As if the tragedy we have seen in the news in the wake of the earthquake in China is not enough, Human Rights Watch researcher and analyst Kay Seok writes about another group of children suffering from the loss of a parent....and a group of children whose suffering has flown below the media radar.
China shares a border with North Korea and in a city in the Jilin province, there are many children who have North Korean mothers. And yet, these children cannot even be registered and given a legal identity because their mothers are North Korean refugees. If their mothers are discovered, they will be separated from their children and repatriated. If these women return to North Korean they face a lot of persecution, as if the fact that they are separated from their children is not persecution enough. There have been more attempts to crackdown on these refugees as the Beijing Olympics draw closer....
Despite China's international obligation towards refugees, as well as their law that declares that all children regardless of their legal status are entitled to nine years of free and mandatory education, schools demand evidence that children are legally registered in the country..... So parents are unable to get any services for their children as well as basic education. If they want to, the mothers have to leave...or risk getting caught and repatriated.
For more on this injustice refer to the article written by Kay Seok here.
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