U.S. Slams North Korea, China, in U.N.

U.S. Slams North Korea, China, in U.N.

NewsMax Wires
Tuesday, April 9, 2002

GENEVA, Switzerland -- Representatives from North Korea, China and Cuba traded verbal broadsides on human rights Monday with a senior U.S. official, with each delegate challenging the American record, and Washington's right to censure other countries.

The setting of the strongly worded exchanges was the annual meeting in Geneva of the U.N. Human Rights Commission, where the United States was taking part with only observer status, following its ouster from full membership last year.

Kevin E. Moley, the U.S. representative to the world body's 53-country human rights watchdog organization listed 10 countries which he said were guilty of serious human rights violations and contempt of global standards.

"North Korea continues to commit egregious rights abuses and denies its citizens fundamental freedoms ... (and) devotes scarce resources to developing missiles and weapons of mass destruction even as its people face hunger and disease," Moley said.

He was equally critical of China's record, and went on to charge that Cuban authorities, "routinely harass, imprison, and defame human rights advocates" and others who are critical of the government.

Earlier, Asma Jahangir, the U.N. independent expert on extra judicial and summary executions, informed delegates of her "alarm over a large number of deaths in custody to have occurred in China."

U.S. Human Rights Record Questioned

But North Korea's Choi Myong Nam and several other delegates replied in kind, questioning the U.S. human rights record. Nam accused the United States of "many cases of genocide" going back to the Korean War. He cited the "massacre of more than 400 civilians in Rogun-ri" in 1950.

This was a reference to the death of several Korean villagers in Rogun-ri which a joint U.S.-South Korean inquiry last year said was the result of accidental shooting by U.S. soldiers. President Clinton expressed U.S. "regrets" calling it one of the "tregedies of war."

China's Shen Bo said the real concern must be the United State's poor human rights record, including the country's treatment of African-Americans. Cuban representative Jorge Mora Godoy hit back that the United States had "no moral authority" to speak against the Cuban people whom it had been starving through its economic blockade for four decades.

Other countries singled out by the United States in the Commission for violations included Zimbabwe, Sudan, Vietnam, and Burma.

The United States also spoke out against atrocities committed by "Russian forces and Chechen fighters" and said despite calls by the commission for an independent inquiry, there has been "little meaningful accountability."

The United States lost its seat on the U.N. Commission on Human Rights in a secret ballot last year for the first time since the commission was established in 1947.

Read more on this subject in related Hot Topics:

China/Taiwan

North Korea

United Nations

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