Fiona Bruce and a number of female members of the UK Parliament have sent the following letter to the High Commissioner of the Maldives to the UK:
H.E. The High
Commissioner of the Maldives to the UK
cc: FCO Minister Hugo
Swire MP
Your Excellency,
We are writing in conjunction with the All-Party
Parliamentary Human Rights Group (PHRG) to express our concerns about the
continued use of flogging to punish those convicted of extramarital relations
in the Maldives, in contravention of international law.
We have been following the recent case of a woman in the
Maldives, who received a sentence of death by stoning for a conviction of
adultery, and have noted that thankfully the Maldives Higher Court overturned
this sentence.
While following the
above case, we have been made aware that the Maldives frequently sentences
those convicted of extramarital sex to public flogging despite the fact that
such prosecutions violate internationally recognised rights to privacy and
bodily autonomy, and that such sentences are against some of the most basic
human rights standards that prohibit torture and other cruel, inhuman and
degrading punishments.
It is also very worrying that these prosecutions and
sentences appear to disproportionately affect women and girls. We understand that authorities more readily
accuse women of adultery, in part because visible pregnancies make the
allegedly adulterous act more obvious, while men can deny the charges and
escape punishment because of the difficulty of proving adultery under Islamic
law. In 2011, it was reported that women
and girls accounted for 90 % of those sentenced for this ‘crime’.
The UN Human Rights
Council has repeatedly asked the Maldives to end the practice of flogging women
convicted of sex outside marriage and we echo that call.
Finally we are aware
that tourism, including from the UK, is a very significant industry for the
Maldives. We believe, however, that many
women from the UK, and more widely, would feel much less comfortable about visiting
if they knew that local women are being flogged for exercising basic human
rights that they as visitors are able to exercise while on their holiday there.
We welcome your comments on the matters raised above and
hope that the Maldives can bring an end to this practice very soon.
Yours sincerely,
Fiona Bruce MP spoke out on Human Rights Violations in the Maldives in her capacity as Chair of the Conservative Party Human Rights Commission.
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| Fiona Bruce MP with Maldivian Parliamentarians, John Glen MP and Ben Rogers, Vice Chair of the Conservative Party Human Rights Commission |
