deporting refugees, including Christians, from North Korea back to their homeland.
The protests and prayer vigils in 15 capitals have been organized by the North Korean Freedom Coalition, which includes several Christian rights groups, including Open Doors International.
"If many people participate in the demonstration it will become clear for the Chinese overnment that it should respect international agreement and end its hunt on North Korean refugees," said Jeno Sebok, the spokesman of Open Doors in the Netherlands, where Christians are involved in a letter campaign and a prayer-chain.
300,000 REFUGEES
Up to 300,000 refugees from North Korea are believed to hide in neighboring China, human rights workers estimate. "They live continuously in fear to be arrested," Open Doors said. Several human rights groups have said that returning refugees are subjected to detention, torture and sometimes execution.
Open Doors said that the refugees need protection under the United Nations Refugees Convention of 1951. The group says China also violates the Convention by its refusal to allow the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) access to the arrested refugees in China.
In the Netherlands Open Doors began a round-the-clock prayer session two years ago. In January the third year of the prayer chain will begin. North Korea’s Stalinist system of carrying out Communism is based on "total devotion of the individual to an ideology promoted by the late leader Kim Il Sung and his successor and son, Kim Jong Il, observers who recently visited the isolated nation said.
