FYI.

This story is over 5 years old.

News

North Korea Says United Nations Must Investigate CIA Torture or Risk 'Double Standards'

As the UN Security Council prepares to meet on Pyongyang's human rights record, the hermit kingdom is pushing for similar action over the US Senate report on the CIA's post-9/11 interrogation program.
Image via Reuters

As the UN Security Council prepares to meet on North Korea's human rights record, the reclusive kingdom says the world body must now also investigate CIA-perpetrated torture or risk "the most striking manifestation of the double standard."

In a statement released after the Senate Intelligence Committee published its 500-page summary of the CIA's brutal post 9/11 interrogation program, North Korea said the Council should "call into question the human rights abuses rampant in the US."

Advertisement

Following a November General Assembly resolution condemning North Korea, the Security Council is expected to hold discussions this month on the country's human rights record. The vote urged the Council to consider referral to the International Criminal Court. Though Russia and China are expected to veto such a move, an open debate on North Korea would be of great symbolic importance and ratchet up pressure on the government in Pyongyang.

Senate Torture Report Finds the CIA Was Less Effective and More Brutal Than Anyone Knew. Read more here.

North Korea — known officially as the Democratic People's Republic of Korea - has long accused the US of orchestrating the resolution drafted by the European Union and Japan. After its passage, it threatened to wipe Japan off the map and raised the specter of nuclear war on the Korean Peninsula.

It lobbed similar allegations at a UN Commission of Inquiry that in April implicated the government of Supreme Leader Kim Jong-un in "unspeakable atrocities," including systematic rape, murder, starvation and enslavement of its own citizens. Those accusations, it says, were all fabricated.

Now the government in Pyongyang is calling attention to the Senate report — the same findings that a UN expert said warrant the prosecution of American officials.

"The individuals responsible for the criminal conspiracy revealed in today's report must be brought to justice, and must face criminal penalties commensurate with the gravity of their crimes," Ben Emmerson, UN special rapporteur on counter-terrorism and human rights, stated on Tuesday.

Advertisement

"The perpetrators may be prosecuted by any other country they travel to," added Emmerson.

Though North Korean diplomats are not always taken seriously at the UN, it is not far-fetched to consider the crimes of Bush administration and CIA officials being taken up at the Security Council. Methods employed by the CIA after 9/11, including so-called "rectal rehydration, waterboarding, and mock executions, are in clear violation of the United Nations Convention Against Torture, which then-President Ronald Reagan signed into law in 1988 and was ratified by the Senate in 1990.

Sources Say North Korean Representatives Used Racist Slur at United Nations. Read more here.

Nor would the spectacle be unprecedented. Russia, another permanent member of the Council, is routinely lambasted in public sessions by representatives of the US, the UK and France over its military involvement in Ukraine.

"If the UNSC handles the 'human rights issue' in the DPRK while shutting its eyes to the serious human rights issues in the US, one of its permanent members," it will "prove itself its miserable position that it has turned into a tool for the US arbitrary practices just as everybody can hear everywhere," said North Korea in its statement, released through the government-run KCNA news agency.

It claimed Washington was trying to get North Korea referred to the Security Council over human rights as a "pretext for military invasion."

Advertisement

"The US is persistently working to refer non-existent DPRK 'human rights issue' to the Security Council although there is the UN Human Rights Council, the organization specializing in human rights issues. This is prompted by its ulterior intention to invent a pretext for military invasion of the DPRK under the pretext of its 'human rights issue'."

The accusations of double standards were also echoed in the Chinese state media. A commentary run by the state news agency Xinhua contended:  "In light of this (report,) perhaps the US government should clean up its own backyard first and respect the rights of other countries to resolve their issues by themselves."

Though the Senate report emerged from within the US government, Pyongyang has shown no similar knack for self-reflection. After lashing out over the Commission of Inquiry's report — and claiming the lead investigator's sexuality compromised its integrity — North Korea in September released an examination of its own human rights record. Their investigation concluded the country in fact "has the world's most advantageous human rights system."

North Korea is a keen observer of the US, and routinely cites any domestic unrest to claim an international double standard. In recent months it has called attention to allegations of racial profiling and police brutality. In August, following the shooting death of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, Pyongyang called the US a "graveyard of human rights."

North Korea Leads the World in Human Rights, Says Report by North Korea. Read more here.

Follow Samuel Oakford on Twitter: @samueloakford