GENEVA, (Reuters) – Mauritania and Maldives, which both permit citizens who renounce Islam to be sentenced to death, were on Monday elected as vice-presidents of the United Nations Human Rights Council in 2013.
Poland was chosen to chair the council next year with Ecuador and Switzerland named as the other vice-presidents of 47 member body. Mauritania and Maldives were elected as representatives of their regional council groupings. Earlier yesterday, the rights records of Mauritania and Maldives, where an elected president and former political prisoner was ousted early this year in what he says was a hard-line coup, came under fire from a global free-thought body.
In a report detailing persecution and discrimination faced by atheists and humanists around the world, International Humanist and Ethical Union (IHEU), said both impose Islam as the sole religion of the state.
Mauritania, the report said, outlaws apostasy, or the renunciation of the official religion for another or for a philosophy that does not recognise the existence of a deity.
Anyone found guilty of the offence is given the opportunity to repent within three days, according to the report. If this is not done, the offender is sentenced to death and his property is confiscated by the state.
