Pressure grows for quick resolution of Ri case
By MARINA JIMENEZ
From: Globe
and Mail - Saturday, Feb. 28, 2004
The most influential international organization lobbying for human rights
in North Korea is taking up the case of Song Dae Ri, asking Canada to grant
the North Korean defector asylum.
The Citizens' Alliance for North Korean Human Rights will circulate a petition
this weekend in Warsaw at a conference in the Polish capital dedicated to
exposing the abuses of the "world's darkest and most closed nation."
Alice Suh, a conference organizer, worries that by rejecting Mr. Ri's refugee
case, Canada is sending a negative message to other North Korean exiles
in search of a haven. The conference, organized with the Helsinki Foundation
for Human Rights, will discuss the disappearance of political prisoners
into the gulag and the plight of famine victims. Five North Korean defectors
will speak, along with the first prime minister of Poland after the collapse
of the Soviet Union.
Ms. Suh will send the Ri petition to Deputy Prime Minister Anne McLellan,
who is reviewing an application filed by Mr. Ri after his asylum claim was
rejected.
Ms. McLellan must decide whether the danger that Mr. Ri will be tortured
or killed if he is deported to North Korea outweighs any risk he may pose
to Canada.
Sources say the former diplomat will eventually be allowed to stay, but
the long wait for a resolution has been frustrating and difficult for Mr.
Ri, who is living in seclusion in Toronto with his six-year-old son.
Several refugee and human-rights groups in Canada are also pressing Ms.
McLellan to make a prompt ruling, saying the Ri case illustrates a number
of significant flaws in Canada's refugee-determination process.
Immigration and Refugee Board member Bonnie Milliner rejected Mr. Ri's
asylum bid last year after finding that he was guilty of crimes against
humanity merely for serving as a trade official in the country's government.
Canada's War Crimes Unit found no evidence of wrongdoing. And Ms. Milliner
accepted Mr. Ri's son as a refugee.
"Refugee claimants in Canada are often denied refugee protection not because
they have committed a crime themselves, but because they have been in some
way associated with others who have committed crimes," the Canadian Council
for Refugees said in a statement.
"The danger to Mr. Ri if returned to North Korea does not appear to be
in doubt: he is expected to be executed. His wife has already been executed."
Mr. Ri, his wife and son defected to Canada in August, 2001, but Mr. Ri's
wife was conflicted about her decision to betray her homeland. She was lured
back to North Korea by her parents in 2001, and then executed four months
later.
The Canadian Council for Refugees notes that the Ri case highlights several
systemic weaknesses in the refugee process, including: the overbroad application
of exclusion clauses; the politicized appointment process of IRB members;
the limited appeals for claimants; the absence of provisions for refugee
children; and the excessive complexity of the system.
The application before Ms. McLellan is an example of this excessive complexity:
"This assessment involves three separate decisions: one to assess the risk
to Mr. Ri, one to assess the danger he represents to Canada and a third
to weigh these two decisions," the council notes.
Amnesty International and the Canadian Civil Liberties Association are
also expected to write letters in support of Mr. Ri's case, said Robert
Moorhouse, representing Mr. Ri.
In Warsaw, the three-day conference will discuss the plight of hundreds
of thousands of North Korean refugees who have fled to China, where they live
in constant fear of repatriation. Millions have died during a decade of famine
and countless others have disappeared into North Korea's brutal prison system.
Yesterday, Japanese television aired for the first time rare footage of the
infamous Yodok 15 prison camp. The footage, smuggled out by a defector, showed
men and women dressed in drab uniforms labouring in snowy fields, while guards
with rifles patrolled the fenced-in camp.
A report by the U.S. Committee for Human Rights in North Korea said that
between 150,000 and 200,000 political prisoners work as slave labourers
in prison colonies. North Korean authorities have denied the existence of
these camps.
Canada is slamming its doors shut
JANET BAGNALL, The
Montreal
Gazette - Friday, February 20, 2004
The number of refugees Canada accepts every year equals one-10th of one
per cent of our total population, or about 33,000 people. One might think,
given how small a number that is out of the world's 20.6 million refugees,
that we could afford to take a generous attitude toward people fleeing persecution.
But at the moment, we don't. Canada is not the easy haven critics of the
refugee system make it out to be. No matter how desperate they are, people
rarely make it to Canada, thousands of kilometres away from most of the world's
trouble spots.
A few hundred Chinese from Fujian province miraculously made it across
the Pacific in rusting ships in the late 1990s. Those who didn't vanish across
the border into the U.S. (most of them) were shipped back to their hardscrabble
lives in China, amid disapproving commentary about how we were known throughout
the world as a pushover.
Well, no need to worry. We've toughened up. We're now prepared to send
a man to his death in North Korea, while allowing his 6-year-old son to stay
on all alone in Canada. Song Dae Ri has been ordered deported because a
sole Immigration and Refugee Board member decided since he was a low-level
North Korean civil servant, it followed he was a war criminal. Our own War
Crimes Unit told the board three times in writing there was no proof of any
such thing, but no matter. If the point is to get rid of a claimant, the
excuse hardly matters.
We have also ordered back to Colombia - a country where 150 people are
killed in political violence every week - a man who was kidnapped, tortured
and threatened with death after standing up for a student who dared to criticize
the governing powers. After an immigration consultant made an error in translation,
the claimant, university professor Alvaro Vega-Ulloha was accused of "changing"
his story when he wanted the error corrected. He, his wife and daughter were
ordered deported last summer. They have been living in the basement of St.
Andrew's-Norwood Church in St. Lambert since then.
For good measure, we have also refused sanctuary to Menen Ayele, an Ethiopian
woman who was imprisoned and tortured for political activity, whose husband
is among the world's "disappeared." The Immigration and Refugee Board found
her story of imprisonment and torture implausible because she had no visible
scars or medical documentation. But the board also ruled against Vega-Ulloa
who did have visible scars and medical documentation, so proof doesn't seem
to be what is at issue.
There are two main points here. The deportation orders for these three
people were issued on the basis of factual errors. If Canada had a workable
appeal system, the errors would be corrected and all three would now be permanent
residents, not hiding or clinging to the safety of a church basement.
The 2002 Immigration and Refugee Protection Act was supposed to have a
Refugee Appeals Division. The appeals mechanism was the trade-off for allowing
the government to drop the number of board members hearing cases from two
to one. The appeals division has yet to be implemented in what increasingly
seems a deliberate oversight.
The second point is Canada no longer seems to feel any compunction about
skimming off from countries around the world young, healthy, unencumbered
people who are not just highly educated but trained in fields in which Canada
finds itself deficient in. We get to take from poor, undeveloped countries
the best they have to offer - their educated young adults - and offer precious
little in return.
There has been no change since last week in the status of Song Dae Ri,
despite a flood of protests from Montreal and Toronto, as well as from the
world's highest-ranking North Korean defector, Hwang Jang Yeop. Hwang urged
from Seoul that at the first sign anyone from North Korea is leaning toward
defection they be taken in.
Ri's lawyer, Robert Moorhouse, said yesterday he had been informed two
reports have been prepared for Public Safety Minister Anne McLellan. One,
a pre-removal risk assessment, dated Feb. 9, was issued to Moorhouse yesterday.
Running to 16 pages, it concluded Ri faced grave personal danger if he were
returned to North Korea. The second document, by the Canada Border Security
Agency, is a two-page report from which only three paragraphs differed from
the original IRB decision, according to Moorhouse. This report, a review
of the original decision, recommended the original ruling stand.
"My client is beside himself," Moorhouse said. "After defecting from one
of the world's most notorious regimes, he is being re-victimized in Canada."
By MARINA JIMENEZ - From Globe
and Mail: Wednesday, Feb. 4, 2004
Canada's Immigration and Refugee Board has rejected the asylum case of a North Korean dissident even though the board agrees the man will likely be executed for treason if deported to his homeland.
The IRB has allowed the man's six-year-old son to remain in Canada, because as the son of a dissident he would face persecution, while a removal order has been issued for his father, his only living parent.
Song Dae Ri, a trade official, was posted to North Korea's embassy in Beijing before he defected to Canada with his son and wife in August, 2001. His wife was lured home by her parents before she had a chance to make a refugee claim, and in April, 2002, was executed in North Korea.
"When I came to Canada, I was relieved to have escaped alive. Now I fear I will die and my son will be an orphan here. It is so terrible," said Mr. Ri, shredding a tissue in his long, thin fingers and weeping as he cast a glance at his cherubic-faced son, Chang-Il, seated beside him playing with his GameBoy.
IRB member Bonnie Milliner ruled that Mr. Ri will likely be executed for treason if returned home, but said he was not "deserving of Canada's protection" because he was complicit in crimes against humanity merely for being a member of Kim Jong-il's government. She made that ruling despite written assurances from Canada's War Crimes Unit that Mr. Ri was "not a person of interest to them" and that there was no evidence he had committed crimes against humanity.
"While [Mr. Ri] may not have personally committed any atrocities, I believe that on a balance of probabilities he was aware of the North Korean government's excesses . . . and waited 10 years [to leave]," she concluded in her September, 2003, decision. "He was a high-level North Korean government official with weighty responsibilities."
He has decided to go public with his story because he fears being deported.
The case offers a rare glimpse into the inner workings of the secretive, authoritarian regime of Kim Jong-Il, known as the Dear Leader, from which few people escape. In the past seven years, 35 North Koreans have applied for refugee status in Canada and just two have been granted asylum.
This week, the country was accused of killing political prisoners in experimental gas chambers and testing new chemical weapons on women and children. North Korea is also known to have developed a nuclear arsenal, although Mr. Ri says he has no knowledge of this.
CSIS agents have approached Mr. Ri, a former trade official, on several occasions, and he says he will meet with them once his case is resolved. He fears North Korean agents may attempt to track him down in Canada and assassinate him. That is why he does not want a photo that shows his face in the paper and why he lives in seclusion in Toronto.
Ms. Milliner observed that North Korea is one of the world's most repressive regimes, bringing misery to its people through dictatorial control and subjugation. The country's criminal code specifies that all those who engage in espionage or treason will be executed, and that the families of political prisoners "must be wiped out for three generations" to come. She suggested Mr. Ri avail himself of "other Canadian remedies" in an attempt to stay in Canada, an apparent reference to a humanitarian and compassionate appeal.
Ms. Milliner questioned why Mr. Ri failed to dissociate himself from government abuses at the first available opportunity, and defected only when he feared his own life was in danger.
Mr. Ri, who bows politely in greeting and wears a black turtleneck and tailored dark suit, believes the IRB completely misunderstood his case. "I have been made a political scapegoat."
He said he was not a high-ranking diplomat, but a low-level trade official, No. 7 million in the North Korean government hierarchy. Four years ago, he was posted to North Korea's embassy in China, and sold commodities to raise hard currency for his country.
"The IRB talks about human-rights abuses. But all I ever did was try to help my people by buying wheat to feed the people," he said.
He and his colleagues lived under a complicated surveillance system in Beijing and were prohibited from living outside the North Korean compound, or from conversing with anyone other than on business. Security personnel spied on him.
"An escape is as difficult as a camel goes through the eye of a needle . . . due to the surveillance accompanying me and in fear for the family members left in North Korea," he said.
He learned of the freedoms of the outside world while on business trips, and made the fatal mistake of sharing his observations with other North Korean officials, opening himself to accusations of treason.
The "trigger" event leading to his defection was witnessing the mistreatment of North Koreans who had escaped to China in search of asylum, only to be recaptured and returned.
His refugee claim also notes that he was accused of "leaking confidential military and state information" to Chinese officials, which he said is untrue.
Through business contacts, he managed to obtain South Korean passports for himself, his wife and their young son, and they fled to Canada on Aug. 22, 2001.
He made a refugee claim four months later.
His son, who goes by the name Joshua now, is fluent in English, as well as Korean, Japanese and Chinese. He is in Grade 1 and recently received a coloured pencil for good performance. Joshua translates for his father and "tries to cheer him up," he said.
His mother fared less well in Canada. Her family had close ties with North Korea's leadership and she was unable to reconcile the betrayal of her family and homeland.
She attempted suicide before finally leaving Canada in December, 2001. She flew to Taiwan and then was taken to Pyongyang, where she was executed in April, 2002.
Mr. Ri's father was executed by the Korean government, and the IRB didn't understand why Mr. Ri failed to mention that, and the fact that his wife was executed. Mr. Ri explained that he was too frightened to mention his wife's execution until he had proof she was dead. He waited to seek asylum for fear the South Korean press would publicize his case and his relatives in Pyongyang would suffer the consequences.
The local South Korean community have taken up Mr. Ri's cause. Several thousand people, including business, community and church leaders and the publisher of the Korean Times Daily, have written letters of support and signed petitions imploring the Canadian government to allow Mr. Ri to stay on humanitarian and compassionate grounds.
"His situation is part of the historical legacy left by the division of North and South Korea in 1948," one letter reads.
Robert Moorhouse, who filed the humanitarian and compassionate review last year, notes that if his client is sent back to China, he will be repatriated to North Korea, because China's government expels all North Koreans without allowing them to seek asylum.
"My client is very worried and is living as an unprotected person in Canada now," he said. "He deserves asylum."
Mr. Ri adds, "I want to be alive and settle in Canada with my son."
Then he begins to weep again, while his son sits at his side playing with his GameBoy, smiling up at his father.
Rejecting Song Dae Ri
Comment - From Globe
and Mail: Wednesday, February 4, 2004 - Page A18
Canada's Immigration and Refugee Board is often criticized, with some justification, for being too lenient. Immigrants are routinely granted refugee status despite coming from peaceful democracies such as Hungary and Mexico, and claimants whose behaviour is unwholesome or even criminal are accepted if there is a belief they may face persecution if sent home.
The opposite appears to be true in the case of Song Dae Ri, a North Korean trade official who fled to Canada with his wife and son in August of 2001, applied for refugee status and was rejected. In fact, the IRB member who heard the case seems to have shown a lack of compassion that is as serious as an excess of it would be.
According to the board's decision last September, Mr. Ri's claim was rejected because he was a member of the North Korean government. As a result, the board decided he was guilty of war crimes and therefore not entitled to refugee status under the United Nations' Convention on the Status of Refugees. It ruled he was "not deserving of Canada's protection."
The board member in question came to this conclusion despite finding that there was a "serious possibility" that Mr. Ri would be persecuted should he return to North Korea, and that there was also a "serious possibility of risk" to his life and "a danger of torture," as outlined in the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act.
In fact, the board did not question the evidence that those found guilty of treason -- as Mr. Ri certainly would be -- are executed in North Korea, and that their family members are often persecuted as well. Mr. Ri testified that both his father and his wife, who was lured back to North Korea by her parents, were killed. The board even granted Mr. Ri's six-year-old son refugee status for that very reason. Yet Mr. Ri's claim was denied.
Was he a high-ranking member of the military? No. A member of the state security agency? No. The available evidence is that he was a trade official with the embassy in Beijing whose job was to buy and sell corn, wheat and mushrooms. The IRB, however, ruled that he was complicit in the atrocities of his government because he took his job voluntarily and didn't leave North Korea at his first opportunity.
The board didn't seem to believe his assertion that he was a low-level trade officer, noting that he had a staff and a separate apartment at the embassy. The board member also said the North Korean official left not because he was opposed to his government's policies in principle but because he made some comments while under the influence of alcohol and was afraid of the consequences of his actions.
In the end, the board decided that because he did not complain about his government's repression of its people or flee earlier, Mr. Ri "committed crimes against humanity." The board reached this conclusion even though Canada's War Crimes Unit said in writing that he was not of interest to it and that there was no evidence he had committed war crimes.
Certainly North Korea is a brutal regime. That's all the more reason why the IRB should give extra thought before rejecting the claim of someone who has escaped from that country. Picking nits about whether Mr. Ri was a high-ranking official seems to miss the point, as does assuming a trade official was complicit in the atrocities of the entire government.
The board pointed out that other avenues are available to Mr. Ri, including a claim on compassionate or humanitarian grounds (an option he is now pursuing). But that isn't the point either. Mr. Ri should not have to endure another two or three years of hearings, not to mention the fear of imminent deportation, simply because the IRB thought he met the broadest possible definition of a war criminal.
OTTAWA (CP) - Canadian authorities are considering their options in the case of North Korean dissident whose plea for asylum was rejected by the national refugee board, likely leaving him to face execution for treason if deported to his homeland.
The board has allowed the man's six-year-old son to remain in Canada, because as the son of a dissident he would face persecution. A removal order has been issued for his father, the child's only living parent. "Whenever any of us as Canadians read stories like that. . .our heart breaks for the families involved in these kinds of issues," Immigration Minister Judy Sgro said Wednesday outside the Commons.
"There are several options open in cases like this. I will wait and see what those options are. I can't get any further into it than that. It certainly raises some interesting issues."
Song Dae Ri, a trade official, was posted to North Korea's embassy in Beijing before he defected to Canada with his son and wife in August 2001.
His wife was lured home by her parents before she had a chance to make a refugee claim and in April 2002, was executed in North Korea.
Board member Bonnie Milliner ruled that Ri would likely be executed for treason if returned home but said he was not "deserving of Canada's protection" because he was complicit in crimes against humanity merely for being a member of Kim Jong Il's government.
She made that ruling despite written assurances from Canada's War Crimes Unit that Ri was "not a person of interest to them" and that there was no evidence he had committed crimes against humanity.
"While (Ri) may not have personally committed any atrocities, I believe that on a balance of probabilities he was aware of the North Korean government's excesses. . .and waited 10 years (to leave)," she concluded in her September 2003 decision.
"He was a high-level North Korean government official with weighty responsibilities."
In the past seven years, 35 North Koreans have applied for refugee status in Canada and just two have been granted asylum.
North Korean denied Cdn. asylum faces execution
CTV.ca
News Staff - Wednesday, February 4, 2004
A North Korean man has had his refugee application rejected, even though Canada's Immigration and Refugee Board agrees he likely faces execution in his homeland.
Song Dae Ri worked as North Korean trade official in Beijing for years before defecting to Canada with his wife and son in 2001.
His wife was lured home in 2002 by her parents and executed by the North
Koreans shortly after.
The Refugee Board has now issued a removal order for Ri.
IRB member Bonnie Milliner admits Ri would likely be put to death if returned home. But she says he's not "deserving of Canada's protection'' because he was a high ranking member of the North Korean government and was complicit in crimes against humanity.
However, Canada's War Crimes Unit disagrees. It assured the board in writing that Ri was "not a person of interest to them'' and there was no evidence he had committed crimes against humanity.
In her decision, written in September 2003, Milliner questioned why Ri failed to dissociate himself from government abuses at the first available opportunity, and defected only when he feared his own life was in danger.
"While (Ri) may not have personally committed any atrocities, I believe that on a balance of probabilities he was aware of the North Korean government's excesses... and waited 10 years (to leave)," she concluded.
In an interview with The Globe and Mail, Ri explained that he and his colleagues lived under a complicated surveillance system in Beijing and escape would have been difficult. He says he was a low-level trade official who helped buy wheat for his country, not a high-ranking diplomat.
The IRB has allowed Ri's six-year-old son, Chang-Il, to remain in Canada, because as the son of a dissident, he would face persecution. But the boy would have no parents here.
The local South Korean community in Toronto has taken up Ri's cause. Several thousand people, including the publisher of the Korean Times Daily, have written letters of support and signed petitions imploring the Canadian government to allow Ri to stay on humanitarian and compassionate grounds.
Ri says he fears North Korean agents may attempt to track him down in Canada and assassinate him. That is why he lives in seclusion in Toronto and doesn't want his picture published.
In the past seven years, 35 North Koreans have applied for refugee status in Canada; just two have been granted asylum.