UK to press Maldives government over human rights abuses

Move comes as MPs and MSPs table questions to ministers after Guardian revealed ties between British and Maldives police
Maldives police officers
The Maldives police service is accused of serious and persistent abuses. Photograph: Ibrahim Faid/AFP/Getty Images





Tory and Labour MPs at Westminster and MSPs active in a cross-party human rights group at Holyrood said the Foreign Office and Scottish ministers should immediately review those contracts.

The Guardian can also disclose that the Scottish Police college could soon extend its role in the Maldives by helping run degree courses for a new policing academy, despite the growing international condemnation of Maldives police conduct over the last 10 months.

The college and the Foreign Office are considering a formal proposal to supply teaching to the new academy. The Maldives president, Mohammed Waheed Hassan, who took power in February after the police helped to force the first democratically elected president, Mohamed Nasheed, from office, has used that deal to defend his regime's track record on human rights.

In October Waheed wrote directly to senior public figures, including the airlines owner Sir Richard Branson and musician Thom Yorke, who had signed an open letter to the Guardian condemning his regime's conduct, claiming that Scottish police were helping to reform policing in the Maldives.

John Glen MP, the parliamentary private secretary to the communities secretary, Eric Pickles, and a supporter of the opposition Maldives Democratic party, said he would be raising "grave concerns" that Waheed was using the Scottish Police college's involvement to manipulate international opinion, in the Commons and directly with Burt.

Glen said: "There are grave implications for the Scottish Police college, which is in danger of being taken for a ride by a regime which is blatantly trying to legitimise the quality of its police force on the back of the established reputation of Scottish policing."

John Finnie MSP, who chairs the Scottish parliament's cross-party human rights group and is a former police officer, said he had written to Hague asking him to reconsider the training deal until democracy and civil liberties had been restored in the Maldives.

Finnie has also tabled questions to Kenny MacAskill, the Scottish justice secretary, asking whether he had any powers to stop the college training police in oppressive regimes, and would be raising the Guardian's investigation with Stephen House, chief constable of the new single police force for Scotland.

"I have always been proud of the training provided to foreign nationals at the Scottish Police college," Finnie said. "However, photographs of smiling faces at graduations and smartly framed diplomas from Tulliallan count for nothing if the population is being abused by those trained at the police college or by their subordinates."

MacAskill will also come under pressure from Scottish Green party MSPs. Alison Johnstone MSP, deputy chair of the cross-party human rights group, said the minister must explain what checks were done to ensure that overseas police training was having a genuine impact.

"The idea of a Scottish organisation profiting while human rights abuses continue raises so many questions. We need to know who approved these contracts and how they reached their decision," Johnstone said.

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