North Korea slams UN resolution on human rights as 'fake document'
People watch a TV showing a file image of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un during a news program, March 25, at the Suseo Railway Station in Seoul. AP
North Korea on Friday slammed a recently adopted U.N. resolution on its human rights violations, calling it a "fake document" with political motives.
The 47-member U.N. Human Rights Council adopted the resolution by consensus at its 46th session in Geneva on Tuesday, marking the 19th consecutive year such a resolution has been adopted.
According to Pyongyang's foreign ministry, Han Tae-song, North Korea's ambassador to the United Nations in Geneva, said in a statement at the session that the North rejects the resolution and denounces it as a "fake document that does not deserve even the slightest consideration."
"The so called 'evidences' presented by the EU for the 'resolution' are nothing more than a fake 'testimony' of scummy 'defectors' to sustain their filthy lives ― the criminals who have abandoned their families after committing crimes in their homeland," he said.
He then criticized the EU and other "Western countries" for their hostile policy against Pyongyang and their "ulterior sinister political scheme" to topple the North's system under the pretext of human rights.
Han pointed out that the U.N. has not adopted a single resolution that takes issue with the human rights situations in the Western countries.
In a separate statement, the North's Permanent Mission to Geneva said that it "vehemently denies and categorically rejects" the latest U.N. resolution and harshly criticized the document as "an illegal and outrageous paper woven by political fraud."
"It should be made clear that the main culprits who must seat in the criminal's dock of human rights court are none other than the sponsors of the anti-DPRK 'human rights resolution,'" the mission said, referring to the North's official name, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea.
The North then vowed continued efforts to strongly counter the "despicable anti-DPRK human rights plots of the hostile forces" by employing all possible ways and means.
The adoption of the resolution came after U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken accused the "authoritarian regime" in Pyongyang of "systemic and widespread abuses" against its own people last week.
After rejoining the Human Rights Council earlier this year following its withdrawal in 2018, the U.S. participated in the resolution as a co-sponsor.
South Korea took part in the adoption process by consensus and not as a co-sponsor of the resolution, a position that it has maintained for the past three years amid efforts to resume inter-Korean talks. (Yonhap)