N Korea slams UN condemnation on rights abuses

N Korea slams UN condemnation on rights abuses

SEOUL - North Korea lashed out Monday at the UN's top rights body for its "vicious, hostile" act in adopting a resolution condemning Pyongyang's record of systematic human rights abuse.

The resolution approved Friday by the 47-member UN Human Rights Council, urged the UN Security Council to ensure that those responsible for "gross human rights violations" in North Korea be held to account.

It was adopted on the back of a damning 400-page UN report that detailed endemic abuses, including rape, torture and enslavement, that could amount to crimes against humanity.

In a statement carried on the North's official KCNA news agency, Pyongyang's foreign ministry said it "totally opposes and rejects" the resolution which it called a product a "vicious, hostile policy" engineered by the United States.

Dismissing the UN rights report as the work of "political swindlers," the ministry said the US and other hostile forces were seeking to fuel a "human rights racket" aimed at toppling the North Korean leadership.

Addressing the suggestion that Kim Jong-Un and other leaders might one day face charges in the International Criminal Court, it said justice should first be served on US military aggression in Iraq and Afghanistan, and on the modern rise of neo-Nazism in Europe.

North Korea's key ally China, which has a veto at the UN Security Council, would likely reject any referral of North Korean rights abuse cases to the ICC in the Hague.

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