Burma and North Korea have vehemently rejected UN condemnation of human rights abuses at the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva, BBC online reports Monday.
Recommendations by the UN special envoy to Burma “violated the right of a sovereign state”, Burma’s UN envoy told the UN Human Rights Council and North Korea’s UN envoy “categorically” rejected a recent report describing the country as “one big prison”.
UN special envoy Tomas Quintana, who visited Burma last month, has recommended a UN inquiry into whether war crimes and crimes against humanity are being committed there.
Mr Quintana told the UN Human Rights Council that elections due this year could not be credible, because the military rulers had failed to reme-dy human rights abuses.
These included the recruitment of child soldiers and the jailing of more than 2.000 prisoners of conscience.
Burma vociferously rejected the report, saying it referred to issues that fell out-side Mr Quintana’s mandate and con-tained “unfounded allegations”, Bur-mas UN envoy Wunna Maung Lwin stressed.
Meanwhile, the UN special envoy to North Korea Vitit Muntarbhorn has told the BBC that North Korea’s human rights’ record is in a category of its own. – The type of surveillance system imposed on people, food deprivation, all these give rise to an array of violations and violence which puts it in its own category, he said.
The UN report was inspired by a “Western conspiracy to eliminate the state and social system” in North Korea, the country’s UN envoy Choe Myong Nam noted according to BBC.
