UNITED NATIONS (Sputnik) – North Korea's mission to the United Nations has criticized the upcoming human rights conference to be held in Washington, pointing to torture crimes committed by the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).
"The United States and South Korea are going to convene so-called 'Conference on North Korean Human Rights: the Road Ahead' on 17 February in Washington…The Permanent Mission of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea [DPRK] to the United Nations condemns the convening of such human rights gathering as a political human rights plot against the DPRK," the mission said in a statement on Sunday.
According to the statement, the United States ignored North Korea's request for participation in the conference because they are afraid of the disclosure of CIA torture crimes.
The mission claimed that the United States "is the worst human rights violator in the world" and thus "does not have qualification at all to talk about human rights situation of other countries".
In December of last year, the US Senate released a report that documented "enhanced interrogation techniques" used by the CIA on suspected terrorists. It found that the CIA had misled Congress and the public about the effectiveness of its torture program.
According to the Senate report, some of the interrogation methods that the CIA used on suspects after the September 11 bombings include waterboarding, mock executions, prolonged sleep deprivation, the threat of sexual abuse and threats against family. The report covered CIA activity between 2001 and 2006.
