SNP Foreign Aid Recipient Maldives Intensifies Religious Repression

I've written before about how the SNP is giving foreign aid to the Maldives (see here, here and here) and made a specific commitment to this in their manifesto. The Maldives was already ranked one of the most religously repressive Islamic regimes in the world. Now the repression is going to intensify a bit further.

MALE, September 17 (HNS) – President’s Office has gazetted the controversial Religious Unity Regulation, declaring it an offence to preach a religion except Islam in the Maldives.

The 12-clause regulation makes it mandatory for preachers of Islam, both locals and foreigners, to have a first degree in a field of Islamic education from a ministry-approved college, university or centre.

...The regulation also prohibits comments of hatred towards people of other religions, spreading a religion other than Islam and using an object that resembles a sign of a religion other than Islam.

A person who violates the regulation will be sentenced to 2-5 years in prison, banishment or house arrest.

Source

Alex Salmond And His New Friends From the Maldives

More on the Maldives

I've been reading up on the persecution of Christians and other non-Muslims in the Maldives in light of the fact that the SNP is giving Scottish taxpayers' money to it.

Open Doors, a charity that campaigns for persecuted Christians worldwide, ranks the Maldives 6th in its list of countries where the persecution of Christians is worst!

All citizens must be Muslims in this archipelago. Legislation forbids the practice of any religion except Islam; churches are forbidden; and the import of Christian literature is prohibited. New regulations governing religious practice were unveiled by the government in 2010, and stricter policies were also imposed on tourists after some were caught bringing in Bibles. The few indigenous believers are isolated from one other and are monitored both by the authorities and the locals.

In 2010 a teacher from India was forced to flee the Maldives after angry parents tried to attack her. They accused her of attempting to spread Christianity because she had drawn a cross on the blackboard to teach the children the directions of the compass!

The Maldives, which is at the forefront of a campaign to get the international community to act on a looming global warming crisis, has a more immediate problem on hand. A rising tide of religious extremism is driving this tropical paradise of a low-lying string of islands down the road to a new conservatism.

What is more, the spread of militant Islam in the country and the appeal of a radical strain of Islam are drawing Maldivian youth into global jihadi groups.

"Hundreds of Maldivians" have been recruited by the Taliban and are fighting in Pakistan, Maldivian President Mohammed Nasheed told the CNN-IBN news channel during his recent visit to India.

...

A puritanical version of Islam has taken root. Signs of conservatism are more evident on the streets of the capital, Male, today than they were even a few years ago. The number of burqa-clad women has been increasing steadily as has that of bearded men.

Forum 18 reports that even migrant workers are denied religious freedom:

Just as Maldivian citizens do not have the right to religious freedom – Sunni Islam in the state-approved form is the only permitted faith – migrant workers too are denied this right. The Maldives prevents the import of non-Muslim books and other religious items, for example by searching foreigners' luggage for "un-Islamic" materials. Migrant workers are banned from practising non-Muslim faiths even privately, while the lack of privacy in which many live makes it almost impossible to worship "unnoticed by locals", as one migrant worker put it to Forum 18 News Service. Some 80,000 migrant workers – mostly Muslims, Buddhists, Christians and Hindus from South Asia – make up about a quarter of the country's population, but are mostly in low-status jobs and find it difficult to challenge human rights violations. The government has not acted on United Nations recommendations to grant migrant workers religious freedom.

SNP Giving Foreign Aid to Islam-Dominated Country Where Other Religions Are Prohibited By Law

Reading through the SNP's 2011 manifesto, I was struck by one section which discussed the SNP's grant of foreign aid to "developing nations". Special support seems to be lavished on the Maldives. Their manifesto says this:

And we will increase our efforts to support developing nations
as they respond to the challenges of climate change. We have
heard the calls from many for Scotland to create a Climate
Adaptation Fund. Given the pressures on the Scottish
Government’s budget we will work with partners in business,
charitable foundations and non-governmental organisations so
we can co-ordinate efforts to build a Scotland-wide climate
adaptation fund. And as part of our commitment to climate
mitigation we will take forward initiatives to share Scottish
knowledge, skills and expertise.

We have recently announced funding for an innovative scheme,
in partnership with the University of Strathclyde, to deliver
community-owned and maintained solar panels to provide
access to renewable energy in rural Malawi. This is delivering
skills, revenue and health improvements in the communities
involved, and the next stage is looking at further requirements
for trials ahead of a potential scaling up of the project. This is
exactly the sort of action we believe is needed to deliver local
energy solutions as part of our contribution to global action on
climate change.

We will support the Maldives to develop renewable marine
energy and go carbon neutral by 2020, and we will take
forward our recently-signed agreement with the InterAmerican
Development Bank (IDB) to promote Scottish expertise in the
development of clean energy technology and
projects in Latin America and the Caribbean. And, we will
further develop Scotland-Malawi links, with a particular focus
on food production and food science in the face of climate
change. The Moredun Institute will work with Malawi to take
forward this important work.

Not knowing much about the Maldives, I looked it up on Wikipedia. Surprise, surprise: it turns out to be an Islam-dominated country where strict sharia is in force.

Islam is the only official religion of The Maldives. The open practice of all other religions is forbidden and such actions are liable to prosecution under the law of the country. A small but growing number of Maldivians do question their faith, using the internet as a means of communication but rarely in a public way. According to the revised constitution, in article two, it says that the republic "is based on the principles of Islam." Article nine says that "a non-Muslim may not become a citizen of the Maldives"; number ten says that "no law contrary to any principle of Islam can be applied in the Maldives." Article nineteen states that "citizens are free to participate in or carry out any activity that is not expressly prohibited by sharia or by the law."

The requirement to adhere to a particular religion and prohibition on public worship in other religions is contrary to Article 18 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and Article 18 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights to which the Maldives has recently become party and was thus addressed in the Maldives' reservation in adhering to the Covenant claiming that "The application of the principles set out in Article 18 of the Covenant shall be without prejudice to the Constitution of the Republic of the Maldives."

The Maldives is one of the countries which tops the government restrictions index on religious freedom.

So the SNP is wasting taxpayers' money supporting one of the most rigid Islamic regimes on earth! Cardinal Keith O'Brien recently called for foreign aid to made contingent on respect for religious pluralism. But this is clearly not a priority for the SNP.