UN urged to condemn guideline for human rights watchdog
28 Jun 2015, 4:43 PM
Ismail Humaam Hamid
A New Delhi-based human rights NGO has called upon the UN human rights council to condemn a Maldives Supreme Court judgment barring the human rights watchdog from communicating with foreign organisations without government oversight.
In a letter to the council’s president Joachim Rücker, the Asian Center for Human Rights (ACHR) urged the UN to “take measures to rescind” the apex court’s judgment and to ensure accountability by “bringing the perpetrators, i.e. judges of the Supreme Court who initiated the suo moto proceedings against the Human Rights Commission of Maldives (HRCM) to, justice.”
The court’s ruling on June 16 found a human rights assessment submitted by the watchdog to the UN unlawful, and imposed an 11-point guideline prescribing how the HRCM should operate within the law.
The ACHR warned that the “act of reprisal” against the HRCM for “cooperating with the Universal Periodic Review (UPR) is unheard of and will set dangerous precedent across the world” if the UN human rights council fails to condemn it.
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