“I join my voice with that of other members of Congress to urge South Korea to recognize practitioners as refugees and not forcibly return them to China where they certainly will face persecution,” said Smith reading from a prepared statement, at the close of a hearing he chaired on Sept. 20 on human rights in North Korea.
Smith's remarks were prompted by the most recent deportation case involving a Falun Gong (also know as Falun Dafa) practitioner. The 25-year-old Mr. Jin Jingzhe, a Chinese national who had sought refuge in South Korea, was arrested in his home on Sept. 6 and faces imminent deportation.
Fifty-six other Falun Gong adherents have been denied refugee status by South Korea and face the threat of deportation back to China.
Smith (R-N.J.) called upon South Korea to honor its legal commitments. He said, “South Korea should find the appropriate means within the South Korean legal system and international conventions on torture and refugees that it has ratified to permit these Falun Gong practitioners to remain in South Korea.”
Smith has been a congressman since 1981 and is well known in Congress as a crusader for human rights. Perhaps the best known of the bills he has authored is the Trafficking Victims Protection Act of 2000. He chairs the human rights panel of the Foreign Affairs Committee (“Africa, Global Health and Human Rights Subcommittee”). He is also a commissioner of the Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission.
As reported by the Epoch Times Rep. Rohrabacher (R-Calif.) sent a letter to South Korean President Lee Myung-bak, which stated, “If sent back, their lives will be at grave risk because the Beijing dictatorship has declared its intention to utterly destroy the Falun Gong movement.”
The Epoch Times also reported that Congressman John Garamendi (D-Calif.) said in a statement about the deportations that torturing someone “indirectly” by sending the individual to those who commit the torture is “immoral and unacceptable in nations that embrace civilized behavior and the rule of law.”
South Korea, which by and large respects the rule of law and human rights, would seem to fit Garamendi’s description of indirect torture and harm, when it repatriates adherents of Falun Gong to China.
Falun Gong is spiritual practice that involves doing meditative exercises and living according to the principles of truthfulness, compassion, and tolerance. Because of its popularity—an official in China's Sports Administration indicated in early 1999 that 100 million had taken up the practice—and because of fears of its influence, the then-head of the Chinese Communist Party, Jiang Zemin, launched a campaign in July 1999 to "eradicate" the practice.
Smith called upon the South Korean government to obtain more knowledge and understanding as to how Falun Gong adherents are systematically persecuted in China. He said in an interview following the North Korea hearing that the South Korean government needs to know “more about the torture and the fact that these individual practitioners face almost certain incarceration, certain harassment, and almost certain torture.”
At least 3,427 practitioners have been confirmed to have died in the subsequent persecution of Falun Gong, according to the Falun Dafa Information Center (FDIC). The true death toll may be in the tens of thousands, according to FDIC.
Pressures to Deport
Soon after Li's visit, South Korea suddenly began rejecting practitioners’ appeals for asylum and several deportations occurred. Since Li's visit, a total of 10 practitioners have been deported. These actions prompted 23 U.S. congressmen in August 2009 to send a letter denouncing the South Korean government’s actions.
China is also South Korea’s No. 1 trading partner, leading in both imports and exports. As such, South Korea depends on the trade relationship it has with China. Patrick Forrest, a former senior official of the Department of Homeland Security and currently a Republican candidate for the Virginia state Senate, has worked with victims of persecution seeking asylum in the United States. In a recent interview, he called upon the South Korean government to resist any economic pressure to compromise its principles.
"I think the South Korean government should say: we appreciate our trade relationship with China; we appreciate the business relationship we have, but we do not condone or accept the persecution of [people], and on that ground we will not deport the individuals to China."
