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A delegate of the DPRK declared this when discussing the item "protection and improvement of human rights" at the meeting of the 3rd Committee of the 63rd UN General Assembly on Oct. 29.
The human rights issue is not a privileged monopoly granted to any specified country or to forces and there can be neither "judge" nor "defendant" as far as international human rights issues are concerned, he noted, and continued:
Some Western countries are politicizing human rights issues and selectively directing accusing fingers to those developing countries which refuse to accept their view on value. This practice aggravates the conflict among countries and adversely affects the worldwide efforts to protect and promote human rights.
It is important to properly settle the past issues in solving human rights issues.
Recently, some countries have taken measures to make repentance, apology and compensation for the human rights abuses which they committed in their countries and other countries in the past.
But it is regretful that only Japan has not sincerely made apology and reparation for the grave human rights abuses which it committed in Korea and other Asian countries in the past.
The government of Japan has not admitted the state responsibility for killing at least a million Koreans, abducting and drafting more than 8.4 million Koreans and forcing 200,000 Korean women into sexual slavery for the Imperial Japanese Army during its occupation of Korea and has refused to make state reparation to the victims.
What is more intolerable is that the discrimination and suppression of Koreans in Japan are now being committed in Japan in an undisguised manner.
Japan should not forget that it will have no rosy future unless it has a will to honestly settle its past and awareness of the reality.
