Torture allegation raises concern about Korean detainees

Lee Gyu-ho, an ethnic Korean and once a police officer in Shenyang, China, where a South Korean activist alleges he was recently tortured by authorities, speaks in front of the Chinese embassy in Seoul about torture tactics used by uthorities there. (Photo : Yonhap)

Calls are mounting for the government to send a stern message to China that any abuse against hundreds of Koreans serving prison sentences there are not be acceptable.

The concern about Korean detainees was raised after freed activist Kim Young-hwan disclosed his suffering at a detention center in the northeastern city of Dandong in great detail.

According to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade, 625 Koreans are detained in China on various charges.

Among them, it said, were a small number of human rights activists, who were held on suspicion of helping North Koreans illegally cross the border.

The foreign ministry said it has no accurate information of how many had been arrested for helping refugees.

On Tuesday, the ministry announced it would seek consular access to all Koreans detained in China to investigate whether they have suffered any kind of abusive treatment.

Pastor Peter Chung, the head of the Seoul-based non-profit group Justice for North Korea, said the Chinese authorities’ torture of Korean human rights activists was not new.

Chung, who was released in 2004 after nearly 18 months imprisonment at a detention center in Yanji, the capital of the northeastern province of Jilin, said China usually holds Korean activists who helped North Korean refugees for eight months or longer.

“I was told that China has a policy to hold activists as long as possible to threaten other human rights activists that they face the same fate if they try to help refugees,” he said.

During the detention, Chung underwent sleep deprivation, had to live for 18 months without sunshine, and was intimidated to “tell the truth.” The Chinese authorities made him listen to a detainee being beaten in the next cell at the detention center.

“About two or three years ago, I was told that there were some 20 Korean human rights activists who were detained in China for helping North Korean refugees. I believe the information may not be correct (because obtaining accurate information on the scale of human rights detainees is not easy),” he said.

Won Jae-chun, a human rights lawyer, called on South Korea to break its silence on China’s decades-long practice of inhumane treatment of Korean activists held there.

“The government can consider building a coalition with likeminded groups in the civic sector, such as domestic and international human rights groups, to ratchet up pressure on China to end the practice of abusing detainees,” Won, also a professor of law at Handong Global University, said.

Analysts say building international pressure on China by spreading the word against torture and its abuses of human rights is seen to be the only realistic way to stop Beijing’s decades-long practice of torturing detainees, given forceful means is not an option applicable between governments.

Human rights activists here plan to bring the torture case involving Kim to the U.N. Human Rights Commission and are also mulling filing a lawsuit against the Chinese government for its abuse of his human rights while he was held there.

China is one of the usual suspects on human rights issues. A Frankfurt-based non-profit group International Society for Human Rights (ISHR) said “systematic torture” takes place in China.

“Arbitrariness and intimidation by the authorities, which are controlled by the Communist Party of China, take place on a daily basis,” it said in a report, titled “Systematic Torture in the People’s Republic of China.”

“The victims are very often civil rights advocates, unionists, democratic activists, members of non-state controlled-Christian churches or Buddhist schools of meditation and representatives of ethnic minorities like the Tibetans and Uyghurs.”

The group said hitting, kicking and electric shocks are the most common methods of torture in China. <The Korea Times/Kang Hyun-kyung>

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