 SEOUL: North Korea hit back on Wednesday to US charges that it suppresses religion by telling Washington to stop acting as the world's "religious judge". The US State Department, in its annual International Religious Freedom Report released this month, quoted defectors and others as saying North Korea imprisoned and executed people who tried to practise religion. An article on Wednesday in Pyongyang's official Rodong Sinmun daily said: | “The United States is a chief culprit in the repression and extermination of religion which should be put in the dock of a religious trial...” |
"The US, after the Sept. 11 incident, has murdered many Muslims in cold blood in its mainland, Afghanistan and Iraq and made no bones about insulting and overriding Islam and Islamic culture. The United States is not a 'religious judge' but a chief culprit in the repression and extermination of religion which should be put in the dock of a religious trial," Rodong Sinmun said, according to an authorised translation. Reclusive North Korea, which governments and human rights groups say has one of the worst rights record in the world, bristles at any criticism of how it treats its citizens. |