DPRK FM Addresses UNHRC Session

Pyongyang, March 5 (KCNA) -- Ri Su Yong, foreign minister of the DPRK, made a speech at the 28th session of the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) on Tuesday.
    Recalling that a "resolution" on the human rights situation in the DPRK was forcibly adopted at a session of the UNHRC last year, he noted in his speech:
    Developments of the situation after the adoption of the "resolution" cast increasing doubts on the authenticity of the allegation by some countries of the "wide-spread" human rights violation in the DPRK.
    While the "evidences" that support their allegation are being proven to be false, the ones proving that their anti-DPRK human rights racket is politically motivated are becoming ever clearer with the passage of time.
    This shows that the "human rights issue" of our country lost its original meaning of the concept and has now turned into another political agenda at international human rights arena, which has become extremely politicized today.
    The problem is that the countries hostile towards the DPRK and their followers pursue a biased approach when it comes to the actual human rights situation of the DPRK, not interested in the truth of the reality.
    At present, the biggest hurdle for the international cooperation in the field of human rights is the abuse of human rights issue for political purposes.
    The most typical examples of such abuses are found in using human rights issues to bring down the social and political systems of certain countries.
    During the Cold War period, the U.S. came to realize that there would be no winner in a nuclear war. Hence they made a shift to the strategy of peaceful transition and started to bring forward the human rights issue in real earnest. This is a well-known fact.
    It is the stereotyped method of the U.S. which is still being used today to smear the countries disobedient to it and demonize them in the eyes of the international community with the ultimate purpose of effecting regime change and bringing down their social system.
    As the DPRK remarkably strengthened its war deterrent, the U.S., realizing that their power politics would not work, started to desperately cling to the anti-DPRK human rights racket particularly since last year.
    Such policy of the U.S. is not the first of its kind.
    It is only an extension of the U.S. hostile policy towards the DPRK pursued since the dawn of the Cold War by which they turned the Korean peninsula into a theatre of confrontation between socialism and capitalism in Asia. To this end, they poured an astronomical amount of money into south Korea, while, at the same time, seeking to bring down the social system of the DPRK by all evil methods including isolation, stifling, blockade, suffocation, threat, blackmail and pressure.
    Another major obstacle to the international cooperation in the field of human rights is the practice of selectivity and double standards.
    Currently, the UN arena is often being misused as a venue where certain powers rally their followers to selectively pick and torment the countries standing up to them.
    If such practices are allowed to go on, the genuine cooperation in the field of human rights will vanish, which, in turn, will result in reducing the UN arena into a theatre of political frauds and confrontation.
    Recently, atrocious acts of torture systematically conducted by the U.S. government agency have been revealed shocking the whole world. However this issue has not been submitted on the table of the UN.
    That is because the European countries fond of raising individual country's human rights issue remained silent.
    Such practices which hamper the international efforts to protect and promote human rights should no longer be tolerated.
    The UNHCR must address the issue of brutal torture crimes by the U.S. as an emergency agenda, thus putting an end to the practice of selectivity and double standards in human rights issue.
    We believe that the interference in other country's internal affairs, use of and threats by armed forces and economic sanctions and blockade against them constitute wanton violations of human rights of the peoples of the countries.
    The UNHRC should direct greater attention to such human rights issues as generally recognized at international level and seek appropriate actions rather than the human rights situations in the specifically selected countries.
    In order to properly fulfill its mission, the UNHRC must maintain impartiality as its mainstay like all the other international organizations.
    The impartiality of the UNHRC will be judged by how it deals with the issue of an individual official acting under the UN name who made psychopathic and reckless political remarks that the leadership of a dignified sovereign member state of the UN must be changed. We will be closely watching.
    The DPRK will firmly safeguard the national sovereignty to thoroughly protect the human rights of our people from the infringement by the hostile forces and contribute to the global solution of the human rights issue by further developing the socialist system that serves for the popular masses. -0-