China urges Canada to hand over North Korean asylum seekers

BEIJING (AFP) - China urged Canada to hand over 44 North Korean men, women and children who stormed its embassy in Beijing the day before in a desperate bid to escape to freedom.
The Chinese foreign ministry condemned the use of foreign diplomatic missions as an avenue to asylum and said it had been in contact with Canadian diplomats on what to do with the group.
"We hope they will hand them over to China," Assistant Foreign Minister Shen Guofang told reporters at a briefing, promising to deal with the refugees in a "humanitarian" spirit.
"We think that rushing into embassies threatens the security of embassies in China and we need to condemn this practice," he said.
The fate of nine North Korean women in Shanghai this week showed the great risks involved in the tactics.
The nine entered the city's American School Monday in the apparent belief it was a diplomatic institution and were turned over to the local police according to a pre-arranged contingency plan.
At the Canadian embassy in Beijing, six or seven from the group of 44 were treated for scrapes and cuts they suffered as they scaled the three-meter-high (10-foot) fence surrounding the compound, and one had to be hospitalized.
"One person suffered injuries that were deemed sufficiently serious that evacuation to a medical facility was necessary," said Ian Burchett, an embassy spokesman. "The person was evacuated in the early evening Wednesday."
The state-controlled Beijing News reported that one person did not make it into the embassy and was seized. Beijing police declined to comment.
Burchett said he believed all 44 were North Koreans and they included 12 men, 26 women, five boys and one girl. Two of the adults were elderly.
The group is one of the largest ever to enter a diplomatic compound in the Chinese capital in an attempt to escape oppression and poverty in their Stalinist homeland.
Burchett declined to say where the injured North Korean had been hospitalized, but said the embassy was in contact with the Chinese authorities on how to deal with the person.
The 43 remaining in the embassy were preparing to spend a second night in relatively comfortable condition. "We moved them to one of our multi-purpose rooms and provided them with mattresses and bedding," Burchett said.
Diplomats went out to buy toys for the children and organized a special play area for them. "They may be staying for days if not weeks," he said.
In Montreal, the Canadian government confirmed that the North Koreans would be staying in the embassy compound "for the time being".
Canadian foreign ministry spokeswoman Kimberly Phillips said officials were interviewing the group.
"We continue to work with the Chinese government to resolve this issue along the line of past resolutions," she said.
Phillips said that on past occasions, Canadian officials accompanied groups of asylum seekers out of China.
Similar situations have occurred at the Canadian embassy in Beijing twice in the past two years, but each time only two North Koreans gained access to the compound.
South Korea said it was watching the negotiations closely and called for the case to be handled from a "humanitarian perspective".
In recent years, scores of North Koreans have won political asylum in South Korea after they successfully scaled walls of diplomatic missions in China.
Earlier in September, 29 asylum seekers broke into the compound of Japan's embassy-run school and at least some of them have since been discreetly spirited out of the country.
In reaction, many embassies in Beijing have evolved into fortress-like structures with fences, spikes and barbed wire.
China treats North Koreans as illegal immigrants and has an agreement with Pyongyang to deport those it catches, to face what is presumed to be harsh punishment at home.
But in recent years China has allowed Koreans who succeed in getting into foreign missions to leave for South Korea via a third country.
North Korea has been ravaged by successive years of natural disaster and bad planning, making it the largest recipient of food aid from the UN World Food Program since the late 1990s.