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Article

3 Nov 2013

Author:
Severin Carrell, Guardian (UK)

Maldives police buy weapons shipment from UK-owned firm

Human rights campaigners are warning of further political repression in the Maldives after a British-owned firm sold a large shipment of teargas, stun grenades and rubber bullets to its police force. The shipment...was sold by a foreign subsidiary of Survitec Group...three weeks before Maldives police provoked international condemnation by preventing voting in a rerun of the presidential elections...The UK government...[said] it would have blocked the entire shipment if it had come from the UK, since it risked fuelling further political instability and internal repression in the Maldives, where the police are notorious for suppressing opposition parties...The ministry admitted that Survitec did not require a UK export licence because the shipment was sold by its Singapore-based and -registered subsidiary, WH Brennan...Survitec Group...said it had voluntarily suspended all its dealings with the Maldives...The company insisted that it was entirely legal for WH Brennan to supply Madlives police with the equipment because there was no arms embargo in force against the Maldives, but it would now heed the Foreign Office complaints about the political instability there...[refers to Condor Industries]