Pyongyang, May 2 (KCNA) -- A spokesman for the Foreign Ministry of the DPRK released the following statement Sunday:

The U.S. State Department spokesperson in a press release about a "ceremony" sponsored by anti-DPRK human rights organizations on April 28 smeared the statewide anti-epidemic measures in the DPRK for protecting the life and security of the people from the worldwide pandemic as "human rights abuses" and even faulted the dignity of our supreme leadership in its grave politically-motivated provocation.

The DPRK Foreign Ministry vehemently denounces the provocation from the U.S. as a vivid manifestation of the hostile policy toward the DPRK to tarnish its image and as a crude violation of its state sovereignty.

The "human rights issue" touted by the U.S. is a political trick designed to destroy the ideology and social system in the DPRK.

The U.S. is not entitled to claim human rights as it has inflicted unspeakable sufferings and pain on the people of the DPRK with unprecedented vicious hostile policy.

The U.S. is the tundra of human rights as deaths of innocent people due to social inequality and racial discrimination are daily occurrences there. It is also the world's worst epidemically defeated country as more than 580 000 people have died of COVID-19 there.

Death toll by gun-related crimes numbers over 40 000 a year in the U.S. and all sorts of crimes stalk its land bragged as the "world of civilization" by itself.

The U.S. must face international investigation and own responsibility for its hideous human rights abuses and violation.

We have already made it clear that we will counter in the strongest terms whoever encroaches upon the dignity of our supreme leadership, which is more valuable than our lives and which is the most sacred to us, and whether it is big or small.

However, the U.S. has now insulted the dignity of our supreme leadership. This becomes an evident sign that it is girding itself up for an all-out showdown with the DPRK, and this is also a clear answer to how we should approach the new administration in the U.S.

For us, human rights precisely mean state sovereignty.

As the U.S. openly expressed its intention to stifle the DPRK with a "resolute deterrence", denying our ideology and social system and abusing the "human rights" as a tool for interference in our internal affairs and a political weapon for overturning our social system, we will be forced to take corresponding measures.

We have warned the U.S. sufficiently enough to understand that it will get hurt if it provokes us.

The U.S. will surely and certainly regret for acting lightly, defying our warnings. -0-