How North Korea describes its defectors and UN human rights probe

According to Michael Kirby, who heads the U.N. commission examining North Korea’s human rights record, North Korea’s official news agency attacked the testimony of North Korean refugees “as ‘slander’ against the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, put forward by ‘human scum.’ ”

In a June 19 dispatch, the KCNA news agency also denounced defectors as “wild dogs in human form” who had become “the main player in the confrontation farce under the patronage of the South Korean puppet group and brigandish U.S. imperialists.”

“An ounce of evidence is worth far more than many pounds of insults and baseless attacks,” Kirby told the 47-nation Council based in Geneva which is the U.N.’s top human rights body. “So far, however, the evidence we have heard has largely pointed in one direction — and evidence to the contrary is lacking.”

Later in the day, Kirby told a news conference that the commission plans to hold more hearings in London, New York and Washington, before giving a final report to the Council next March. He said the commission “is not a judge and is not a prosecutor,” so it remains to be seen whether specific people will be named for alleged crimes against humanity and other abuses.

North Korea’s U.N. envoy in Geneva, Kim Yong Ho, told the Council on Tuesday that his government will not cooperate with a probe and “totally rejects” its latest report.

The report is based on information “fabricated and invented by the forces hostile to the DPRK, defectors and rebels,” Kim said.

[AP]

This entry was posted in DPRK Government, Humanitarian Aid and Relief, North Korean refugee, Prison Camps by Grant Montgomery.