North Korea rejects UN human rights report as 'lies and fabrications'
22 February 2014, 04:49
North Korea on Saturday rejected the findings of a UN panel, which accused the state of crimes against humanity that evoked Nazi-era atrocities, saying they were based on 'lies and fabrications deliberately cooked up by hostile forces and riff-raffs.' North Korean security chiefs and even Kim Jong Un should face international prosecution for ordering systematic torture, starvation and killings of its people, UN investigators said on Monday in a report. The unprecedented public rebuke to a head of state by a UN commission is likely to further antagonize Kim, but activists and defectors who fled the North including prison camp survivors expressed scepticism that the report will have any impact on the regime.
The North's foreign ministry said it categorically rejects the report by the UN Commission of Inquiry, which it said was 'set up the US and its satellite forces out of inveterate repugnance towards the DPRK.'
DPRK stands for the North's official name, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, and the comments were carried by the official KCNA news agency.
The UN report is 'peppered with sheer lies and fabrications deliberately cooked up by hostile forces and riff-raffs such as some 'elements with ambiguous identities who defected from the north', criminals escaped from it after committing crimes against the country to earn money,' it said.
The North's formal rejection of the report comes after the UN human rights chief urged world powers to refer the state to the International Criminal Court (ICC).
The North's foreign ministry said such a move would be 'an extremely dangerous politically motivated provocation aimed to tarnish the image of the dignified DPRK and ramp up pressure on it in a bid to bring down its social system.'
Referral to the Hague-based International Criminal Court is seen as unlikely given China's probable veto of any such move in the UN Security Council, diplomats have said.
'Hundreds' of N Korea officials could be responsible for crimes against humanity - UN probe
Hundreds of North Korean officials could be responsible for crimes against humanity in their country, the head of a UN-mandated probe said Monday.
'The potential number could be running into the hundreds,' Michael Kirby told reporters.
Kirby did not accuse the country's dictator Kim Jong-un directly, but said that in North Korea 'everything comes together through the supreme leader'.
Voice of Russia, AFP, Reuters
|
NEWSLETTER
|
| Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list |
|
|
|
