North Korea on Wednesday denounced the UN Human Rights Council's adoption of a resolution on North Korean human rights, calling it "a grave political provocation against the dignity and sovereignty of our state" and saying it "condemns and rejects it in the strongest terms."
A spokesperson for North Korea's Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in a statement carried by the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) that "the selective human rights discussion mechanism targeting individual countries is a hostile act that runs counter to the spirit of the UN Charter, which enshrines the principles of sovereign equality and non-interference in internal affairs."
The ministry warned that "malicious behavior will certainly be accounted for," and criticized the practice of adopting resolutions on North Korean human rights, which has continued for more than 20 years, as "a regrettable state of the UN human rights arena, which is becoming extremely contaminated by politicization, selectivity and double standards."
The ministry also said that "the most urgent task before the UN Human Rights Council today is to devise practical measures to thoroughly investigate and hold accountable the extraordinary crimes against humanity caused by the state terrorism and sovereignty violations of hegemonic forces." The remarks were interpreted as targeting U.S. airstrikes on Iran, among other actions.
North Korea also criticized the deaths of 175 people, including elementary school students in Iran, resulting from U.S. military strikes. The ministry said that "children, who should be under special protection, are being targeted by precision-guided weapons, and tragic disasters in which more than a hundred are killed are occurring on a daily basis."