Thailand accused of deliberate abuse of N.Koreans

By Ed Cropley

BANGKOK (Reuters) - A refugee group accused Thailand on Tuesday of deliberately mistreating hundreds of North Korean fugitives by keeping them in squalid and overcrowded detention cells for months to try to deter others from coming.

Immigration police denied the allegation and said they were doing all they could to provide decent accommodation for North Koreans awaiting transfer to South Korea, but admitted the main detention centre in the capital was overflowing.

"We've tried to improve the situation, but it's never going to be enough," police Lieutenant-Colonel Prawit Sirithorn told a North Korean human rights conference in Bangkok. "It was never designed to accommodate this many people."

Kim Sang-hun of the North Korean Human Rights Database Center said conditions were so bad one man called Kim Sang-hyon, a senior Pyongyang official who fled in March, had died in custody of a brain hemorrhage on August 8.

"There is little doubt that he could have been saved if proper medical attention was given," Kim said. He had obtained the information about two weeks ago from North Koreans who had reached Seoul, he added.

Prawit said the immigration detention centre had two medical units and adequate care was given to everyone. He could not immediately confirm details of Kim Sang-hyon's death.

HUNGER STRIKE

China and then Thailand is fast becoming one of the main "underground railway" routes out of Kim Jong-il's totalitarian state, with police along the northern Thai borders with Laos and Myanmar picking up as many as 60 fugitives a month.