U.N. opens periodic review of N. Korea's human rights situations

GENEVA: The U.N. Human Rights Council on Thursday opened a working group session on North Korea under its periodic peer review, with more than 80 countries expressing their views on Pyongyang's treatment of its citizens.

At the second working group meeting on North Korea following the 2009 session, Takashi Okada, a Japanese ambassador to the United Nations in Geneva, said rights violations such as those associated with political prisoners' camps and the abduction of foreign nationals "could constitute crimes against humanity" and called on the North to take concrete actions to end the violations.