OTTAWA – One of the world’s worst human rights abusers, North Korea, used a United Nations committee this week to publicly denounce Canada’s rights record.

A North Korean diplomat called Canada a land of broken promises and said it has no right criticizing others because it has been accused of mistreating immigrants and aboriginal women and children at home.

It’s another example of a trend that fuels the Harper government’s disdain for the UN — despotic, rights-abusing countries using the world body as a podium to cast stones at their democratic critics.

Earlier in the meeting, which was held Wednesday in New York, Guillermo Rishchynski (gee-YAIR-mo rish-IN-ski), Canada’s ambassador to the UN, condemned the closed, totalitarian state.

He said North Korea’s leaders are removed from reality and abuse their own people through forced labour camps and medical experiments, among other things.

In September, Cuba, Iran, Belarus and Russia used a session of the UN Human Rights Council to criticize Canada’s treatment of aboriginals.