North Korea’s envoy to the United Nations lashed out at the U.S. Thursday ahead of the General Assembly’s passage of a draft resolution calling for the country to be referred to the International Criminal Court for alleged crimes against humanity.
The vote passed 116-20, but North Korea’s envoy called the resolution part of the United States’ plot to overthrow the Kim Jong-un regime.
“The resolution does not reflect the reality on the ground,” the envoy said. Cuba and Iran’s envoys also defended North Korea.
The approval of the draft resolution comes after the UN’s Commission of Inquiry Report on Human Rights in North Korea released a 400-page report in February that documented torture and abuse, including cases of mothers being forced to drown newborns and corpses being eaten by dogs. The assembly also passed resolutions criticizing the human rights records of Iran and Syria.
The non-binding measure is largely symbolic, as the General Assembly does not have the power to refer North Korea to the ICC, but the Security Council does.
Next Monday, despite objections from China and Russia, the U.N. Security Council will debate North Korea’s human rights record for the first time for possible prosecution before the ICC.
The North Korean envoy also said a recently-released Senate report on the CIA’s interrogation methods should also be investigated.
On Monday, in a letter addressed to the president of the U.N. Security Council, Ja Song-nam, Pyongyang's ambassador to the U.N., accuses the U.S. of conducting "brutal medieval forms" of torture and "the gravest human rights violations in the world."
Fox News' Jonathan Wachtel contributed to this report.
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