China has subjected hundreds of North Koreans to atrocities in the last year by forcibly returning them home. The North Korean government believes that religion, especially Christianity, is the greatest threat to its power, experts said at a recent US hearing.
Christian Daily International reports that torture, sexual violence, enslavement and murder await those repatriated from China to detention centres in North Korea.
‘Any religious belief, and Christianity in particular, as well as South Korea, constitute the only challenges to Supreme Leader Kim Jong Un’s absolute monopoly on power,’ Greg Scarlatoiu, executive director of the non-governmental Committee for Human Rights in North Korea (HRNK), said at a hearing of the US Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF). ‘Christianity offers an alternative way of life that delegitimises tyranny and transcends oppression.’