By Gary Streeter MP
February 2006

Last month, a new report on torture was published. But this time it was not China or Zimbabwe. Appropriately titled “Blood on the beaches”, it documents torture and ill-treatment in the prisons of the Maldives. Unusual holiday reading for tourists to the idyllic sandy beaches and luxury resorts of the paradise destination which receives 500,000 tourists, 100,000 of them British, each year. How many of them are aware that coconut palms are used as a common instrument of torture, or that the leader of the democratic opposition is an Amnesty International prisoner of conscience under house arrest?

Mohamed Nasheed, leader of the Maldivian Democratic Party, was arrested last August while conducting a peaceful vigil for democracy in a square in the capital, Male. He now faces trial, charged with “terrorism” and “sedition”. There are grave doubts over whether he can expect a fair trial.

The sun-soaked islands of the Maldives are ruled by a paranoid despot, President Gayyoom, whose behaviour appears almost as erratic and bizarre as the junta that rules Burma or Kim Jong-il in North Korea. Gayyoom’s regime, despite being heavily in debt following the tsunami, continues to spend the 14th highest proportion of GDP on military expenditure in the world. He has imprisoned 32 year-old journalist and human rights activist Jennifer Latheef for ten years for taking part in a peaceful vigil, and Amnesty International claims she has been subjected to “cruel and inhuman” punishment. Nineteen year-old Evan Naseem was beaten to death by prison guards in 2003, and his mother spent 50 days in detention following his death, where she was sexually abused. Fourteen year-old Abdulla Alexander and a fellow prisoner were handcuffed to a coconut palm for a week, simply because they requested a mattress and pillow. According to “Blood on the Beaches”, pouring sewage on prisoners’ heads or urinating on them while handcuffed to a palm tree “are common occurrences”.

But the Maldives are by no means alone. In North Korea, political prisoners are regarded as less than human, and are subjected to horrendous torture in the labour camps. There is some evidence to suggest that chemical weapons have been tested on prisoners in North Korea. In Burma, elections were held in 1990 and overwhelmingly won by Nobel Laureate Aung San Suu Kyi and the National League for Democracy. Yet she remains under house arrest, and 1,100 political prisoners are behind bars. The ethnic minorities in Burma face crimes against humanity and, some would argue, genocide – systematic rape, forced labour, forced relocation, torture, the use of human minesweepers, the destruction of villages, crops and livestock, and killings. Since 1996, over 2,500 villages have been destroyed in eastern Burma alone. Over one million people are internally displaced, on the run, in fear for their lives. Hundreds of thousands of refugees are in camps in Thailand, India and Bangladesh. Then there are the madmen ruling Turkmenistan, Uzbekhistan and Belarus, the brutal regimes in Sudan, Eritrea and Cuba, the “disappearances” in Nepal and the subjugation of women in Saudi Arabia.

In addition to the behaviour of brutal regimes, there are grave human rights violations perpetrated by elements within societies and cultures – sometimes, as in the case of India, centuries-old religious attitudes towards caste and hierarchy. The 250 million Dalits, otherwise known as “untouchables”, are abused and discriminated against on a daily basis.

For too long, these issues have not been high enough up the political agenda. Governments of both colours in the United Kingdom have been guilty of prioritizing perceived short-term national interests, instead of realizing that it cannot be in our long-term national interest to allow tyranny and torture to go unchallenged. Dictators do not make good partners. They create instability, reek of corruption and threaten not only their people but also their neighbours.

That is why the Conservative Party has established its own Human Rights Commission. Consisting of MPs such as John Bercow and Michael Gove, and human rights activists, including Amnesty International, the Conservative Party Human Rights Commission will focus this year on the twenty countries it considers either the worst offenders, such as North Korea, Sudan and Burma, or the most forgotten “little guys” who few people know about, such as The Maldives. We will hold hearings, take evidence, ask questions in Parliament, produce an Annual Report and develop policies for a future manifesto. We will advise the Shadow Foreign Secretary, William Hague, on international human rights issues, and develop campaigns within the Party and Parliament on specific issues. We will be a voice for the persecuted and oppressed.

William Wilberforce, that great Parliamentarian who fought the battle to end the slave trade, was a Conservative. It is his legacy that the Conservative Human Rights Commission will embrace, as we address modern-day forms of slavery. For if the values of freedom, the rule of law, limited government and opportunity are, as we claim, Conservative values, then they must be applied to foreign as well as domestic policy. When he introduced the bill to end the slave trade, Wilberforce said: “We can no longer plead ignorance. We cannot turn aside.” Let today’s Conservatives hear those words. Let us be the freedom fighters of today, and then we will earn the right to be the liberators of tomorrow.

Gary Streeter is the Chairman of the Conservative Party Human Rights Commission