UNITED NATIONS. UN RIGHTS ENVOY ASKS CHINA TO AID NORTH KOREAN REFUGEES

China should stop repatriating North Koreans who flee their country and give them refugee status instead, Vitit Muntarbhorn, UN special rapporteur on human rights in North Korea, said. 
Relief agencies said as many as 300,000 North Koreans were hiding in China after fleeing hunger and repression at home.
"The people coming from North Korea are not just hunger cases but they are more than hunger cases because they fear persecution upon return," Vitit told a meeting on migrants and refugee issues in the Malaysian capital.
China is a signatory to the United Nations Convention on Refugees, which mandates humane treatment of refugees. But Beijing, Pyongyang's only significant ally, says the North Koreans on its soil were economic migrants, not refugees.
The UN Commission on Human Rights set up the post of special investigator for North Korea in 2004 with the task of probing reports of torture, public executions, forced labour and "infanticide" in prison and labour camps.
But North Korea did not recognise the mandate and had denied Vitit, a Thai law professor, a visit.