[Congressional Bills 114th Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
[S. 2231 Introduced in Senate (IS)]

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114th CONGRESS
  1st Session
                                S. 2231

 To express the sense of Congress that the Government of the Maldives 
should immediately release former President Mohamed Nasheed from prison 
 and release all other political prisoners in the country, as well as 
 guarantee due process for and respect the human rights of all of the 
                        people of the Maldives.


_______________________________________________________________________


                   IN THE SENATE OF THE UNITED STATES

                            November 3, 2015

 Mr. Leahy (for himself, Mr. Durbin, Mr. Murphy, Mr. McCain, Mr. Reed, 
 Mr. Whitehouse, Mr. Blumenthal, Mr. Peters, Mr. Rubio, Mr. Menendez, 
 Mr. Cardin, Mr. Coons, Mr. Markey, and Mrs. Feinstein) introduced the 
 following bill; which was read twice and referred to the Committee on 
                           Foreign Relations

_______________________________________________________________________

                                 A BILL


 
 To express the sense of Congress that the Government of the Maldives 
should immediately release former President Mohamed Nasheed from prison 
 and release all other political prisoners in the country, as well as 
 guarantee due process for and respect the human rights of all of the 
                        people of the Maldives.

    Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the 
United States of America in Congress assembled,

SECTION 1. SENSE OF CONGRESS ON POLITICALLY MOTIVATED DETENTIONS AND 
              HUMAN RIGHTS ABUSES IN THE MALDIVES.

    (a) Findings.--Congress makes the following findings:
            (1) The Maldives is strategically important due to its 
        location, which straddles major trade routes in the Indian 
        Ocean.
            (2) Increasing human rights violations in the Maldives fuel 
        instability and pose a threat to regional security.
            (3) Since January 2015, President Abdulla Yameen of the 
        Maldives has increasingly cracked down on dissent within his 
        own party and the political opposition, presided over the 
        erosion of judicial impartiality, and put increasing pressure 
        on civil society.
            (4) The arrest of former President Mohamed Nasheed in March 
        2015 was widely condemned as politically motivated, and his 
        conviction and sentence of 13 years in prison has been 
        condemned by Amnesty International as a ``travesty of 
        justice''.
            (5) In his speech in Sri Lanka on May 2, 2015, Secretary of 
        State John Kerry stated, ``[W]e've seen even now how 
        regrettably there are troubling signs that democracy is under 
        threat in the Maldives where the former President Nasheed has 
        been imprisoned without due process. And that is an injustice 
        that must be addressed soon.''
            (6) On September 14, 2015, in his opening statement at the 
        30th session of the United Nations Human Rights Council, United 
        Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra'ad said, 
        ``In the Maldives, the rule of law continues to be manipulated 
        for political ends.'' He also stated, in reference to former 
        President Mohamed Nasheed's detention, ``Given the deeply 
        tainted nature of this case, I urge the Government to release 
        him, and to review several hundred pending criminal cases 
        against opposition supporters in relation to protests in recent 
        months.''
    (b) Sense of Congress.--It is the sense of Congress that the 
Government of the Maldives should immediately release former President 
Nasheed from prison and release all other political prisoners in the 
country, as well as guarantee due process for and respect the human 
rights of all of the people of the Maldives.
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