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By Glynn Cosker
Editor, In Homeland Security

In one of the most ironic and hypocritical statements of modern times, North Korea called the CIA’s enhanced interrogation methods “the gravest human rights violations in the world.”

Asking the United Nations to investigate what he called “brutal, medieval” torture, North Korea’s ambassador to the world body, Ja Song-nam, simultaneously dismissed evidence of his own country’s appalling record of treating human beings.

“The so-called ‘human rights issue’ in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea is politically fabricated and, therefore, it is not at all relevant to the regional or international peace and security,” stated Ja in a letter to the U.N.’s council president. “The issue of CIA torture crimes committed by the United States needs to be urgently addressed in the Security Council since it threatens to have an imminent and destabilizing impact on the maintenance of international peace and security,” continues Ja.

North Korea accuses CIA of torture
North Korea accuses CIA of torture.

To label such rhetoric as caustic is a not doing the word ‘caustic’ justice given that a recent U.N. commission depicts ongoing crimes against humanity routinely occurring in North Korea including “enslavement, torture, imprisonment, rape, forced abortions and other sexual violence.”

“There is an almost complete denial of the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion, as well as of the rights to freedom of opinion, expression, information and association,” states the U.N. commission report on North Korea’s human rights violations.

There are plenty of worldwide governments who agree with Ja’s sentiment about the CIA’s methods, and there are plenty in the United States who agree too, but when it’s opined from a nation known for terrorizing and starving its own citizens and executing infants in prison camps, it borders on ridicule. The U.N. reports there are close to 15,000 people currently doing slave labor in one North Korean prison area.

One can only hope that the U.N. gives Ja’s request for an investigation into the CIA’s interrogation tactics the treatment it deserves: a quick entry into the shredder.

Related: Sony Quickly Denies North Korean Links to Cyber-Attack

By Kerry Givens

The  universal values of freedom, and the inalienable value and respect for human rights and the principle of holding regular and legitimate elections by universal suffrage are essential elements to the foundation of a democratic state. In return, democracy provides the universal environment for the protection and effective realization of human rights.