Alarm Over North Korea Human Rights Cover Up For US Violations

MOSCOW (Sputnik) – The attention that the United States is drawing to the human rights situation in North Korea is only a way of concealing its own violations, such as torture and cruel treatment of immigrants, a representative on North Korea’s Foreign Affairs Ministry told KCNA.

"After the resolution of the Iranian nuclear problem the United States has repeatedly said that attention must be focused on ‘the issue of human rights’ in DPRK [Democratic People’s Republic of Korea] and more pressure on ‘the issue of human rights’ must be made," the representative said, adding that Washington has been using "political provocations" aimed at destroying North Korea’s power structure.

According to North Korea’s Foreign Ministry, the European Union is following in US footsteps.

The ministry’s representative stressed that the world community, particularly the United Nations Human Rights Council, must pay attention to human rights violations in the United States and Europe, "such as appalling tortures in the US…cruel treatment of immigrants and repressions against [foreign] religions in Western countries."

The representative of North Korea’s Foreign Ministry said that should the United States and its allies continue using political provocations against Pyongyang, North Korea will respond with "extra rigid adequate measures."

The United States has been supporting South Korea in its stand-off with the North. Joint US-South Korea exercises, condemned by Pyongyang, have been held annually since 2011.

South and North Korea are still formally at war, as no peace treaty was ever signed after the Korean War of 1950-1953.

The United Nations plans to discuss North Korea’s human rights record on September 21. In last year’s report, the United Nations described various human rights abuses in North Korea, including starvation and the operation of secretive prison camps.

The United States in its turn has been widely criticized for the operation of the Guantanamo Bay detention facility. US President Barack Obama has repeatedly pledged to close the notorious prison amid mounting concern of human rights abuses, such as force-feeding and torture, but the detention camp in Cuba remains open.