Washington Post: This is a regime that plays by its own rules

Turning to China, a Washington Post editorial says that Beijing's "harsh treatment of Falun Gong adherents has [now] become routine." It calls the brutal repression yesterday in the Chinese capital of a demonstration by
Falun Gong followers "not surprising: Police dragged dozens of people to jail, where no doubt more will be abused and ordered to renounce their beliefs."

The editorial goes on: "All of this violates the commitments China undertook in signing the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights in 1998. And," it adds, "China is no more respectful of international law with regard to non-Chinese. Thousands of people from famine-stricken North Korea have made their way to northeast China, where they live at the margins of society, fearing arrest and repatriation, but where they can at least find
something to eat. This week, about 100 North Koreans at a Chinese detention camp rioted to resist being returned, [but] China's authorities subdued them and sent them home [to likely execution]."

The paper says that China's actions "violate the 1951 international convention on refugees, of which the People's Republic is a signatory. But this is a regime," it concludes, "that plays by its own rules."

Source:
http://www.rferl.org/nca/features/2000/04/F.RU.000427132338.html