HONG KONG -- Millions of dollars earmarked by the U.S. government to help North Koreans fleeing their impoverished homeland are still tied up by red tape three years after they were first authorized, a U.S. official acknowledged.
The North Korean Human Rights Act passed in 2004 authorized the use of US$24 million (��16.5 million) to improve human rights in North Korea and help refugees. But none of that money has been appropriated, or approved, yet by the U.S. Congress for release, Christian Whiton, deputy to the U.S. special envoy on human rights in North Korea, said Monday.
Whiton said Washington has spent about US$4 million (��2.7 million) ramping up its radio broadcasts into North Korea over the last year, as well as sending funds into the country via the U.N. and other aid agencies.
"It's not that funds have not been expended on the North Korean refugee issue, but it's not quite the US$24 million," Whiton said in a public lecture at The University of Hong Kong.
The act, pushed by U.S. President George W. Bush, mandates that North Korean refugees be offered asylum and other assistance.
Whiton said 30-35 North Koreans have been resettled in the United States since 2006 and that Washington was actively working with European and some Asian countries to help more refugees reach safety.
He said another US$4 million was expected to be funneled into broadcasters - such as Radio Free Asia and Voice of America - to help effect change in North Korea, but warned that change would not happen overnight.
"Democracy and respect for human rights is not something that emerges in short order. The two key aspects ... it comes down to information and networks. You don't have that in North Korea, but we are trying to lay some of the basic ground work which over time will assist indigenous human rights movements."
Hundreds of North Koreans flee starvation, economic and political repression every year, hoping to find refuge in a third country. Many escape into China and take a long and risky land journey through the jungles of neighboring Laos and into Thailand, while others try to cross the Gobi desert into Mongolia. More than 10,000 North Korean defectors are living in South Korea.
China treats North Korean defectors as economic migrants and forcibly repatriates many of those it finds, to almost certain incarceration, torture and possible execution.
Ahead of the Beijing Olympics, China's police are stepping up surveillance along the border with North Korea and cracking down on refugee shelters, said Tim Peters, founder of the private group Helping Hands North Korea.
"When you're putting on a huge festival like the Olympics, the last thing China wants is a public relations nightmare such as North Korean refugees showing up at inopportune times," Peters said at the lecture.
Peters - whose organization escorts refugees across borders to find asylum in third countries - said the crackdown was forcing refugees to abandon urban safehouses for more rural ones, and that some of these were as basic as a simple hole in the ground where a North Korean may live for up to a year, waiting for the right moment to flee.
He called for China to abide by its international obligations and treat North Koreans as refugees, not as illegal migrants.
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