Deporting Mr. Ri

I haven't written about the pending deportation of former North Korean diplomat Song Dae Ri to his homeland yet, mainly because I wasn't sure what to make of it. As bad as torture and execution may be, we sometimes have little choice but to send "refugee" claimants back, especially where they have been responsible for brutal atrocities.

That's the Immigration and Refugee Board's rationale for sending Song Dae Ri back to the DPRDC: as a former official in the North Korean government, he is complicit in crimes against humanity and therefore should not be given refugee status. But according to the Globe and Mail, Canadian investigators found no evidence that he was complicit in crimes against humanity:

The Immigration and Refugee Board rejected Song Dae Ri's case even though the board acknowledged that the former trade official likely would suffer the same fate as his wife if returned home: death by execution. But the board accepted Mr. Ri's six-year-old son, Chang-Il, which would lead to the separation of father and child.

"Mr. Ri would be killed if sent back, there is no question about it," said Yongwoo Li, editor of the Korea Times Daily who is lobbying for Canada to accept Mr. Ri on humanitarian grounds. "He is one of the victims of North Korea, even though he worked for the government. Canada must save him."
[...]
The IRB ruled that Mr. Ri is "undeserving" of Canada's protection because he is complicit in crimes against humanity because he was a member of North Korean President Kim Jong-il's repressive, authoritarian government.

Board member Bonnie Milliner issued this September, 2003, ruling despite three written assurances from Canada's War Crimes Unit that there was no evidence Mr. Ri committed war crimes.

Ri's wife was murdered when she went back to North Korea in 2001 - as was his father, for the "crimes" of his son.

Maybe the IRB has evidence, which somehow escaped everyone else's attention, that Ri has committed crimes against humanity. Maybe. But I can't help thinking that if he was trying to escape a country that wasn't Communist, he'd be allowed to stay. (Everyone in North Korea has free health care, you know.)

And where is CSIS in all of this? With evidence arising of the DPRDC's nuclear program and death camps, you'd think we'd have a North Korean defector hidden away in a safe house somewhere. It's not like we get them very often.

I still don't know what to make of it.

Posted by damian at February 5, 2004 08:34 PM