North Koreans kill babies of women forced back from China

WASHINGTON, Oct 22 (AFP) - North Korea kills the babies of pregnant women forcibly repatriated from China, according to a report released by a rights group Wednesday which details the brutal treatment of people who try to flee the last Stalinist bastion.

The camps where North Koreans sent back across the border are locked away justified the infanticide by the need to stop the birth of babies that might have Chinese fathers, according to harrowing witness accounts compiled by the US Committee for Human Rights in North Korea.

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Women who had been in the camps told how some mothers to be were forced to have abortions while others watched in desolation while their new-born children were killed before them.

Accounts of the killings were included in "The Hidden Gulag - Exposing North Korea's Prison Camps" by David Hawk, a former UN human rights investigator.

Hawk estimates there are between 150,000 and 200,000 people in "slave" camps in North Korea where torture and executions are routine and many other inmates die of starvation.

A second category of camps has been set up for people sent back from China where according to some rights groups, up to 300,000 people have fled from North Korea's chronic food shortages and repression.

The report said the North's authorities practice a "particularly reprehensible phenomena of repression" against forcibly repatriated pregnant women.

Among the accounts was one given by Choi Yong-Hwa, a young woman who was sent to a provincial detention centre in South Sinuiju, near the Chinese frontier.

The report said Choi and two other women were assigned to help pregnant women to get to a military hospital.

"The woman assisted by Choi was given a labour-inducing injection and shortly thereafter gave birth. While Choi watched in horror the baby was suffocated with a wet towel in front of the mother who passed out in distress."

The report said "the explanation provided was that no half-Han (Chinese) babies would be tolerated."

A 66-year-old grandmother held in the border city of Sinuiju also helped pregnant detainees at the centre where she was held.

The woman, whose name was withheld to protect her family still in North Korea, said she helped deliver seven babies "some of which were full term, some of which were injection-induced abortions. All of the babies were killed."

Describing the case of one woman who had been married to a Chinese man, the report said when the grandmother "started to hold the baby and wrap him in a blanket, a guard grabbed the newborn by one leg and threw it in a large, plastic-lined box.

"A doctor explained that since North Korea was short on food, the country should not have to feed the children of foreign fathers."

Two of the babies survived for two days. The grandmother told Hawk that a North Korean guard "came by, and seeing that two of the babies were not dead yet, stabbed them with forceps at a soft spot in their skulls."

Other women told of similar killings at other camps where women who had children with Chinese fathers were berated.

Accounts of the baby-killings concentrated on three cities -- Sinuiju, Onsong and Chongjin -- but the report said it was likely the practice was widespread.

China normally sends back North Koreans it catches in its territory because it does not consider them refugees, despite pressure from the United Nations and aid groups.

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