N Korea rejects UN rights report as 'fabrication'

North Korea has "categorically" rejected a UN report on its human rights record, accusing it of being a "sheer fabrication" invented by the United States and its allies.
A UN report released Monday said North Korea's leaders should be brought before an international court for a litany of crimes against humanity.
The report by the Commission of Inquiry on North Korea found "systemic, widespread and gross human rights violations have been and are being committed" by North Korea, its institutions and officials.
"The so-called Commission of Inquiry was deceitfully put together last year by the United States and its cronies... And we've never acknowledged even its existence", a North Korean foreign ministry spokesman said yesterday.

"The so-called report by the puppet commission is a ragtag of cooked-up materials fed by hostile forces, criminals who escaped punishment in the country and other tramps. We categorically reject it", he was quoted as saying by KCNA.
The spokesman condemned as "far-fetched" the assertion that North Korea's leaders should be brought before an international court for a litany of crimes against humanity that include exterminating, starving and enslaving its population.

"This is an extremely dangerous, politically-motivated provocation aimed to undermine our regime", the spokesman said.
He also accused the United States of being "the worst human rights abuser who killed innocent people through aggression and intervention, and systematically committed illegal wire-tapping and surveillance not only over its own citizens but those of other countries".

The hard-hitting, 400-page report detailed "extermination, murder, enslavement, torture, imprisonment, rape, forced abortions and other sexual violence" in the nuclear-armed totalitarian state.
It included shocking testimony from North Koreans who escaped, highlighting "the inhumane act of knowingly causing prolonged starvation".
The commission was created in March 2013 by the UN Human Rights Council. Its chair Michael Kirby said on Monday that ignorance was no longer an excuse for a failure to act.
Denied access to North Korea, the commission held hearings in South Korea and Japan with 320 North Korean exiles.
A frustrated Kirby wrote to North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un - the third ruler of the communist dynasty founded by his grandfather in 1948 - on January 20, asking him to put his side.

Kirby told Kim that any North Korean official who "commits, orders, solicits or aids and abets crimes against humanity" is responsible and must be held accountable.