N Korea calls US ‘graveyard of human rights’

SEOUL — North Korea’s government said today (Aug 27) that the police shooting of an unarmed black 18-year-old in Ferguson, Missouri, is evidence that the United States is a “graveyard of human rights”.

The comments by a Foreign Ministry spokesman fit a pattern by North Korea of seizing any opportunity to turn the table on Washington’s longstanding criticism of the North as one of the world’s worst human rights abusers.

The Aug 9 death of Michael Brown in Ferguson triggered nearly two weeks of sometimes-violent street protests.

In a statement carried by North Korea’s official Korean Central News Agency, the spokesman called the US a country “where people are subject to discrimination and humiliation due to their races and they are seized with such horror that they do not know when they are shot to death”.

“The protests in Ferguson City and other parts of the US are an eruption of the pent-up discontent and resistance of the people against racial discrimination and inequality deeply rooted in the American society,” the statement said.

It accused America of acting like an “international human rights judge”, and said the US should “mind its own business, instead of interfering in the internal affairs of other countries”.

“It should not seek solutions to its problem in suppressing demonstrators but bring to light the real picture of the American society, a graveyard of human rights, and have a correct understanding of what the genuine human rights are like and how they should be guaranteed,” the statement said. AP