US President Donald Trump administration a racist billionaires’ club: North Korea

North Korean leader Kim Jong-un delivering a speech during a Workers' Party of Korea (WPK) meeting in the capital Pyongyang on December 22, 2017. (Photo by AFP)

North Korea did not hesitate to lash out at US President Donald Trump over his country’s “gross” human rights violations shortly after his first State of the Union speech in which he referred to the North’s leadership as being “depraved.” Pyongyang's “white paper” on the human rights situation in the US during Trump’s first year in office accused his administration of being a billionaires’ club engaged in a “policy of racism” while denying health care and freedom of press to its citizens.

“Racial discrimination and misanthropy are serious maladies inherent to the social system of the US, and they have been aggravated since Trump took office,” said the “White Paper on Human Rights Violations in the US in 2017,” issued by the North's Institute of International Studies and circulated via the country's diplomatic mission in Geneva on Wednesday.

“The racial violence that took place in Charlottesville, Virginia, on August 12 is a typical example of the acme of the current administration’s policy of racism,” it said.    

The paper was referring to a bout of violence that took place following a white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, and ensuing clashes with anti-racist counter-protesters, which claimed the lives of three people and injured some 20 more.

The document also said that since taking office, Trump had populated his cabinet with billionaires, citing US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnunchin and Secretary of Defense James Mattis.  

“The total assets of public servants at the level of deputy secretary and above of the current administration are worth $14 billion,” it said.

The paper also added that genuine freedom of the press and of expression no longer remained in the US, where it said unemployment and homelessness were also on the rise.

“The US, ‘guardian of democracy’ and ‘human rights champion’, is kicking up the human rights racket, but it can never camouflage its true identity as the gross violator of human rights” it added.    

The paper, which was released a few weeks ahead the main annual session of the United Nations Human Rights Council, refrained from referring to current tensions between Washington and Pyongyang over the latter's missile tests.

The United States and its allies in the West and in Asia engineered tough UN sanctions on North Korea last year when Pyongyang test-fired two missiles in July and then carried out its most powerful nuclear test in August.

However, many said the sanctions would not deter North Korea from pursuing its nuclear and missile program, which Pyongyang insists is part of its defense policy against the United States. Critics have repeatedly warned that sanctions would more affect North Korean people rather than its military and the government.