March 11 Photo Brief: Japan commemorates second anniversary of 2011 earthquake and tsunami, Pakistani Christians, camel races, 2,200 pigs dead

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Japan commemorates second anniversary of 2011 earthquake and tsunami, Pakistani Christians, camel races in Mongolia, 2,200 pigs found dead in China and more in today’s daily brief.

North Korea slams U.N. “plot” to investigate its human rights record
Tom Miles, Reuters
1:54 p.m. EDT, March 11, 2013

GENEVA (Reuters) – North Korea condemned a threatened U.N. investigation into its alleged human rights abuses on Monday and denounced a U.N. report as “faked material … invented by the hostile forces, defectors and other rabbles”.

The U.N. Human Rights Council is likely to back a call by Japan and the European Union to set up a “Commission of Inquiry” later this month, meaning that the isolated Asian state will face much closer scrutiny.

“It is nothing more than an instrument of political plot aimed at sabotaging our socialist system by defaming the dignified image of the DPRK and creating an atmosphere of international pressure under the pretext of ‘human rights protection’,” North Korea’s Ambassador So Se Pyong told the Council.

The likely establishment of a U.N. investigation follows a report by an independent expert, Indonesian lawyer Marzuki Darusman, identifying human rights violations including kidnapping of foreign nationals, torture, and a gulag system thought to hold up to 200,000 prisoners.

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