
WALL STREET JOURNAL
Wednesday, June 25, 2003

Today, I have two stories to tell. The second concerns refugees from North Korea. But first -- and this is no digression -- let's pause to honor a brave man who almost 60 years ago answered the call not of practicality but of principle, to save the lives of some 200 human beings on the island of Rhodes, then under Nazi occupation.

The year was 1944, and Selahattin Ulkumen was the Turkish consul-general in Rhodes. That July, the Nazis began rounding up all Jews on the island for
deportation to Auschwitz. Ulkumen could have simply stood by and watched. But he did not. And though he could not save them all, he saved all he could. He confronted the German general in charge, told him that some of these Jews were Turkish citizens, and demanded they be released.

One of the people he saved, Bernard Turiel, now a 68 year-old lawyer in New Jersey, recalls with gratitude how Ulkumen "took it on himself to confront the German authorities" -- parlaying the Turkish citizenship of Mr. Turiel's mother into salvation for the entire family, including Bernard, his younger brother, and their non-Turkish father. In response to Ulkumen's demand, the Nazis released 42 Jewish families, totaling some 200 souls. He himself paid a high price for his courage. The Germans took their reprisal with a bombing raid on the Turkish consulate, injuring Ulkumen's wife, who died of those injuries after giving birth to a son.

On June 7, in Istanbul, at the age of 90, Ulkumen died. His son, Mehmet Ulkumen, told me that when his father talked about the events of 1944, he would say: "I listened to my conscience. Any decent human being would have done what I have done."

Which brings me to the promised story of North Korean refugees, who are today fleeing a holocaust in their own country. The totalitarian regime of Kim Jong Il has in recent years presided over the deaths by starvation, exposure and outright execution of some two million North Koreans. Many North Koreans have fled to the only place they can reach -- China. But of the 100,000-300,000 estimated to be now hiding in China, Beijing has refused to recognize any as refugees. Not one. Instead, calling them criminals and economic migrants, Chinese security agents have been hunting them down, sending them back to likely punishment or even death, and jailing private individuals who try to help them.

On the part of private individuals, especially a small network of ethnic Koreans from both South Korea and the U.S., there has been astounding generosity and courage. Among the heroes is the Rev. Chun Ki Won, a South Korean jailed in China for more than seven months last year for trying to smuggle a group of North Koreans to safety in Mongolia. There is South Korean Choi Yong-hun, now in a Chinese prison, making his final appeal against a five-year sentence for trying to help a small group of North Koreans escape China last January aboard two fishing boats. Jailed for the same "crime" are ethnic-Korean Chinese Park Yong-ho, sentenced to three years, and South Korean photojournalist Seok Jae-Hyun, sentenced to two years. And waging a campaign world-wide to save the North Korean refugees and end the holocaust is the now-famous German doctor, Norbert Vollertsen.

But among the United Nations officials specifically tasked, paid and protected to serve as frontline defenders of the rights of the North Korean refugees, there are no heroes. For years, the office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees has deferred to China's abuse of the U.N.'s own refugee convention. Last Friday, the head of the UNHCR's Beijing office, Colin Mitchell, celebrated World Refugee Day by giving an interview to China's official People's Daily, in which he praised China for a 20-year partnership with the UNHCR, saying: "China has set a good example for many countries in this respect." Mr. Mitchell did not respond to my requests that he explain this comment.

But Mr. Mitchell's budget, which according to a spokesman in the UNHCR's headquarters would cover all dealings with North Korean refugees, speaks volumes. Of the UNHCR's total annual budget of $881 million, $3.37 million goes to the Beijing office, of which 70% is spent in Hong Kong, another 27% on salaries for international and local staff in Beijing, and the remaining $100,000 or so on Macau and Mongolia. There is nothing for the North Koreans. They do not even turn up in the UNHCR refugee statistics.

To be fair, the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, Ruud Lubbers, last week made a small nod to decency, offering up the understatement that with regard to North Korean refugees, China's authorities have been "falling short of their obligations." But so has Mr. Lubbers. The UNHCR has a 1995 treaty with China that allows it to invoke binding arbitration in a dispute over refugee policy. But the UNHCR hasn't even tried. A spokesman tells me there would be no point, because China might not comply.

By that logic, Ulkumen would never have confronted the Nazis. And, unlike the brave private individuals now doing prison time in China, none of the UNHCR officials need put their lives, or their freedom on the line. Should any one of these bureaucrats find the courage to stand up and demand that China's rulers honor their signed commitment to the value of human life, the most they'd be risking is their jobs. It is way past time to wonder if we should have people running the UNHCR who consider their own jobs more important than the lives of the refugees they are supposed to be helping.


Ms. Rosett is a columnist for The Wall Street Journal Europe and OpinionJournal.com.