Maldives Dissent

Nasheed administration to continue flogging women

2011-11-26T22:05:00.000-08:00

The administration of Maldives president Mohamed Nasheed has unequivocally stated support for the institutional violence against women.

Foreign minister Ahmed Naseem told Haveeru News that flogging was a basic Islamic principle on which the current administration would not allow a debate.

"What's there to debate about?" he asked, stating: "No one can argue with God."

Despite Nasheed's administrations intention to stifle debate on flogging, the religious right has so far failed to explain to why Maldivians should preserve the practice. While flogging is prescribed in the Quran the way it is carried out in the Maldives would contradict its basis in verse 24.2:

"The fornicatress and the fornicator, flog each of them with a hundred stripes. Let not pity withhold you in their case, in a punishment prescribed by Allah."

Flogging, as practiced in the Maldives, is overwhelmingly carried out against women. In 2006, for instance, out of 174 people sentenced to flogging, 146 were women, 19 of who were under 18 years of age. The Maldives judiciary has since deleted this telling statistic from its website. Maldivian implementation of flogging not only violates UN conventions it has signed but also its Quranic basis.

While Nasheed's administration is keen to preserve a cruel, inhumane, and degrading punishment carried out overwhelming on women, none of his ministers is calling for hand amputation for convicted thieves, which is also part of some Islamic jurisprudence. The only difference is that theft in the Maldives, as elsewhere in the world, is committed mainly by men.

The Islamic justification for flogging in the Maldives offered by Nasheed's administration, therefore, is baseless. And, by attempting to stifle debate on the practice and vowing to continue to act on the advice of proven misogynists---Bari has several times stated on national TV that a woman's role is at home and subservient to men---Nasheed's administration is only revealing to the world that it has no interest in human rights, gender or honouring UN conventions.

India should slap a travel ban on intolerant Maldivians

2011-11-25T06:46:00.000-08:00

India should draw a list of Maldivian organisations and individuals voicing intolerance towards SAARC monuments and slap a travel ban on them.

For now they would include the Islamic Minister, members of the Adhalath Party, Jamiyathul Salaf, and Gayoom and the members of his Progressive Party. The elections commission should be able to make public the members of Adhalath and the Progressive Party.

It would also be easy to identify many of these people as they are spouting intolerance in public, all that is needed is a rudimentary research into the press and the media since the SAARC summit.

Other SAARC countries and, indeed, all decent, progressive nations should also draw a list of bigoted Maldivians and ban them from entering.

This might be an effective (and only) way of sending the message across to bigots in the Maldives that if they want to travel to other countries they should learn to be tolerant of other cultures first.

Gadhdhoo council subjects three women to physical examination

2011-06-23T06:43:00.000-07:00

Haveeru is reporting that three Gadhdhoo women were subjected to pregnancy tests and physical examinations to verify whether they had given birth recently, after suspicion that the recent newborn found in a garage in Thinadhoo might have belonged to one of them.

However, similar tests are not carried out on men in the Maldives, despite a fair number of pregnancies out of wedlock and, in some cases, women naming the men they had had sex with. A simple DNA test could prove paternity and, in turn, ensure men contributed their share for the upbringing of children they father.

It remains to be seen if the human rights commission of the Maldives makes a statement against this gross violation of the rights of women on Gadhdhoo.

Muttalib afraid domestic violence law may prevent men marrying two women

2010-10-12T02:31:00.000-07:00

MP for Fares Mathoda Ibrahim Muttalib yesterday fought a valiant but seemingly lone battle against DRP's domestic violence bill. Here is a selection of choice bits from his speech:

When we talk of violence against women, we should also talk of women's wickedness.
Such laws create discord and degeneration of society.
Today the law prevents parents from disciplining their children and teachers from taking good measures to discipline children.
We should be afraid of laws like these for they will prevent men from marrying two wives, a right granted to them by Islam.
Women should be at the servitude of their husbands, fulfill his needs, bring up their children and serve their needs.

"Nazim repents and reverts to Islam" say Haveeru

2010-06-01T01:26:00.000-07:00

Haveeru has just reported that Mohamed Nazim repented and reverted to Islam in front of the media in a ceremony at the Islamic Centre.

It is not known at this stage whether Nazim was subjected to any coercion or if it was his wish and not the government's decision to turn this extremely private act into a media event.

The fundamental issue of human rights violation by the state remains and Maldives Dissent calls for a full, external, and independent inquiry not only into the chain of events but also why the human rights commission remained silent.

Meanwhile religious hardline contributers to the blog Addu Community have launched a witch-hunt by cut-pasting comments from Facebook profiles that it says are anti-Islam.

First prisoner of conscience in Nasheed's Maldives

2010-05-30T00:20:00.000-07:00

Mohamed Nazim, a man who posed a question to Wahhabi televengalist Zakir Naik has become the country's first prisoner of conscience since president since Nasheed took office in 2008.

Nazim asked Naik the verdict in Islam for individuals who were still struggling to decide on faith in a country such as the Maldives, where most people practise religion not by choice but because they inherited it from their parents.

Naik's jumbled response that the Maldives government should decide the plight of such people suggests that he hadn't properly researched the country to which he had come to lecture. Clearly unused to intelligent debate, Naik then went on the insult Nazim's knowledge of Islam and education.

"Don't try to be too smart," he told Nazim. "I have to educate you from scratch."

Following the exchange, a section of Naik's auidence hounded Nazim and allegedly attacked him before police took him away.

The latest news is that police have now obtained a court order to extend Nazim's detention. But Maldivian judges have not extended similar cooperation to police for people accused of murder, child abuse and rape.

Mohamed Nazim did say he was not a believer of Islam, but it could be argued that he was speaking hyphothetically to elicit an answer from Zakir Naik. Only Nazim himself can verify his religous stance.

Nazim has effectively become the country's first prisoner of conscience since Mohamed Nasheed, a self-professed champion of free speech and democracy, took office.

While Article 9 (b) of the Maldives constitution states a citizen of Maldives may not be deprived of citizenship, 9 (d) states that a non-Muslim may not become a citizen of the Maldives. And, Article 10 states that state religion is Islam and that no law contrary to any tenet of Islam shall be enacted in the Maldives.

However, the Quran, the most important tenet of Islam, makes it clear that religion cannot be forced on people.

According to verse 2:256:

"Let there be no compulsion in religion. Truth stands out from error. Whoever rejects evil and believes in Allah hath grasped the most trustworthy handhold, that never breaks. And Allah heareth and knoweth all."

The Maldives is also a signatory of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which protects the freedom of thought, conscience, and religious belief.

But at the time of uploading this post, Anni's government and the Maldives human rights commission have not publicly stated their position on the incident.

To my knowledge none of Nazim's alleged attackers have been arrested for taking the law into their hands, even though they must have been caught on TV.

Meanwhile, although Naik himself is reported to have said things which might be contrary to Maldivian law, such as promoting under-aged marriage, no one has called for the arrest of the preacher yet.

Dhiffushi: the next Himendhoo?

2010-04-23T00:35:00.000-07:00

A man claiming to have been trained by Taliban militants in Pakistan is recruiting in Dhiffushi, Kaafu Atoll, Maldives Dissent has learnt.

Known as Zubba, and originally from Male, the man, who is in his 30s, recently rented a room on the island and moved in with his wife and two children.

Zubba is said to have befriended a handful of disenfranchised youth, mostly heroin addicts, and has already twice held Friday prayer congregations in his rented accommodation.

When islanders discovered this they called for him to be expelled from the island, Zubba’s supporters have rallied around him in support. Zubba, meanwhile, has threatened serious consequences if the islanders interfered with his activities.

According to an islander, Zubba at present is tailoring leaflets to convert the whole of Dhiffushi. He does not go to work and it is not known from where he gets funds to support his stay on the island.

Although Zubba has been Wahhabi for a long time, he shaved off his beard and turned non-Wahhabi for a short while after the Sultan Park bombing.

Dhiffushi, an impoverished island two hours from Male has a population of just over 700. Many of its inhabitants turned Wahhabi in the aftermath of the 2004 tsunami. An islander reported that the boatyard on the island constantly plays Radio Atoll, which spreads misogyny and intolerance in the name of religion, over loudspeakers.

The government’s Islamic ministry, headed by the Adhalath Party, has so far failed to address the growth of extremism in the country. Instead, its heads appear to be using the resources at its disposal to spread its own intolerant misogynistic and anti-democratic propaganda.

Maldives government to host pro-Taliban preacher

2010-04-15T22:23:00.000-07:00

The Maldives government is sponsoring an even that will bring public speaker Zakir Naik to preach Islam in the capital Male, and is planning to broadcast it live on TV and radio.

Naik, a medical doctor by profession, hails from Maharashtra, India, and is the founder of the Islamic Research Foundation which owns and broadcasts Peace TV.

Although Naik participates in inter-faith dialogue and peace conferences, he is known for his anti-western rants and has been criticized for spreading hatred and intolerance.

Like members of our own Adhalath Party, which runs the Maldives Islamic ministry, Naik supports the buruga and claims western dresses make women more susceptible to rape. This shifts the blame of violence against against women from the perpetrator to the victim, a view championed by the religious right in the Maldives.

Naik doesn’t consider the Taliban a terrorist organization and denies it suppressed women.

In fact the Taliban made life for women in Afghanistan “hellish” by any measurement: they banned women from going to school, university or other educational institution; deprived them of medical care; whipped, beat and verbally abused women who were not clothed according to Taliban rules; and banned women from sports and, even, laughing aloud.

Some critics claim Naik is funded by the Wahhabi sect, which is also widely believed to be financing the spread of religious fundamentalism in the Maldives, and have called on an inquiry into his finances.

Others have pointed out Naik is not a scholar and, therefore, is issuing Islamic teachings without knowledge or authority.

The government can only hope to strengthen Wahhabi and regressive ideology in the Maldives by bringing Naik here.

Religious ‘scholars’ who subscribe to Wahhabi teachings already have a free reign to spread hatred, intolerance, and misogyny unchallenged in the Maldives.

Last year, Wahhabi scholar Bilal Philips told thousands of Maldivians that it was permissible in Islam to marry off young girls as soon as they experience menarche, even if they are only nine years old.

National broadcasters TVM, which gave free airtime to Bilal Philips’s pro-child abuse and misogynistic speech has, since, sold airtime to Adhalath’s Ilyas Hussein to sexualize women and the Quran, and to ‘Naraka’ Fareed to spread hatred against women.

TVM is yet to provide concerned people with a copy of its broadcast standards or to offer a satisfactory explanation of their role in the spread of misogyny and child-abuse propaganda in the name of Islam.

Zealots have been spreading hatred and intolerance with renewed vigour ever since President Mohamed Nasheed gave the Adhalath Party a ministry.

As blogger naimbe pointed out, the Islamic ministry was this year given a budget of more than 16 million US dollars.

Thats a lot of money to spread and facilitate the spread of regressive ideology.

Haitians deserved earthquake, says Maldives government

2010-03-23T23:16:00.000-07:00

The Maldives Ministry of Islamic Affairs has said in its website that God sends things like earthquakes because of the actions of people.

Although there are Muslims living in Haiti, the website says, they are "not good people", and we should regard the Haitian earthquake as a moral lesson.

The Islamic ministry statement appeared in its website's "Religious Q&A No. 314".

Blogger Moyameeha's post which drew my attention to this.

Ever since President Mohamed Nasheed came into power in 2008 and gave a ministry to the Wahhabi Adhaalath Party, a member of its coalition, intolerance, misogyny and pro-child abuse propaganda been spreading openly in the name of Islam, most of it by the Islamic ministry itself.

In an episode of their daily TV show Thedhu Magu (The Righteous Path), the Islamic minister Bari has categorically stated that Islam required girls to help their mothers in domestic chores so that they can be moulded to the role of mother in latter life.

"A woman's role," Bari said, "is that of mother."

President Nasheed's government is sponsoring the spread this regressive ideology. For the year 2010, it gave the Islamic ministry 211 million rufiyaa (16.5 million US dollars) which, as blogger naimbe' has pointed out, is fourteen times more than what the Maldives is spending on economic development.

Meanwhile, former president Maumoon Abdul Gayoom has condemned 'scholars' for misleading the public about Islam. On International Women's Day, Gayoom said Islam promoted gender equality and called on women to join DRP, which he said would not discriminate against them.

Who the hell is calling?

2010-03-21T13:33:00.001-07:00

Maldives Update

2010-03-15T07:21:00.000-07:00

TODAY:
A man working for Haveeru, the largest newspaper in the country, was stabbed by a group of people shortly as he left work. The incident happened after the paper reported violence at DhiTV, one of the two private TV stations in the country, earlier this afternoon. According to Haveeru, four men attacked senior officials of the station and made their way into its premises, where they issued violent warnings to staff to stop running the story about notorious gangster Nafiz Ibrahim (Chika). DhiTV had broadcast the news that Chika, who in 2008 was convicted of possessing a sword and jailed for 5 years, had been transferred to house-arrest.

YESTERDAY:
An anonymous right-wing religious blogger by the name of Jibue issued death threats against the Maldives first lady Laila Ali, blogger Hilath Rasheed, and special envoy to the president and editor of the online newspaper Dhivehi Observer Ahmed Moosa (Sappe). Jibue warned that blood would be spilled if the authorities failed take action against the alleged mockery of Islam by the latter two.

LAST WEEK:
Four men broke into the house of the manager of Habib Bank Mohamed Anjul Jameel and stabbed and robbed him. It appeared that the men knew Jameel, who had worked for six years in the Maldives, was leaving the country in a matter of days.

EARLIER THIS MONTH:
A criminal court judge aquitted Adam Naseer, alleged by the state to be one of the country's top six drug lords, citing a lack of evidence. Naseer had been been arrested after being monitored by police for months, which was followed by a year-long investigation. Presidential spokesperson Mohamed Zuhair told Minivannews.com that there were "intrinsic problems" with the judiciary, which he claimed was the only part of the state that did not go through reform.

THIS YEAR:
After suffering years of abuse, 30-year-old Mariyam Shereen was was murdered and buried under a pile of sandbags in a construction site in Male, allegedly by her own partner.

A group of men gang-raped a woman in Foah Mulah, while restraining her husband. The alleged-rapists are also said to have thrown gravel into the woman's vagina which caused severe septicemia.

A group of men reportedly broke into a house, tied electrical wires to the feet of a 35-year-old women, and electrocuted her, burning the toes of her left foot.

MALDIVES TODAY
The Maldives in 2010 isn't a very pleasant place to live, especially for women, writers, and those working in the media. Street gangs are thriving, corruption is rife, and the religious right has bullied their way into every aspect of life.

Nobody I know has any confidence that the government, the police or the judiciary is working in their best interest.

I never thought that the Maldives could be worse off than it was during Maumoon Abdul Gayoom's dictatorship.

But it is beginning to look like I was wrong.

A SIGN OF THINGS TO COME?
A woman recently got into a taxi and had to listen to the driver tell someone on the phone that those who didn't wear the buruga should have acid thrown in their face. The woman was one of the few that didn't wear one.

Death threat against a writer in Nasheed's Maldives

2010-03-11T08:52:00.000-08:00

President Mohamed Nasheed of the Maldives likes to present himself as a champion of the freedom of expression and the freedom to dissent. A former dissenter and journalist himself, Nasheed has made well-publicised calls for the release of detained Burmese opposition leader Aung San Su Kyi and offered her refuge in the Maldives. But does Nasheed's compassion extend to dissenters in his own country? We may soon find out.

Earlier today, an anonymous writer calling himself/herself Jihad published an article on the online Dhivehi language Muraasil, calling for the death of blogger Hilath Rasheed, known for his pieces against the religious right. The article appeared shortly after Rasheed published an anonymous letter on his blog critical of 'Sheikh' Fareed's forthcoming lecture "Who is Hell calling for?".

Jihad's article, now removed from Muraasil, repeatedly called for "infidel" Hilath's murder:

"Let's kill off this fellow. Let's behead him."

Jihad also remonstrates the government for not shutting down Rasheed's "irreligious" blog or taken action against him.

The website's founder Nasrulla Adam told Minivan News that only 'regular and approved' contributors could post content on the website without moderation, meaning they may be able to help the police trace Jihad's identity.

If President Nasheed really is a champion of the free press he will take this opportunity to condemn the death threat against Hilath Rasheed, and reassure writers and dissenters that his government will do everything it can to protect them.

But Nasheed's silence following attacks on child rights and women's rights by religious conservatives isn't encouraging.

Even if Aung San Su Kyi is released, she shouldn't hop on a plane to the Maldives just yet.

International Women's Day: Murder, rape, and torture of Maldivian women

2010-03-07T23:47:00.000-08:00

It’s the International Women’s Day, but Maldivian women have nothing to celebrate. A year into Mohamed Nasheed’s presidency and the murder, rape and horrific torture of women is commonplace, with his government showing impunity, if not sanctioning, the spread of misogyny by the religious right.

On new year’s eve, the body of 30-year-old Mariyam Shereen was discovered under a pile of sandbags in a construction site, allegedly murdered by her own partner. Shereen’s death came after a long history of abuse by her boyfriend, according to her family and friends.

In January, this year, a group of men allegedly gang-raped a woman in Foah Mulaku, while restraining her husband. Maldives Dissent has learnt that the alleged rapists threw gravel into the women’s vagina, which caused severe septicaemia. Not surprisingly, the woman is yet to recover physically or psychologically from her ordeal.

In February, a group of men in Laamu Atoll allegedly broke into a house, tied electrical wires to the feet of a 35-year-old woman, and connected them to the mains. According to the hospital, the electrical shock severely burnt the toes of her left foot.

Violence against women isn’t new to the Maldives, but is now revealing an unmistakably misogynistic trend. This should not come as a surprise, however. Ever since the new government came into power the fastest propaganda being spread in this country is by the religious right, much of it the hatred of women.

Shortly after President’s Nasheed took office, his Islamic ministry granted a preaching permit to Sheikh Fareed, who told a congregation of more than a thousand men in a mosque that more women than men would go to hell since women sin more. But crime figures the world over indicate that the overwhelming majority of crimes are committed by men.

The Adhalath Party, which controls the Islamic ministry, last month held an event entitled “Those Who Desire Paradise’, in which Sheikh Ilyas Hussein gave vent to what appears to be male sexual fantasies in explicit detail. He described at length the many ‘houris’, or pure and beautiful maidens, that await devout men in heaven and told women that if they went to heaven they would be ‘recreated’ to perpetually be 33 years old and have with pointed breasts. Unlike men, who only have to be devout Muslims to go to heaven, women have to have been faithful to their husbands in order to attain paradise.

This may be the most serious abuse of the Quran by the Adhalath to date. In fact, Quranic descriptions of paradise use parables and the verses themselves explicitly state that parables are being used. By failing to tell his audience of this fact, Sheikh Ilyas is clearly misleading them.

But the underlying theme of the speech is the sexualisation of women and the inequality of the sexes. Yet TV Maldives saw it fit to broadcast the speech live, well before the watershed of 10.30 pm.

Sustained spread of misogyny in the Maldives has also been orchestrated by former pop-star turned Wahhabi Ali Rameez’s Jamiyathul Salaf. Ever since Rameez and his associates released a post-tsunami CD blaming the natural disaster on women, Salaf has been churning out misogyny in the name of Islam, by using its unlimited access to the private radio station Radio Atoll, and business tycoon Gasim Ibrahim’s Villa TV. It appears that broadcast standards don't apply to 'religious' content. Salaf works closely with the Islamic ministry and its CDs are now played in mosques across the country.

Last August, Salaf brought in Wahhabi preacher Bilal Philips to tell thousands of Maldivians on live TV that it was alright to marry off girls as soon as they reached puberty, even if they're only nine years old. In a country that has one of the highest child sexual abuse rates in the world, paedophiles couldn’t have hoped for a clearer endorsement of their ideology.

The Maldives state is not only showing impunity towards the spread of misogyny and violence against women children it is, in fact, perpetrating it. According to statistics from the Maldives judiciary, 174 people were convicted of zina or fornication in 2006, and sentenced to public flogging. An overwhelming majority of those sentenced, 146, were women, 19 of who were under 18 years of age. In the same year, seven women, including three minors, were convicted of giving birth out of wedlock. There is no question that institutionalized violence against women and children is condoned and carried out in the Maldives.

When Minivan News broke the story about the shocking flogging statistics, the religious right held a protest against the online newspaper and called for the deportation of its editor Mariyam Omidi. The judiciary has since removed the statistics from its website.

On this International Women’s Day, the government will give the obligatory speech via radio and TV, but is unlikely to delve too deeply into any of the real issues facing Maldivian women today. We can also expect little or no meaningful statement or commitment from the human rights commission or the UN system.

For now, women of the Maldives have nothing to look forward to but a continuation of ideological, physical and sexual assault on them.

Minivan no more

2010-01-23T00:08:00.000-08:00

A group calling itself the Maldives Whale Shark Research Programme MWSRP, registered as a UK charity, has had its research permit temporarily suspended by the Maldives government. This follows clashes with local divers and complaints by the Divers Association of Maldives DAM to the authorities about the research methods used and the possible impact on marine life. The conflict is fast developing into an all out propaganda war, with one of the country's top news source taking sides.

In this Minivan News article, the writer JJ Robinson dedicates 721 words out of a total of 1401 words to MWSRP’s own version of the events, painting a picture of uncivilized, uneducated Maldivian divers from dive safari liveaboards engaged in guerrilla tactics to sabotage all-important research being done by enlightened Westerners.

As if that were not enough, Robinson gives an additional 173 words to an official of the Diva Island Resort and Spa to describe crew of liveaboards as bottom-baring, reckless louts, out to cause harm to other people’s guests. Robinson does not bother to interview a single liveboard crew or diver against whom his article levies serious allegations. Indeed, only 201 words are given to a representative of the Divers Association of Maldives, currently raising concern with the government about the methods used by the MWSRP, which may be causing of the dwindling number of whale sharks in the protected area.

JJ Robinson’s article is a glaring example of the violation of the code of impartiality, a fundamental ethic of good journalism, and it seriously undermines the pioneering work done by Minivan News to raise reporting standards in the Maldives.

Minivan means independent in Maldivian a, claim Minivan News can no longer make.

Husnu Sood's flawed special needs bill

2010-01-06T20:22:00.000-08:00

President Nasheed did the right thing by heeding the concerns of disability NGOs and sending the controversial special needs bill back to parliament without ratifying it. And, although his attorney general Husnu Sood is said to support the move, Anni must now question him on why his office produced such legislature in the first place.

The bill addresses people with disability as "people with special needs", ignores the obligations of the state under the UN convention on the rights of persons with disabilities signed by the Maldives in 2008, and essentially tries to wash its hand off PWDs with a monthly handout.

Maldives Dissent has learned that Husnu Sood paid students at the law school do draft the bill, an indication of the importance he gives to legislature of this nature. Sood's failure to background research the subject of disability, read international conventions signed by the Maldives, and consult stake-holders has resulted in wasting valuable time and resources and embarrassing the government.

MPs are no better. By passing the bill they've shown their own ignorance on the subject and their laziness to research the issue before going to parliament. And, as it has now emerged, their failure to listen to the concerns of people involved in disability prior to the voting, seriously raises questions about whether they are acting in the best interests of the people.

Vilufushi MP Riyaz Rasheed, who proposed the handout, displayed astonishing arrogance when he told TVM that the bill would remain unchanged and that the civil society couldn't do anything about it.

But it is heartening that Anni has chosen to listen to the civil society in this instance.

He must now have a chat with Husnu Sood to ensure that nonsense like this doesn't come out of his office again.

It's ok to keep unclothed slave women, say Adhalath

2009-12-27T21:53:00.000-08:00

In their weekly TV Show Thedhu Magu (The Right Path), aired after 6pm on TVM yesterday, Adhalath's Abdul Majeed Bari and Mohamed Shaheem Ali Saeed, respectively minister and state minister of Islamic affairs, may inadvertently have admitted their support for the "jaria", or sex-slaves tradition.

Speaking of women's clothing, a topic so popular among Adhalath sheikhs that people have wondered if they are closet cross-dressers, Bari said Islam made it compulsory for women to "cover their nudity" upon reaching puberty. Moderator Saeed then interrupted to qualify Bari's reference to women as "free women", meaning those that are not free can remain unclothed.

This extraordinary exchange to me is highly revealing of the attitudes of these two men. At best it suggests impunity to the custom of keeping sex-slaves. At worst, it's an attempt to indirectly normalise and, indeed, promote the tradition. It seems to me that for Bari and Shaheem not only is it ok for men to enslave women, but they can also keep postpubescent girls naked around the house.

Continuing with the theme of women's clothing, Bari equated "covering nudity" with veiling, but failed to mention that the issue was highly contested by scholars. He then appeared to call for the mainstreaming of girls uniforms worn in the madrassas Mauhadh and Arabiyya.

Bari also said Islam required girls to be brought up to help their mothers in domestic chores, to mould them to the role of the mother in latter life. A women's role, he stressed, was that of a mother.

TVM, which infamously gave free airtime to Salafi preacher Bilal Philips to voice pro-child abuse sentiments, is giving Adhalath a free reign to spread Wahhabism and misogynist propaganda. In addition, the sheikhs have also taken over a host of other TV and radio channels. Adhalath preachers also control the Friday sermon, the largest congregation of Maldivian males. Meanwhile, their partners in crime Jamiyathul Salaf produces countless CDs to be played in taxis and in mosques across the country.

In November, parliamenterians from across the parties joined forces and vowed to fight violence against women. But no MP is challenging the religious right's continuation of its misogynistic agenda, probably the single-most important factor leading to the hatred, discrimination, and violence of women. With such powerful fueling, it's not surprising that the Maldives has some of the highest rates of violence against women in the world. And, there's no sign of things getting any better.

The vast majority of Maldivians voted President Nasheed in to get rid of dictator Gayoom and to usher in a new era of democracy. But by giving Adhalath a ministry of its own to monopolise Islam and to spread misogynist Wahhabi propaganda at will, Anni is seriously compromising the democratic aspirations of his core support base.

The only thing that has remained consistent in Anni's first year as Maldives president is the sustained assault on democracy, free media, and human rights by Bari and Shaheem, along with their proxies Jamiyathul Salaf (or is it the other way around?)

Note: Please call TVM on 3000428 and ask for a recording of yesterday's Thedhu Magu, analyse it carefully, and confront them if you are concerned. State media is answerable to the public. To raise the issue, also call:

Ministry of Health and Family's Gender Department: 3323687

Ministry of Islamic Affairs: 3323623

War on democracy

2009-12-25T07:04:00.000-08:00

The Religious Unity Act has been hijacked by the very people against whom it was created. According to a news story published on minivannews.com last week, recommendations by the Wahhabi NGO Jamiyathul Salaf have been included by the Islamic ministry in the regulations being formulated for the Act.

It will come as a surprise for people to learn that former pop star Ali Rameez is now drafting legislature, but Wahhabism’s most famous convert and other colleagues appear to have been collaborating with the Islamic ministry, for some time, on these regulations.

In fact, the stated objective of formulating the regulations were to protect Maldivians from brutal practices in the name of Islam and combat religious divisions and antagonism. Jamiyathul Salaf has an unenviable history of openly supporting flogging, the marrying off of under-aged girls, and calling for harsh punishments for people who challenge what it says.

Now Salaf is recommending, among other things, for power to be given to a religious body (no doubt comprising of its supporters) to meddle with the national educational curriculum, crackdown on the print media, censor advertisements, and to take action against anyone they consider as defying Islam. If implemented, media and the freedom of expression will be even worse than they were during Gayoom’s dictatorship.

The Maldives Salafi movement rose to notoriety in the aftermath of the 2004 tsunami, when Ali Rameez and his buddies produced an audio CD blaming women for the natural disaster, specifically women who refused to wear the veil. The CD had dramatic sound effects, which recreated the sound of the waves, and a voiceover by TVM’s Mohamed Asif Mondhu to lend it authority, and is said to have converted hundreds of women to the buruga.

The organization has been trying to spread Wahhabism across the country, allegedly with funds received from Saudi charities. Wahhabism originated in Saudi Arabia two centuries ago and has, since, been the dominant faith there. It insists on a literal interpretation of the Koran and strict Wahhabis denounce anyone who doesn’t practice their form of Islam as enemies. Wahhabism has been criticized as misinterpreting and distorting Islam and leading to extremists like Osama bin Laden and the Taliban.

With ever increasing resources and power, Jamiyathul Salaf produced an anti-music video in which it even got a Human Rights Commission member to denounce music and singing as haraam or anti-Islamic, a highly contested claim in Islamic scholarship. More recently, Salaf has tried to stifle debate about the disproportionate sentencing of women and under-age girls to flogging by Maldivian courts, and labeled critics of this cruel and degrading practice as anti-Islamic.

But Salaf’s lowest moment came when they brought in Wahhabi preacher Bilal Phillips to spout misogyny on the Maldivian populace and to state on live television that it was permissible in Islam to marry off under-aged girls. Studies have repeatedly shown that the Maldives has some of the highest (if not the highest) child-abuse rates in South Asia and, possibly, the world. Maldivian paedophiles have long argued that menstruation and not age, physical or psychological development, is the indication of maturity in a women. Philips’s claim can only be read as an endorsement of the sexual abuse of under-aged girls.

The Islamic Ministry, composed almost entirely of Adhalath Party members has, up until now, been coy about its relationship with Salaf. But commentators haven’t failed to notice that Salaf has grown in strength ever since President Nasheed gave a ministry to Adhalath. It has been observed that when Anni was declared president, and portfolio bargaining was in full swing, Adhalath members were so excited about the powers they were going obtain that they even forgot to go to the mosque for prayers.

It is unclear what Attorney General Husnu Sood will make of the Adhalath-Salaf regulations, but online responses to the Minivan News shows great dismay.

It seems that most Maldivians, certainly those that have access to the internet, recongise Adhalath and Salaf for what they are and will not surrender their hard-earned fledgling democratic rights without a fight.

But Maldivian politicians usually take longer to respond to threats to democracy when they come from “religious” groups. By the time they do it may be too late.

Should Adhalath sheiks be put to death?

2009-10-20T02:47:00.000-07:00

Under Islamic Sharia, they could well be. More than one Adhalath sheikh has at one time or other accused Gayoom of not being Muslim. Under Sharia law, the punishment for apostasy is death. But a person who accuses another of apostasy and is unable to prove it must suffer the same punishment themselves. Leading Adhalath sheikhs Hussein Rasheed Ahmed and Abdul Majeed Bari failed to prove in court that Gayoom was not a Sunni Muslim. If the Maldives had enforced Sharia punishments, it is highly probable that these two would not be alive today to voice their laughable threats against Anni.

In their most recent rants, Adhalath sheikhs have been threatening to bring Anni down from power if he continued to argue for the abolishing of Hadd punishments, which the conservatives are interpreting as anti-Islamic. In the process, Adhalath may be overplaying their own role in the fall of Gayoom. In fact, Gayoom won in the first round despite Adhalath's open lobbying against him. On the other hand, the Adhalath-endorsed candidate Gasim, despite his unlimited powers and resources, only managed to get fourth place. When Gasim joined the MDP coalition Adhalath had no choice but to follow their master or fade into obscurity.

The truth is Adhalath never had enough support in the Maldives to field a presidential candidate of its own, which was made glaringly obvious in its failure to win any seat in the parliamentary elections. The only power it now has is the Islamic ministry, which the government must surely have realised is a big mistake.

Adhalath's string of failures include the banning of DJs, Airtell, dissenting websites, and their much mocked plans to start a TV station with Zakath money. In contrast, Adhalath has never raised its voice against child abuse or done anything to stop the spread of terrorism in the name of Islam by a growing number of Maldives.

But their biggest lie may be the unquestioning equation of Islamic Sharia Law with Islam. In fact the only unquestionable source in Islam is the Quran. Sharia law, while containing elements from the Quran weighs more towards Hadiths. For instance, there's no reference to stoning to death in the Quran.

The second most important source of Islamic Sharia is a proven liar. Abu Huraira, who narrated over 5000 Hadiths (Aisha, the prophet's wife narrated just over 2,000), was accused by the Prophet's companions of fabricating sayings just to gain status in society. Indeed, Omar Ibn Al-Khattab, the second guided Caliph, threatened to send Abu Huraira into exile if he did not stop lying about the Prophet.

But, as with the buruga, the religious conservatives, heavily influenced by Wahhabism and the generous funds they receive for spreading it in the Maldives, tend to forget this. Many progressive Islamic scholars only regard Hadith as useful to establish a historic context to Islam. As for Sharia law, emerging scholars have dismissed it as deeply flawed and archaic. But criticism of Sharia law amounts to just that, and cannot be said to be a rejection of Islam.

But Adhalath has always worked to mislead the public and use religion as a tool for their personal gains, just like Gayoom did in the 1970s and 1980s.

The irony is that if the Maldives implemented Islamic Sharia Law, Adhalath sheikhs, known for their blunders and buffoonery, are more likely to find themselves at the receiving end of its many cruel and inhumane punishments.

Death threats in the name of Islam

2009-09-15T12:56:00.000-07:00

A section of the religious right has singled out a blogger and for three days openly called for his death. A person calling himself Ali Manik published an article on the Maldivan language website www.musaasil.com, accusing blogger Hilath Rasheed of mocking Islam, which prompted several commentators to call for the latter's death.

Another blog www.kandukoss.blogspot.com earlier published a post with the title "Kill Whosoever Makes Fun of Islam", which also appeared to target Rasheed.

The online assault, launched under the guise of Islam, is a clear attempt to silence debate on religion by resorting to the threat of violence, but there has been no condemnation by the government, even though it tries to promote itself abroad as the providers of a safe haven for dissident writers. The Maldives human rights commission has predictably remained silent, as has the NGO which calls itself the Maldives Journalists Association.

But one blogger, Simon, called on muraasil.com to remove the hate comments and death threats, and this seems to have had an impact; the offending article and comments have been temporarily removed.

The incident recalls the 2007 death threats made against Aishath Aniya, the then secretary-general of the MDP, for writing an article against veiling. The government, the police, and the MDP didn't take any action in Aniya's defense back then.

The MDP government needs to send a strong message to religious bullies that death threats and calls to violence will not be tolerated under any circumstances.

President Nasheed has no business to attempt to woo Aung San Suu Kyi to the Maldives if he is unable to protect homegrown writers from clear incite to violence, hatred, and murder.

The human rights commission: tennis and foreign trips

2009-08-17T22:05:00.000-07:00

According to Human Rights Commission of Maldives insiders, the president Ahmed Saleem is in the habit of arriving leisurely for work, settling himself down comfortably in his office, and watching tennis on cable TV for most of the day. Vice-president Mohamed Zahid, meanwhile, never misses an opportunity to go on a foreign trip, even when it is to attend a specialist workshop or meeting more suitable for a reporting staff. A strict division is maintained between the "members" and "staff" of the HRCM, with the former reaping all the benefits like overseas travel and out-of-the-country expenditure.

Both were appointed to the posts by the previous government, due to their close links to Gayoom. Saleem, of course, was a recipient of one of the notorious presiden't office "loans". To date, the HRCM hasn't found a single human rights violation that would implicate the aging ex-dictator, even though the commission was involved in all the high-profile investigations of alleged prisoner abuse of the recent past. Saleem was aslo part of the commission set up by Gayoom to clear himself from the murder of Evan Naseem and others in Maafushi jail in 2003. If Gayoom's motive for getting these two into the HRCM was protect himself from the barrage of accusations, he clearly chose the right pair.

At the height of the recent Sula Siraz controversy, Saleem was overheard "confirming" to people that president Anni did, indeed, drink. The human rights chief knows only too well which party controls the votes needed to get himself re-appointed and Zahid, a member of the DRP, has always been a faithful defender of Gayoom.

Human rights experts who have worked with the pair have been flabbergasted by their sheer ignorance of international human rights laws and their unwillingness to learn.

It is not surprising, therefore, that the HRCM has not made a statement against the recent flogging of an 18-year-old girl in Male, or Wahhabi preacher Bilal Philips's endorsement of lowering the age of marriage for girls to the onset of puberty. These would violate at least four UN conventions signed by the Maldives: the child rights conventions; the convention on the elimination of discrimination against women; the civil and political rights convention; and the convention against torture. But Saleem and Zahid have been silent and no one has openly challenged their silence.

Under the leadership of the former human rights president Mujthaba, there was some hope that the Maldives would move towards an independent, efficient, and functioning human rights commission. But today, staff are frustrated with their new bosses and morale is at an all-time low. No one can get Saleem to sign anything when tennis is on, and many worthy initiatives by the staff themselves never see the light of the day.

The latest from the HRCM is that the president and vice president have been more active lately; apparently, their terms are about to expire and they are sweating it out in the bid to get re-appointed to continue to enjoy fat salaries, tennis, and foreign trips.

ERRATUM:

A human rights commission staff has pointed out to me that Saleem has an exemplary record of reporting to work on time. So I apologise for describing his arrival at work as "leisurely" in the first paragraph of the post.

Bilal Philips, friend of misogynists and child sexual abusers

2009-08-11T21:14:00.000-07:00

On 8 August, Wahhabi preacher Bilal Philips told thousands of Maldivians that it is ok to marry young girls once they attain puberty. Upon reaching puberty, he said, girls were capable of carrying children regardless of what age she was.

The medical profession should have a thing or two to say on that, but you can count on Maldivian doctors to remain silent. Bilal Philips's remarks are also a direct contradiction of Maldivian laws under which the general age of marriage is 18 years. However, young people of 16 and above can be married off under special circumstances, at the discretion of the judge.

The Maldives has one of the highest child sexual abuse rates in the world and the speech by Philips will be seen by many as an endorsement of the pro-child sexual abuse ideology. Many child sexual abuse sympathisers - and there are many in this country - have long tried to justify sex with minors by claiming that once a girl attains puberty she is no longer a child

What is unacceptable is that the Maldivian Human Rights Commission, which has an obligation under national and international laws to defend the rights of children, and UNICEF, didn't feel a need to make a statement in response to Philips's speech. Other silent onlookers include the child protection services at the police department and the health ministry, MP Kutti Nasheed, and former MP Ibra, who champion against child sexual abuse only when it suits them.

The state broadcaster TV Maldives gave free, live airtime to Bilal Philips while the Adhalat Party-led Islamic ministry endorsed the preacher's visit. There are those that claim that without the support of the Islamic ministry, the Wahhabi NGO Jamiyyathul Salaf would never have been able to bring Philips to the Maldives. Meanwhile, the Maldives Human Rights Ambassador Mohamed Latheef, who was also spotted at a recent pro-flogging rally, was scheduled to meet Philips, though it is not known in what capacity.

The education authorities were no better. The principal of CHSE not only provided the pro-child sexual abuse preacher access into her school, but made it compulsory for her students to attend his talk.

On Saturday night, Bilal Philips was unabashedly condescending to women. While it was "permissible" in Islam, he said, for women to become heads of states, he warned of the consequences. "It's a fact," he said, that rule by women ended in failure, pointing out that this was what the prophet Muhammad had warned us a long time ago.

Bilal Philips also warned Maldivians against "Quranites". Recent Islamic scholarship has challenged people like Bilal Philips for their departure from the Quran and dependence on Hadith to endorse regressive, misogynistic ideology. In response, Wahhabis have attacked liberal scholars of being "Quranites". Philips notably dismissed the progressive Islamic scholar Amina Wadud as a product of Jewish brainwashing.

The preacher will find many fans among misogynistic, pro-child abuse Maldivians, who try to justify their ideology under the guise of Islam.

But I'm not sure what they made of his declaration that cigarettes are haraam.

Cover-up of Independence Day pickup accident

2009-08-06T22:18:00.000-07:00

A re-telling of the Independence Day pickup accident in Gan, Laamu Atoll, by several sources to Maldives Dissent, is pointing to irresponsible actions by those in charge and a cover-up by the authorities. At least 22 students, aged 12-15, and two of their teachers sustained various levels of injury when a pickup truck, speeding on the dirt-track from Thundi to Mukurimagu, lost control, skidded and overturned.

Three students were flown to Male for treatment the same night, while five more students and two teachers were ferried to the capital on a high-speed boat by the Coastguard the following day. According to the police the driver of the pickup truck, who received minor injuries, was taken into police custody after being treated by the hospital in Gan. It emerged that the license of the driver had expired in 2007 and both the police and officials, who accompanied the injured to Male, appear to put the blame solely on him for the worst accident in Laamu recently.

But sources in Thundi, Gan, claim that the picture painted by the authorities is misleading. The pickup truck was, in fact, part of an entourage including two motorcycles, a bus, and another pickup. The pickup that overturned was, in fact, trailing the other vehicles. The bus, at the head of the pack, with the police motorcycles, was carrying the principal of the Hamad Bin Khalifa Al-Sani School and the female students. According to the girls, it was the principal, Ibrahim Asif Rasheed, who ordered the bus driver to break the 40-km/hour speed limit. The two pickups following tried to keep up with the bus, which had kicked up a massive cloud of dust. Motorists on the road at the same time claim the vehicles must have been speeding at at least 80km/hour.

Without clearly seeing where he was going, the driver of the second pickup saw a pit on the dirt-road too late, tried to avoid it, and caused the pickup to skid and overturn, throwing off the students.

While the driver will almost certainly face charges, the authorities have not asked the principal of the school for an explanation of his irresponsible behaviour. Not only did he allegedly order the driver of the bus to break the speed limit while he had several of his students under his charge, it is also not quite clear why he bundled several other students in the back of two pickups. Under Maldivian law, it is illegal for pickup trucks to carry passengers in the back; only two persons can sit in the back to look after loads. But the second pickup had at least 25 students in the back when it lost control.

The authorities also appear to be downplaying the injuries caused by the accident. Families of the injured students say that the principal Rasheed tried to discourage them from sending the boys to Male for treatment, by claiming they would be discharged the same day and the school would not foot the medical bills. Initially, Male's Indira Gandhi Memorial Hospital went with the official version. The official in charge, Dr. Abdulla Ubaid, at first said that no one had sustained serious injuries, praising Gan Hospital for their primary care of the patients. However, he later contradicted himself when he admitted that three of the students who had sustained head injuries, as well as a teacher who broke his shoulder, were in a "serious" condition.

But sources in Gan claim the injuries included fractured skulls, and uncontrollable bleeding. Moreover, families complained that Gan Hospital didn't disinfect the wounds properly before stitching them up; as a result, they turned septic and IGMH had to take out the stitches.

Meanwhile, the evening of day that the patients arrived in Male, principal Rasheed was telling parents that all the patients had been discharged, and that there was no need to send any more students to Male. In fact it was only after three days that anyone was released from the hospital. But the education minister Musthafa Luthufy wasted no time in getting on TV to praise the school for its handling of the events.

The Al-Sani School, its principal, and the education authorities may hope that arrest of the driver of the pickup will be enough to appease the families of the victims.

If things go as they plan, Rasheed may never have to answer any uncomfortable questions or be held accountable to the actions which directly and/or indirectly caused the worst accident in Gan, Laamu Atoll, in terms of the number of injured.

Post on Bilal Philips and terrorism deleted

2009-07-30T01:10:00.000-07:00

I've just deleted the previous post titled "Bilal Philips inspired militants, say terrorism research group" because, as a commentator pointed out, the website of the research group in question, the IPT, is maintained by an individual who has several times been criticised for inaccurate reporting and sweeping Islamophobic generalisations.

Many thanks to the commentator for bringing this fact to my notice.

Anti-music preacher to visit the Maldives

2009-07-27T08:16:00.000-07:00

Former pop-star Ali Rameez's Jamiyathul Salaf is inviting Bilal Philips, described by them as a "world-renowned English -speaking Islamic scholar", to give a series of talks to Maldivians in August. A YouTube clip of one of his lectures may give us a hint on what Philips is going to talk about. In the clip Philips, among other things, claims musical instruments apart from a tambourine-like gadget, are haraam in Islam.

"They have a way of getting into the heart," he explains. "And you remember the notes long after you forget the words of a song." Addressing a largely subservient, unchallenging audience, he says with an easy finality that, according the the prophet Muhammad, "We're not supposed to use these instruments".

In fact many scholars challenge this view. They point out that prohibitions are stated very clearly in the Quran and these do not include music. Quran, a complete work on its own as far as Islam is concerned, teaches that God is extremely displeased with those who prohibit things not specifically prohibited by its verses.

Yet representatives of Jamiyathul Salaf, inspired by Muslim "scholars", have waged a long campaign against music in the Maldives. They refer to some Quranic verses, for instance 31:6 of Luqman Sura, and simply interpret words such as "idle talk" to mean "music". More often than not, however, they draw on Hadiths to give the credence to claims for which they fail to find any in the Quran.

For a more thorough discussion on music in Islam, see the chapter on music and singing in www.submissions.org.

Last year, a host of Islamic "scholars", including a member of the human rights commission, lent sound bites to an anti-music propaganda video. Jamiyathul Salaf also has several YouTube clips proclaiming music is haraam in Islam.

Many people would find it ironic that Ali Rameez, who must have plagiarised more than 500 Hindi tunes to make a fortune, is now the champion anti-music advocate.

So far, however, Maldivians haven't paid much attention to their propaganda.

But in one respect, Jamiyathul Salaf does seem to have affected a change. After the 2004 tsunami, the organisation wasted no time in releasing an audio album which suggests that the natural disaster was God's wrath against women who don't wear the buruga. The album, which boasted the saccharine voiceover of TVM's Mohamed Asif, was advertised in the print media with a quotation from the Quran stating that women should be modest and lower their gaze. In fact the original verse first tells men to lower their gaze, but somehow the part about men requiring to be modest was deleted.

Nevertheless, the album appears to have struck a chord and the buruga has taken off in a big way in post-tsunami Maldives.

It remains to be seen if Maldivians will also surrender their love of music to Bilal Philips.

"Music and singing were never prohibited by God. They are part of the most beautiful creations of God."

www.submission.org

Gayoom's ordeal

2009-07-20T11:14:00.000-07:00

It's hard to gauge what was going through Gayoom's mind as he was escorted by police for questioning earlier this evening. Certainly, during the dictator's own rule hundreds, even thousands, are likely to have said their "last prayers", as we say here in the Maldives, when the police came to take them away.

Back then people spent months, even years, in detention centres without trial. Many of them would have incurred Gayoom's wrath by criticising his regime; somehow, someone would have heard them and carried tales to one of his brothers-in law. I know a woman who was taken in for questioning by police for switching off the television while Gayoom was on air.

Then there are the tales of torture. People were beaten, hung, leaves tied round them and tied to chairs inside goat sties. There were those that had their backbones broken, even killed. One of Gayoom's classmates, Ahmed Adam, who claimed some of the dictator's children were conceived out of wedlock, found himself in jail and languished there for years to suffer the most horrific torture imaginable. A hearty, robust man when he went in, he was reduced to a cripple when they were done with him. Adam died soon after he was released from prison.

And let's not forget Ahmed Waheed, who wrote scathing articles about Gayoom in the 1990s weekly Hukuru, banned by the dictator months after it came out. Nobody knows quite what they did to Waheed, but whatever it was was so terrible that he's stopped talking to people. The former writer and TV producer can be still be seen hanging out in Ameeni Magu and the south seawall in Machchangolhi, immersed in a strange, autistic-like state.

Witnessing Gayoom leave the police headquarters an hour or so after he went in, I'm thankful that things are not the same now and that the erstwhile dictator didn't have to suffer any of what his critics suffered in the not too distant past.

The religious right calls for violence against women and children to continue

2009-07-18T23:59:00.000-07:00

Press freedom is under threat again, this time from a small group of the religious right and their supporters. Yesterday, about 150 people, believed to be proxies of the Adhaalath Party, gathered at the Artificial Beach to call for, among other things, a ban on the internet newspaper Minivan News, and the deportation of its writer Mariyam Omidi.

Omidi and other writers at Minivan News had recently covered a public flogging in the capital Male, and explored the debates surrounding it in a series of articles.

Protesters called the writings ‘anti-Islamic’, a label which in the past has succeeded in muzzling important debates and discussions. The crowd also called for the resignation of foreign minister Dr. Shaheed and the Maldvies embassador to the UK Dr Farhanaz Faisal, whose views on flogging to had been published in the Minivan News articles.

The public flogging at the centre of the controversy involves an18-year-old girl, but a disturbing aspect of the case appears to have gone unnoticed. It has emerged that the girl, who reportedly “confessed” to having had extra-marital sex with two adult males, committed the “crime” when she was under-18. If so, this would have grave implications for the Maldivian state. Not only has the state failed to protect a child from sexual abuse but has, in fact, been party to subjecting her to further physical abuse.

Sadly, this is not an isolated case. At least 22 girls under 18 years of age were sentenced to public flogging, in 2006, for fornication or giving birth out of wedlock.

Under Maldivian law child sexual abuse requires a confession by the alleged abuser, or testimony by four eye-witnesses, for a successful conviction to take place. This means that if a victim reports sexual abuse but the perpetrator denies it and there are no eye-witnesses, the court can find the child guilty of having consented to the sex. The state would then wait for the girl to turn 18 and then carry out the sentence of public flogging, in effect, punishing her for reporting the crime.

By continuing with the practice, the Maldives is violating no less than four UN conventions it has signed: the convention on the rights of children; the convention on civil and political rights; the convention against torture; and the convention against all forms of discrimination against women.

But the UN has remained silent on the issue, as has the human rights commission, and the government’s child protection services.

Recent studies suggest the Maldives may have one of the highest child sexual abuse rates in the world. A 2007 survey revealed that one in six Maldivian women aged 15-49 is sexually abused before they turn 15 years of age. A UNICEF study published earlier this year has found that one in five school girls experiences sexual abuse at least once in their lifetime. Although boys are sexually abused too, the majority of victims of child sexual abuse in the Maldives are girls.

While there have been numerous protests against child abuse, attended by governmental and non-governmental organizations, no one has yet organized a public gathering against child abuse by the state. And, although it has been fashionable in recent months for people to call for harsher penalties for perpetrators of child sexual abuse, there hasn’t been a call to introduce the necessary evidence laws to convict these people of their crimes. Public flogging disproportionately punishes women, many of them victims of child sexual abuse.

And now, the religious right are calling for a continuation of punishment. At yesterday’s rally, speakers invoked the Quranic verse 24:2 to support their argument:

“The fornicatress and the fornicator, flog each of them with a hundred stripes. Let not pity withhold you in their case, in a punishment prescribed by Allah, if you believe in Allah and the Last Day. And let a party of the believers witness their punishment.”

In fact flogging, as practiced in the Maldives, would appear to contravene this verse. In an overwhelming majority of cases the “fornicatress”, and not the “fornicator”, receives the lashings.

Chief judge of the criminal court Abdulla Mohamed explained to Minivan News that while men were able to deny the crime, women were often implicated due to pregnancy.

Zina or fornication is notoriously difficult to prove under Sharia Law because a confession by the parties or testimonies by four eye-witnesses, who saw the actual penetration, are needed. Some scholars have said that these conditions indicate that Islam does not intend to punish people as a matter of course.

But the all-male speakers at yesterday’s rally were vociferous in their support for public flogging, even if it meant that a disproportionate number of women would be punished. They also rejected the suggestion that DNA testing on males should be introduced to ensure both parties are punished equally.

“Women don’t know who they’ve slept with,” said one speaker. “How can we test all the men in the Maldives?”

It is this unmistakable misogyny that gives the game away, and lifts the lid on the real agenda of these pious men. They want to continue to punish women and girls but are happy to absolve men of their part in the crime. And, when they feel the status quo is threatened, they always look for a female to vilify.

In 2007 when the religious right condemned MDP’s Aishath Aniya for writing an anti-buruga article in Minivan Daily, they didn’t bother to actually read what she said or argue with her points. There was a known and tested shortcut: label your opponents “anti-Islamic” and nobody asks questions even when you call for their death. Mariyam Omidi is the new Aniya for the religious right.

Adhalath bigwigs were notably absent at the rally, even though many people believe they are behind it. An earlier statement by the party, while it didn’t name names, said visas to foreign nationals should be conditional on their respect of the Maldives constitution. The theme was very much part of yesterday’s rally where Omidi was singled out for deportation calls.

The recently formed Maldives Journalism Association, which likes to present itself as the champion of free press in the Maldives, is yet to condemn this attack on an individual writer, a newspaper and, indeed, press freedom in the Maldives. We can also expect silence from the human rights commission.

But the attitudes of the general public may be changing, apparent in the small numbers that turned up for rally. Moreover, the online community, which Adhaalath Party tried to ban earlier in the year, is alive with debates not only of the flogging in question, but also press freedom.

In the 1950s, Maldivians protested against president Mohamed Ameen’s ill advised introduction of Hadd punishment, particularly capital punishment and the amputation of hands. The public outcry is likely to have contributed to the downfall of the first president of the Maldives, because the subsequent revolutions committee had to ban the punishments.

More than half a century later, Maldivians are grappling with public floggings. A criminal court judge has told Minivan News that 200 more floggings are waiting to be carried out.

With the help of new technology and tools, such as the social networking websites like Facebook, Maldivians can put a stop to a cruel and discriminatory punishment that has never served a legal, religious or social purpose.

The government's impending crackdown on women's mosques

2009-07-10T07:19:00.000-07:00

A worshipper sits on a bench in Masjidul Muslima in Kendhoo, Baa Atoll, reading the Quran. Simply and tastefully designed, the spotlessly clean mosque with its spacious, immaculately swept garden basks in the afternoon sunshine, a picture of serenity.

Masjidhul Muslima is one of the several exclusive women’s mosques in the Maldives. Women’s mosques and female imams are virtually non-existent in the rest of the Muslim word, except for parts of China which in 1997 was recorded as having 29 mosques. The Maldives has 210, probably the highest number of women’s mosques in a single country in the world at present.

But in June, the Islamic ministry announced that it was closing down all the women’s mosques in the Maldives. The official reason given was that the government wanted to cut down on expenditure and “the best place for a woman to pray is at home.”

In fact the government spends very little on women’s mosques. Apart from a token monthly salary for some female imams, the only government contribution to women’s mosques is an annual calendar, a few Qurans, and cloth for cleaning the floors. Almost all the women’s mosques in the Maldives have been built by the communities themselves and maintenance is carried out by volunteer worshippers.

Women’s mosques have existed in this country for as long as any living Maldivian can remember. According to a registry of currently operating mosques, the oldest is Masjidul Salat in Thakandhoo, Haa Alif Atoll, which was inaugurated in 1926. It is likely that women’s mosques evolved in the last century or so, since historical writings before that make no mention of these unique places of worship.

Women’s mosques are a common feature of north Maldives with some islands boasting more women’s mosques than men’s mosques. Dhidhdhoo, in Haa Alif Atoll, has no less than four women’s mosques.

A 61-year-old retired female imam said that one of the women's mosques on her island predated its oldest inhabitant. However, with the growth of the population, the community decided to build a second one. Both men and women worked tirelessly to raise funds and to construct the mosque, which stands proud today, grander than even the men’s mosque. The communities take great pride in these mosques and female worshipers clean and maintain them lovingly.

“Our women’s mosque is such a pleasant place that sometimes even men go there to pray, when there are no women in the mosque,” the former imam told me.

For the women of these island communities the women’s mosque is a safe, peaceful place, where they can pray without fear or intimidation at any time of the day or night. These mosques are revered by all members of the community and, to date, no harassment is known to have taken place in any of them. In contrast, many homes are too noisy, crowded and unfit for worship. Women’s mosques, as well as being a place of worship, offers women a space for social interaction.

These mosques exist in most parts of the country but are notably absent in the far south. There is no women’s mosque on Foah Mulah and only one in the whole of Addu Atoll. Instead, on Hithadhoo, every house has a namaadhu-ge or prayer room, where women and children worship. A Hithadhoo elder has pointed out that this tradition may be a legacy of the Buddhist practice of building a shrine inside the house for worship.

The namaadhu-ge also serves another function. When children see their mothers praying, it helps them to learn to pray at an early age. “The namaadhu-ge is an age-old tradition passed down from generation to generation,” a Hithadhoo woman told me. “Even the smallest house has one.”

In 1987, a women’s mosque was opened in the adjoining island community of Maradhoo and this lead to Hithadhoo women demanding their own mosque.

“We told them women’s mosques were un-Islamic but they persisted,” recalled a former Katheeb or Island Head. “Fortunately, the funds never materialized and Hithadhoo, to this day, doesn’t have a women’s mosque.”

Addu people’s religious education has traditionally been different to the rest of the country. The atoll is believed to have converted to Islam at least half a century before the rest of the Maldives and has a history of exposure to visiting scholars from the Middle East. Many people also go to countries like Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Pakistan to study Islam, and bring back with them religious sensibilities that are hostile to women’s mosques.

Abdul Majeed Abdul Bari, who heads the Islamic ministry, hails from Addu Atoll. While his ministry is gearing to ban women’s mosques from the rest of the country, it has not bothered to consult the women whose lives are going to be impacted. Instead, the ministry is recommending that women pray in the small designated corner of men’s mosques, behind the male congregation. But many women, used to the independence and security of their own mosques, are likely to feel intimidated in men’s mosques.

Although the Islamic ministry advocates women to pray at home, there is no evidence that women were banned from mosques by the Prophet Muhammad. Indeed, no restriction or segregation is imposed on them in the largest Islamic gathering in the word, the Hajj pilgrimage.

If the Islamic ministry goes ahead with its proposed ban, it can only be read as a government crackdown on women’s right to worship in a safe and secure place that they have build for themselves.

“Many women, especially older ones, will be heartbroken,” the former imam told me. “For them, the exercise of walking to the mosque, worshipping there, and the social interaction are an important daily routine.”

The Islamic ministry recently threatened to ban Airtel dish antennas, but the outcry from angry citizens successfully thwarted it. It remains to be seen whether we'll hear enough noise to prevent the impending ban on women’s mosques too.

Islamic Ministry's banning spree

2009-07-06T05:31:00.000-07:00

Last week it was women's mosques. This week the Islamic Ministry, lead by the Adhaalath Party, is set to ban Airtel dish antennas.

The Adhaalath Party, which failed to win a single seat in the recent parliamentary elections and may have died a natural death like the Islamic Democratic Party has, nevertheless, been embraced by the MDP government for some undisclosed reason.

The Adhaalath Party does not have enough clout of its own to perform as an independent party, but leeches off bigger parties for survival. Up until recently, it was the mistress of Gasim's Republican Party. Now it is slutting for the MDP, which it earlier tried its best to discredit.

Music may be the next to go if Maldivians let Adhaalath have its way.

The Maldives state violates human rights obligations

2009-07-05T01:40:00.000-07:00

A woman was flogged this morning outside the "Justice" Building in front of a jeering crowd of mostly men. A witness said she had to be carried away after the ordeal because she was too weak to walk on her own.

By continuing to carry out public floggings, the Maldives state is repeatedly violating international conventions it has signed, including the convention against torture and the convention on civil and political rights. Today's deplorable action by the state is a clear indication that cruel and degrading punishment of women, which the Maldives has been carrying out unchallenged for years, has survived into the new presidency.

The only online statistics available on public flogging in the Maldives are for the year 2006 and they show that out of the 181 people sentenced to flogging 153 were women, including 22 minors.

To my knowledge no parliamentarian or politician or, indeed, the human rights commission has ever spoken out against the Maldivian state's violence against women. One reason for this could be their fear of offending the religious right and being labelled anti-Muslim. In fact most Muslim countries, including Iran and Pakistan, have banned the practice.

Anni's government must now publicly state its position on this inhumane practice and the human rights commission must condemn it in the strongest possible language. If both the opposition and the government can meet eye to eye on this parliament could ban the practice within days.

The Adhaalath Party, I suspect, will be the only people to moan the discontinuation of public flogging in the Maldives. But, as the recent parliamentary elections showed, the Maldivian public don't care much for Adhaalath's views.

Maldivians say no to Adhaalath

2009-05-13T00:24:00.000-07:00

If there's anything good to say about the outcome of the parliamentary elections it's the clear rejection of the religious conservative Adhaalath Party by the Maldivian populace. Candidates on that party's ticket failed to secure a single seat in the next parliament, according to provisional results by the Elections Commission.

By rejecting Adhaalath Party, Maldivians are showing that they are more moderate and secular-minded than politicians and commentators seem to think. The MDP and the Republican Party have been humouring the Adhaalath Party in the mistaken belief that the religious conservatives command widespread support in this country. As a result, members of that party have enjoyed unlimited access to the media, including the Friday sermon, through which they've launched unchallenged diatribes against women, music, and democracy, in the name of Islam.

With the support of the MDP and RP president Gasim Ibrahim's money, Adhaalath had some success last year in undermining more liberal Islamic scholars like Afrasheem Ali and Gubaad Abu Bakr. But in public debates and the ill-advised court action against Gayoom, in which they tried unsuccessfully to prove the former dictator was not Muslim, Adhaalath scholars were no match for these two.

To add insult to Adhaalath's defeat in the parliamentary elections , Afraasheem Ali appears to have won a seat in the parliament on a DRP ticket.

The Adhaalath Party is a politically insignificant entity with outmoded views that have no place in a progressive, liberal democracy and it remains to be seen how the MDP and RP, Adhaalath's main patrons, respond to this obvious fact.

Child abuse by the Maldivian state

2009-04-12T01:14:00.000-07:00

Last week, the family court in Male registered a marriage between a man in his 20s and a 17-year-old girl. The terrified girl confided to a schoolmate that her family of religious conservatives had pushed her into the marriage and how frightened she had been that her husband might turn out to be really old. Under Maldivian law, any form of coercion would disqualify the marriage but neither the court nor child protection, in this case, seems to have noticed the immense pressures exerted on the girl by her parents.

In the Maldives, a person is legally of age only after he or she is 18 years of age, but a provision allows 16-18 year olds to marry at the discretion of the judge. Family law was introduced to the Maldives in 2001 and judges, to their credit, have used their powers to prevent marriages involving minors. But after 2005, the courts transferred the responsibility to child protection authorities in the ministry of gender and family. Ironically, this only saw a lifting of the restraint on marriages involving children. When questioned by national and international child rights groups, officials attempt to justify the state-condoned child abuse by citing overwhelming religious pressure.

There has been an increase in the number of marriages between older men and under-aged girls in the Maldives. Religious conservatives argue that once a girl attains puberty she is an “adult” and draw on the example of Prophet Muhammed’s marriage to Aisha. Even sheikh Mohamed Shaheem Ali, the state minister for Islamic affairs, is reported to have “approached” a 16-year-old girl for marriage.

In addition, “unregistered marriages” involving girls as young as nine years of age, have taken place across the country in the last couple of years, notably in Himendhoo, in Alif Atoll, and parts of Raa Atoll.

The state has also institutionalized another form of child abuse. According to statistics (see page 75) from the Maldives judiciary, 174 people were convicted of zina or fornication in 2006, and sentenced to public flogging. An overwhelming majority of those sentenced, 146, were women, 19 of who were under 18 years of age. In the same year, seven women, including three minors, were convicted of giving birth out of wedlock.

Usually, the state waits until the under-aged girls it has failed to protect are legally of age, and then subjects them to a cruel and degrading public flogging. Gayoom's government has a well-documented history of complicity in child sexual abuse, but there is no sign that the change of government will protect Maldivian children.

At least one of MDP's candidates for the upcoming parliamentary elections, Ibrahim Manik, who is contesting a Dhaalu Atoll seat, was convicted of sex offense involving a minor. When concerned people contacted the party about it, they were told the candidate would be removed from the party ticket. But at the time of the publishing of this post, he was still on the MDP list of candidates.

Maldivian laws, particularly evidence laws, have been criticised for their failure to protect children from child sexual abuse. With erstwhile abusers poised to become lawmakers, the future looks bleak for Maldivian children.

Video of flogging of 17-year-old girl in Pakistan

2009-04-03T23:15:00.000-07:00

Pakistanti networks have aired a video showing a 17-year-old girl held down by two men while a third flogs her mercilessly. This has lead to widespread public outcry and forced the government to order an investigation into the flogging, believed to have been perpetrated by the Taliban. You can watch the video and read the Guardian article here.

If the video shocks you, you should know that public flogging is carried out in the Maldives too. The victims are overwhelmingly women and girls, and there has never been a public call for an end to the practice or any attempt by Maldivian parliamentarians to outlaw it. Ibra's much hyped bill, which proposes 16 years as the age of consent, will not protect victims of child sexual abuse from this cruel and degrading practice either.

The UN system, likewise, has remained silent on the issue, even though public flogging would contravene a number of international conventions signed by the Maldives.

God says no to Adhaalath

2009-03-28T21:34:00.001-07:00

On Friday Adhaalath officials led a prayer for rain, following several months of the northeast monsoon Iruvai which have caused severe water shortages across the country. In fact, weather forecasts had predicted rain and the religious conservatives were probably hoping to cash in on it. Unfortunately, the weather remained stubbornly dry and no rain, which can in any way be regarded as an answer to Adhaalath's prayer, occurred at the weekend.

Adhaalath is also having a bad time in politics. After protests over revelations of internet censorship by the Islamic ministry, which is controlled by Adhaalath party bigwigs, president Anni has installed MDP's own religious scholars in the ministry to keep an eye on Adhaalath. Adhaalath is now grumbling that it might have to get critical of the government.

There are those that think God is punishing Adhaalath, because no religious group in the Maldives is as hypocritical as them. The Quran abounds in verses censuring hypocrites, and Adhaalath's double standards on issues such as photography and alcohol sale have been the butt of jokes for a long time.

But my favourite Adhaalath moment is when they justified endorsing Gasim for presidency last year, by claiming: "If a man can manage 4 wives, he can also manage a country."

Despite Adhaalath's support and unlimited resources, Gasim got less votes than Hassan Saeed.

Victim of child sexual abuse to be flogged and imprisoned for life

2009-03-27T01:37:00.000-07:00

I've learnt from reliable sources that the state is under enormous pressure to prosecute a young woman, who was abused by her own father, for sexual misconduct and murder.

The girl, at the age of 16, was investigated by police and the child rights ministry in 2006 for allegedly giving birth outside wedlock and murdering the infant. What the authorities knew but never officially acknowledged was that the child had been sexually abused by her own father for years before she got pregnant. They also know that the father was party to the infanticide. Although the state had an obligation under the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child CRC, to which it was a signatory, to protect the child, both the police and the child rights ministry chose to wash its hand off the case and send victim back to her abuser.

The authorities initially housed her in the orphans home on Vilingili, but child protection officials said she was wanton and a murderer and would be a bad influence on the other children, and deprived her of state protection.

Now legally of age, the girl has given birth to another child allegedly again fathered by her own father. A headline in the mainstream media reflects society's attitudes: "Woman who had and murdered an illegitimate child gets pregnant again". Not surprisingly conservative hardliners are secretly calling for her to be prosecuted for sexual misconduct and infanticide, as a lesson for other "easy" women.

This young woman is the result of the failure of Gayoom's government to protect its young people and the gross neglect and heartlessness of the social services, most of who are still in the payroll of the child protection department of the health ministry.

If this woman is flogged and sentenced as hardliners want, it will also reflect the failure of Anni's government to protect victims of child abuse.

It's looking increasingly unlikely that parliament and politicians will take an interest in this case, but the public can and should make it known to the authorities that they will not tolerate further abuse of this young woman.

Aishath Mohamed Didi failed to protect the young woman, but we should make sure that Aminath Jameel does a better job.

Ibra's bill will not protect children

2009-03-25T21:48:00.000-07:00

In 2006, a 16-year old girl from an island in south Maldives was brought to Male for an investigation concerning a dead newborn discovered there. Police and the child rights ministry sources revealed at the time that the child had been chronically abused by her own father, who made her pregnant and assisted in the killing of the infant. But after the investigation, the then child rights minister Aishath Mohamed Didi sent the girl back to her parents and, in affect, to her abuser.

Child sexual abuse, under Maldivian law, required, and still does, a confession by the alleged abuser, or testimony by four witnesses, for a successful conviction to take place. This meant that if a child reports sexual abuse, the perpetrator denies it, and there are no witnesses, the court can find the child guilty of consent. Victims of child sexual abuse are therefore often punished for reporting the crime while the abuser is almost always let free.

Ibra's much heralded bill to criminalise paedophilia would not protect the vast majority of victims, because it does not propose changes to evidence laws. If the conviction of child sexual abusers is a near impossibility, what's the point of calling for harsher sentences for them? I understand that Ibra was advised by experts and concerned individuals about this, but chose to ignore the issue of evidence laws in his bill.

Child sexual abuse flourished in the Maldives in Gayoom's three decades of power, with presidential pardons granted habitually to the few that were convicted. A survey published a year before Gayoom was ousted revealed that one in six Maldivian women aged 15-49 years was sexually abused under 15 years of age. A UNICEF study published this year has found out that one in five school girls and one in ten school boys experience sexual abuse at least once in their lifetime. The present government is yet to publicly speak out against the the high levels of child sexual abuse in this country or state what it plans to do about it.

Ibra's bill does not offer respite either. The seriously flawed bill was probably more politically motivated than the result of any genuine commitment to protecting Maldivian children from widespread sexual abuse. Note also that Ibra is proposing lowering the age of consent to 16 years, even though those under 18 years of age are regarded as minors under Maldivian law. This means the 16 year old girl from south Maldives would not not have got any protection from Ibra or Anni.

That girl, now legally of age, is reported to have had another illegitimate child and the state is considering flogging her as punishment.

Perhaps Aishath Mohamed Didi and her team should have a taste of the "durra", or the flogging baton, for failing to protect the young woman.

Should the Islamic ministry be sued?

2009-03-19T23:25:00.000-07:00

The Maldives constitution guarantees the freedom of expression of its citizens except when it's against the tenets of Islam. The banning of raajjeislam.com, which promotes Islam, therefore, may be a violation of the constitution and the owners of the website could profitably sue both the Islamic ministry and the telecommunication authority.

This is not the first time that Adhaalath hardliners have acted unconstitutionally. Last year Abdul Majeed Abdul Bari claimed that a woman could not become a ruler of this country because it would be "directly against Islam".

In fact a Saudi government paper presented at a UN conference on women in 1996 stated: "There is absolutely nothing in the Quran which directly or indirectly forbids a woman to become the head of a state or even suggests that she is essentially incompetent for the position."

Not only, then, is Bari's view not shared by more reliable authorities on Islam, his statement is directly against the constitution. When Bari made the remark the new constitution had already been ratified and, and not even the efforts by MDP's resident hardliner BA Naseem, could reverse the rights of Maldivian women to take up the top job.

And then there was the anti-music video, produced by erstwhile pop singer Ali Rameez's Jamiyathul Salaf, an organisation known to spread misogyny in the Maldives in the name of Islam. Ali Rameez, the biggest success story of the Wahhabi infiltration into Maldivian culture, managed to convince key Adhaalath players to proclaim music was haraam. But liberal scholars claim that no sound hadith concerning the prohibition of music exists, and point out that some companions of the Prophet as well as second generation Muslims listened to music and did not see anything wrong in it. Since it cannot be firmly established that music is against the tenets of Islam, the attempts by the Adhaalath and the washed-out pop singer to curtail creative freedom and expression can only be regarded as unconstitutional.

Interestingly, the Maldives human rights commission has remained silent on the issue of censorship and the currents debates surrounding the actions of the Islamic ministry. In fact one of the people deriding music in the Salafiyya video was a member of that commission. How he managed to employed by the human rights commission is anybody's guess.

Some people have been suggesting that president Anni is playing a shrewd game here: allowing those in the Islamic ministry to slowly destroy themselves in the eyes of the public. But it should be noted that not once has Anni backed women or defended freedom of expression against the religious right. Indeed, MDP members habitually mock and undermine liberal Islamic scholars, notably Gubad Abu Bakr and Afrasheem Ali, who can and have defeated the Adhaalath "shekhs" at numerous religious debates. The truth is that Gayoom got all the best, forward thinking religious scholars, while Anni was saddled with the dubious ones, who may well derail the democratic process that Maldivians have fought for so long. The Adhaalath have also proved to be an embarrassment to Anni's government as it courts international support.

I know some Maldivians who said that once we'd got rid of Gayoom, they would initiate legal proceedings against Adhaalath, and others, for their proven record of acts and statements against the constitution.

Now may be the time for this.

Maldives president blocks websites and cracks down on protests

2009-03-15T22:33:00.000-07:00

The list of websites banned by Anni's government is growing, all of them on the orders of the Ministry of Islam. According to Haveeru, eight websites have been blocked so far for allegedly publishing anti-Islamic and pro-Christianity content in the Dhivehi, the Maldivian language.

One of the banned websites, randomreflexions.com, an English language one, was reportedly targeted because it evoked debates and discussions around Islam. And, at least one of the banned websites, raajjeislam.com, may have been targeted for political reasons since it exposed tyranny by a state minister at the Islamic ministry.

The Maldives internet community is a vibrant space which for the last 5 years or so have seen the articulation of a wide range of thematic preoccupations in contemporary Maldives. Religion, politics, sexuality, drug abuse, paedophilia, amongst other subjects have been debated in far greater depth on the internet than in the conventional media.

When president Anni created a ministry for the conservative religious party Adhaalath's Abdul Majeed Bari and other hardliners as a reward for their "support" to the coalition, many internet writers expressed unease. Now the sentiments appear justified. The Islamic ministry is blocking dissent, debate, and discussion, in the name of Islam, and president Anni is pretending not to see.

Anni can't have imagined that a week after he announced his intention of turning the Maldives into a safe haven for the world's dissidents, he would have to block websites and send in police to crackdown on protesting resort workers.

While the very foundations of our fledgeling democracy are being threatened, the new president, for now, is chosing to turn the other way and chase international headlines.

Anni has just announced that the Maldives is to go carbon neutral in 2020, to combat the threat facing the world's environment.

It remains to be seen if Anni will turn to the threat facing Maldivian democracy any time soon.

Anni's commitment to free speech under the spotlight

2009-03-13T07:28:00.000-07:00

A week after President Anni announced his intention of turning the Maldives into a sanctuary for oppressed writers, his government has blocked a dissident website. The telecommunications authority has blocked the raajjeislam.com website on the order of the Islamic ministry. According to minivannews.com, the most reliable news service in the Maldives to my mind, the website was blocked a day after an audio clip by Foakaidhoo Imam Mohamed Shakeeb alleged that the state minister of Islamic affairs Mohamed Shaheem Ali Saeed had threatened him.

Now, the permanent secretary of the ministry of communications Mohamed Latheef is accusing the telecommunications authority of not informing them of its decision.

He told minivannews.com: "a websited can only be blocked after we have been informed and no website can be blocked for political reasons."

This will be an embarrassment for Anni, himself an erstwhile dissident writer, after the headline grabbing announcement he made to coincide with a visit to the Maldives by the UN freedom of expression rapporteur Frank La Rue.

Anni's response to the crisis will be a litmus test of how genuine his professed commitment to the freedom expression is. I'm highly skeptical.

When Aishath Aniya, the then secretary-general of the MDP, was vilified by the party's religious right for writing an anti-buruga article, Anni didn't utter a word in public in her defense. There were even open calls for her death, but none of the MDP bigwigs protested. While Anni and Munavvaru, then the president of MDP, remained silent, Dhivehi Observer's Sappe ticked Aniya off in an open letter and called her to step down.

Before the Maldives can become a safe haven for the dissidents of the world, it first needs to establish an environment for the freedom of expression of its own writers to flourish.

If Anni publicly apologised to Aishath Aniya and Mohamed Shakeeb and ordered the unbanning of rajjeislam.com, it would send a strong message to people like Shaheem and re-inspire Maldivians who once looked on the new president as a champion of free speech.

To access raajjeislam.com, go to www.proxify.com and enter in the url box http://www.raajjeislam.com

Human trafficking in the Maldives?

2009-03-08T21:15:00.000-07:00

The Human Rights Commission of the Maldives has in its latest report slammed the country's treatment of migrant workers, warning that the practice of bringing a person in for one job and making them work on another may amount to human trafficking.

Migrant labourers pay as much as 2,000 US Dollars to agents to get into what they think is the lucrative Maldives labour force, only to be hoodwinked into lesser jobs, lesser pay and appalling working conditions. What is even more disturbing is that it is now almost certain that Maldivian government officials and employment agents have profited from this exploitation.

Last year, a report by the auditor general suggests that insiders in Gayoom's labour ministry may have deleted records on foreign labourers. It is widely believed that senior officials then made millions for issuing new permits to replace the "missing" labourers. New permits meant the recruitment of new migrant labourers who paid the exhorbitant fee, part of which was pocketed by Maldivian government officials. This cycle is believed to have existed for years under Gayoom's rule and his government did not attempt to seek or prosecute any of the alleged perpetrators, many of whom were supporters of his DRP.

But the dispossessed labourers found themselves in a place that couldn't have been more different to their dreams. Without proper documents they were unable to report to the police and susceptible to exploitation and extortion by unscrupulous Maldivians. The immigration department estimates that as much as 30,000 "illegal" migrant workers may be in the country.

Although the new government is trying to sort the problem, no doubt motivated by its bid to become a member of the the International Labour Organisatoin, it has, so far, failed to bring any of the alleged agents or officials to justice. Instead, the government appears to be concentrating on rounding up illegal immigrants and trying to deport them.

Many of the labourers caught are kept in the immigration department's detention centre. The human rights commission has questioned the legality of this arrangement, pointing out that many have been there for more than a month even though Maldivian law requires a court ruling for this.

Human trafficking is a serious international crime and colluding or complicity can seriously jeopardise the Maldives government's bid to join the ILO, which has a consitiutional mandate to protect migrant workers.

As Juan Somavia, the director general of the ILO declared: "Migrant workers are an asset to every country where they bring their labour. Let us give them the dignity they deserve as human beings and the respect they deserve as workers."

Maldivian children abused by parents, schools and the community

2009-03-05T21:47:00.000-08:00

A new UNICEF study is confirming what many in the psychosocial field have known for years: that child abuse is widespread in the Maldives.

One in five school girls have been sexually abused at least once, while the figure for school boys is just over one in ten. These rates are "considerably high" even by global standards, according to one of the researchers.

Of the nearly 2,000 students who participated in the largest study of emotional and physical punishment and sexual abuse of children in the Maldives, three out of ten children said their parents hit them with boys more likely to be subjected to physical and emotional violence than girls.

School life doesn't fare any better; 23 per cent of boys and 10 per cent of girls said they had been hit by a teacher, even though corporal punishment is banned in Maldivian schools. Five per cent of the children said they had been so badly injured by their teacher that they had needed to go to the hospital.

One third of the teachers in Maldivian schools are not qualified to teach. Not surprisingly, only 5 per cent of students sitting the GCSE exams passed in English in 2005. The UNICEF study paints a bleak picture of life for Maldivian children: they've been let down by their parents, the education system and by the community.

But a substantial section of Maldivian society, 36 per cent, supports physical punishment of children. Even supposedly progressive members of the community are pro-punishment. Dr. Abdullah Waheed, the deputy home minister, echoed populist sentiment in a personal blog post recently, when he criticised child laws protecting children as "ill-conceived and inappropriately implemented" and alleged they "prevented teachers from disciplining children". If this isn't a cry to bring back corporal punishment, I don't know what is.

Kay Engelhardt, a consultant for the international research firm Taylor Nelson Sofres which was part of the study, has commented that violence already enters the life of Maldivian children at an early age. "Home is not safe, the community is not safe and school is a grey area", Engelhardt told Minivannews.com.

But Maldivians in positions of power have habitually been unsympathetic to young people. Gayoom's buddy and former education minister Zahir Hussein, in the 80s, hit a Majeediyya student with a stick in front of the whole school. Hussein also, notoriously, tried to turn a blind eye to the serial child sexual abuse by two teachers during his disastrous reign at the ministry. Gayoom's faithful servant Umar Zahir, who headed the home ministry for several years, allowed rampant physical, psyhological and sexual abuse of children in the government's reformatory.

And now we have the likes of Dr. Abdullah Waheed, who failed to establish or manage a decent rehabilitation centre for recovering addicts or a modern prison service, advocating Maldivian children to be subjected to even more violence.

Payne puffs again

2009-01-23T10:18:00.001-08:00

In a meeting yesterday with his staff, the general manager of One And Only Reethi Rah Resort Michael Payne told disgruntled staff to find work elsewhere if they still found working conditions on the island unsatisfactory.

The resort found itself in the centre of political controversy last November when its management called in police to break up a demonstration by staff protesting against inadequate working conditions and the failure to implement the new employment act.

Payne managed to get riot police or the "Golha" force onto the island, in part because the then home minister Gasim Ibrahim, who owned a fleet of resorts himself, would have been more sympathetic to the management than the protestors. Sending the golha force into Reethi Rah cost Gasim his cabinet portfolio, and government intervention forced the resort to take back staff they had sacked unfairly and take steps to meet the demands of its workforce.

Reethi Rah management has since adopted the new employment act and promised to improve working conditions there.

But Payne is singing a different tune now, say staff.

"He was raving like a lunatic yesterday," a staff told me. "He was going on about Obama and the global economic recession."

Payne reportedly warned staff of impending redundancies, then lost his cool when he was asked to explain why working conditions hadn't improved as promised.

Many of the promises made by the management, including better accomodation, more toilets for staff, and an increase in the transport to and from Male have yet to materialise.

In the words of one staff, Payne "puffed up like a puffer-fish" when confronted by his staff, and yelled at them to find work elsewhere if they didn't like conditions on Reethi Rah.

In December, president Anni bragged that his government had successfully resolved the Reethi Rah crisis.

But with Payne puffing again, that is beginning to look more like wishful thinking than fact.

Murder on Eid

2008-12-09T08:26:00.000-08:00

23-year old Sameer was walking amidst crowds enjoying the Eid festivities, in the glorious late afternoon sunshine, when a couple of young men suddenly pulled up on a motorcycle and viciously stabbed him all over. As the shocked crowd looked on, some more intent on photographing the attack than assisting him, Sameer tried to flee his attackers, hit a pickup truck and fell, never to get up again. A little over an hour later he was declared dead in IGMH.

What was unthinkable in Male even five years ago is now a regular occurrence. In the last twelve month alone 5 young men lost their lives to what the authorities are describing as gang-related violence. To my knowledge nobody involved in any of those murders has been brought to justice. Knifings by young people, who're barely 16, are now commonplace in this once bustling but relatively crime-free island capita, and people are right to ask what law enforcement is doing about it?

When staff of One And Only Reethi Rah recently protested peacefully against discrimination and the lack of implementation of the employment act by the management, the then home minister Gasim Ibrahim dramatically stated: "If...buildings had been set on fire and people had been knifed who would the public hold accountable?" Although Gasim ordered the notorious "Golha Force" or riot police to Reethi Rah to stop the imagined burnings and knifings, neither he nor anyone else in the new government appears to be in any hurry to do anything to stop the actual blood-spilling in Male's streets.

It is said that police already know most of the gangs operating in Male and involved in the violence. There can't be more than 200 or so of these young people in total and the fact that Maldives police haven't been able to clean up the streets is a national shame. Gayoom has rightly been called the father of heroin and violent youths in Male, but the present government isn't doing much to make the streets safer.

In the last 5 or 6 years violent crime has risen several times over. Like heroin-addiction, child sexual abuse and violence against women, police have failed to reduce it and now it looks like the Maldives has one of the highest rates of violent crime in the world.

In the meantime "cutter" incidents continue to happen daily, and the attackers are getting more bold, secure in the knowledge they will not be persecuted.

Many of the attacks are taking place in broad daylight, in full view of a gawking public. Some of them have been captured on mobile phone cameras and are taking the Maldives to an international fame of a different kind on YouTube.

Gasim resigns, defiant to the end

2008-12-03T05:01:00.000-08:00

Gasim Ibrahim has resigned as home minister, quoting inability to act independently from the president's office as a reason, but is defiant about his actions in the Reethi Rah crisis. He refuses to acknowledge the harm caused by the riot police on protesters, including beating them with batons and the use of pepper spray.

Gasim's resignation will let take some pressure off the MDP-led coalition government, which is finding itself under increased criticism from the public and its own supporters. It also sends a strong message that this government will not be part of human rights abuses.

Most MDP supporters, and others who champion democracy and human rights, will not miss Gasim, but the government may now find itself without the parliamentary majority that it had, up until now, enjoyed.

Liberals will also be hoping that Gasim takes away the Adhalath contingency with him, which the MDP inherited when it formed an alliance with the Republican Party.

Maldives Dissent welcomes this development and calls on the government to speed up the implementation of the employment act for resort workers.

"Golha Gasim" not sorry

2008-12-02T20:08:00.001-08:00

Gasim admits ordering the riot police in and Anni apologises for the incident, but a big question mark hangs over the stated commitment to human rights of the new government formed by the MDP-led coalition.

After the human rights commission stated that police used excessive force to break up a peaceful protest by workers on One And Only Reethi Rah Resort, including using irritant-spray and beating up people with batons, home minister Gasim Ibrahim was defiant. Instead of apologising to those hurt by the violence, he chose to thank the police for the "sincerity" with which they did their "duty". Maldivians will recall that after police murdered Hassan Eevan Naseem and other inmates in Maafushi jail, Gayoom also praised the police force and gave them promotions.

Gasim is aligning with the PR of Reethi Rah to conjure up bogus images of an island under threat: "If police had not been sent and buildings had been set on fire and people had been knifed, who would the public hold accountable?" Knifings have continued to happen in the capital Male regularly since Gasim took over as home minister but, to my knowledge, he hasn't lifted a finger to stop it. It's not clear quite why Gasim thought the striking workers on Reethi Rah would torch the island and knife the guests, but the resort's PR manager Zhannie Long also claimed to Minivan News that there was violence although she failed to substantiate her claim. "They were running around the resort," was the best she could manage. In fact the only time the workers breached the guest area was when they ran to the main restaurant to flee the attack by the police.

It's not surprising that Gasim, who owns a fleet of tourists resorts himself, is more concerned about corporate interests than human rights abuses. Indeed, he showed outright contempt for the human rights commissioner who, he said, "based his statement on hearsay."

Although the human rights commission should sue Gasim and Anni should sack him, it is unlikely to happen .

The Maldivian electorate rallied behind the MDP largely because they had had enough of the violence and human rights abuses perpetrated by the Gayoom government. Now, the new government has used precisely the same tactics to deal with the Reethi Rah crisis. The term "golha" springs to mind here and, by sending in the "golha force" to break up a legitimate protest, the home minister has clearly invited the title of "Golha Gasim".

Anni may have resolved the dispute between the strikers and the management of the Reethi Rah, but he must now see to the more difficult task seeing that justice is done in this sorry affair.

Reethi Rah protest resolved

2008-12-01T22:47:00.000-08:00

The Reethi Rah protest was resolved around midnight last night with protesters, the resort management and the Maldives government signing an agreement to this effect.

The Reethi Rah management agreed to implement the new employment act and I understand all of the demands by the protesters have been met barring calls for the removal of the manager.

However, the issue of the illegal crackdown by police on the peaceful protest and the use of excessive force, which resulted in injuries to protesters, remains. And, the Home Minister, Gasim Ibrahim, who called in the riot police, is yet to explain his actions in public.

Meanwhile there are protests going in other resorts of the Maldives.

Resort owners need to understand that the new employment act is now an un-negotiable reality and any delay in implementing it increases the risk of prosecution for violation of the constitution.

Independent commission to investigate Reethi Rah protest

2008-12-01T08:09:00.000-08:00

Last night the ruling party MDP held a council meeting to discuss the protest by staff of One And Only Reethi Rah Resort, and the government's shameful response. Members called for the formation of an independent commission to investigate and take legal action against those responsible. The commission is to complete its work by December 4 and to make recommendations to President Anni. Given that all the government has done up until now is try to cover up any wrongdoing, many will be skeptical about whether the commission will do anything useful.

Yesterday, Nasheed's 20-day-old government sent in riot police to break up a legal, peaceful protest in One And Only Reethi Rah Resort with excessive force, including kicking, beating, and pepper-spraying the protesters. When word got out, the police chose to lie to the public and deny what they had done. But the human rights commission published a damning statement and set the record straight. Since then, Anni's government has remained largely silent, even as the protesters, impatient with the lack of action, have since sunset today gone on hunger strike.

The government does not have to wait until December 4 to call on all resorts to implement the employment act and warn those failing to comply of legal action. Home Minister Gasim Ibrahim, who is said to have ordered the riot police to the resort, should also be made to explain his actions to the public. An apology by the police to those hurt would also go a long way.

Meanwhile One And Only bosses have reportedly been flown to Male and, at 10pm Monday, were said to be in a meeting with Anni and officials of TEAM, the Tourism Employees Association of Maldives.

Not all resorts want to go through all the this hassle to adopt the employment act. Kuredhdhoo today implemented the act after staff threatened to protest, while Bandos was one of the first to endorse employees rights.

Resort strike spreads to Raa

2008-11-30T22:05:00.000-08:00

All Maldivian staff at Meedhupparu, Raa Atoll, about 150 in all, have been on strike since 10pm Sunday night. They're protesting peacefully against the lack of implementation of the employment act by the management of the resort, discrimination against Maldivian staff, and poor working conditions, especially food and accomodation. Meedhupparu management at 11 am Monday morning had not met with the protesting staff. The protesters say they have informed the tourism ministry.

Reethi Rah protesters

2008-11-30T09:51:00.000-08:00

One of the Reethi Rah Resort protesters in handcuffs, with a gash below his right knee. Police denied using excessive force, but the human rights commission has said otherwise. According to the commission, police in riot gear used pepper spray and batons to break up a peaceful protest.

Anni's government has done very poorly in its first real test since taking power. To send in riot police to quash a legal protest is bad enough, but to do so in the early hours of the day can only mean one thing: someone wanted to bundle away the ringleaders before the guests, media, or the public got to know about it. In other words, whoever ordered the riot police did not believe in the right to peaceful protest, guaranteed by the constitution. Or did they hope that rounding off protesters on Reethi Rah would frighten protesters elsewhere from copying them?

Maldives police have already acted unconstitutionally by attempting to break up a peaceful protest; on top of that they've lied to the public. The management of Reethi Rah Resort and the government clearly wanted the protest to die a quiet death, but the brave protesters held out and were firm in their resolve not to let this go like demonstrations of the past.

Latest reports suggest Reethi Rah Resort have been forced to relent. But the government still has a lot of explaining to do. "Sorry" might be a good start.

Anni should be ashamed that Maldivians still have to shed their blood for basic rights enshrined in the constitution.

Reethi Rah staff say police are lying

2008-11-30T03:19:00.000-08:00

Maldives police have denied using excessive force, including tear-gas or pepper-spray, in their pre-dawn crackdown of a peaceful protest by staff of One And Only Reethi Rah Resort. But protesters say police are lying.

In the early hours of Sunday morning, about 50 or so riot police, they say, got on the luxury resort island, pepper-sprayed and severely beat up demonstrators to break up a protest. One of the protesters say he saw police tread on people's feet and spray pepper into their faces.

Peaceful protesting is allowed under the current constitutional and police may have acted unconstitutionally in Reethi Rah this morning.

Last night the protest, which had been continuing all day, lead to the firing of 13 staff, including the president and vice-president of TEAM (Tourism Employment Association of Maldives) by the management of the resort. Protesters are now calling for the removal of the resort's general manager and the training manager, who they blame not only for failing to implement the employment act but also for the mess hotel finds itself in today.

Meanwhile president Anni has denied knowledge of the decision by his home minister Gasim Ibrahim to send in riot police to quash the protest. But it is unlikely to inspire the confidence of either resort staff or the general public for the way the government has handled the crisis.

If the government really means to make amends it must admit that mistakes have been made if, indeed, they have; officials must take due responsibility and apologise to the staff of Reethi Rah Resort who have been injured in the crackdown or fired from their jobs; and remedial action must take place at once.

For a start, the government needs to get tough on all resorts failing to implement the employment act.

With parliamentary elections due early in the new year, Nasheed's government cannot afford to lose public confidence in their first real test since coming into power.

Anni's government uses 'golha force' to break up protest

2008-11-29T19:46:00.000-08:00

9.30am: According to protesters Anni has denied knowledge of Golha Force actions and promised to take prompt action. It now appears Home Minister Gasim Ibrahim took the decision to send in riot police without consulting with the president. Meanwhile the number of staff sacked by the management of Reethi Rah has risen to over 30.

New Maldives President Mohamed Nasheed's goverment has quelled its first protest by sending in riot-police, notoriously known as 'Golha Force'. In a pre-dawn attack today about 50 officers, in full riot gear, landed on One And Only Reethi Rah to tear-gas and beat up 200 protesters, who were demonstrating against the lack of implementation of the new Employment Act. According to the protesters, 'Golha Force', showed no restraint whatsoever and left many staff injured.

Earlier, yesterday evening, the management of One And Only Reethi Rah sacked 13 staff, including the president and vice-president of TEAM, the Tourism Employees Association of Maldives.

Yesterday Tourism Minister Ali Sawaad told Haveeru that the problem was in the lack of a clear understanding of the Employment Act by the staff and the management and promised to do all he could do to mediate between the parties to solve the issue.

Fareed attacks women again

2008-11-22T19:54:00.000-08:00

Sheikh Fareed, notorious for his fiery anti-women rants before he switched to the more popular target of Gayoom, isn't wasting time. In his first "sermon" after being given a preaching permit by the new Ministry of Islamic Affairs, he told an almost exclusively male crowd of thousands at the weekend that more women than men would go to hell. This was, he said, because women were more likely to sin than men.

While Fareed quoted misogynistic and disputed hadiths to support his claims, hard evidence from this country paints a very different picture. A 2007 survey found out that 1 in 3 Maldivian women aged 15-49 years of age have experienced physical or sexual abuse, while 1 in 6 had been sexually abused when they were under 15 years of age. Perpetrators in an overwhelming majority of cases of child abuse and violence against women are men.

It's not clear what Fareed is trying to achieve with this attempt to rouse disrespect and contempt for women. But, given the increased violence that Maldivian women and children live with, Fareed is sending a very dangerous signal to the perpetrators and, society at large.

The underlying reasons for violence and sexual abuse of women are complicated, but social scientist say they relate to the maintenance of hegemonic masculinity, which depends on the sexual, physical and emotional degradation of women. In many cultures, becoming a man and learning to disdain women go hand in hand. Cultural patterns, thus, enable men to learn to instigate and justify the physical, emotional, and sexual abuse of women.

Fareed and others like him, notably the 'scholars' of Adhalath Party, are the crudest examples of these patterns at play. Whenever the status of women have been raised in the Maldives in recent times these people have raised objections, usually in the name of 'Islam'. This is to frighten critics into silence. But these same people have ever uttered a word against the high prevalence of child sexual abuse in the Maldives, a fair share of it perpetrated by religious teachers and imams. Notably, not a single religious scholar raised their voice against the recent rape of a 14-year old girl by six men. Although the rapists confessed their crime they remain at large to this day, free to threaten and harass their victim and her family.

Fareed's sermon provides an implicit justification for these rapists, and feeds the disrespect and contempt of women necessary to maintain the cycle of violence against women and child sexual abuse in this country.

Urgent appeal to the police

2008-11-17T13:52:00.000-08:00

Last night around 8.30 I was chatting to a friend on the street when we heard a group of people running round the corner and a woman screaming. There was a young people's hangout nearby and I thought some friends were having a good time. Then there was a distinct thumping sound and the screaming got horrible. My friend and I ran to the corner to see a boy, about 15 years of age, repeatedly hitting someone with what appeared to be a piece of wood. As we stood transfixed, trying to make sense of what was happening, the boy threw the stick and ran off to a waiting motorbike to ride off with his buddy.

It looked like the boy had been hitting another boy and a woman had tried to intervene, earning a severe assault on herself. A crowd had gathered around them, including uniformed MTCC officials (the incident happened near the ferry station), but nobody appeared to have tried to stop the boy. By that time my friend had reached the spot he was furious, yelling at people for their inaction.

The most striking thing about the incident, surely, was the audacity of the scrawny young boy for carrying out the attack in full view of more than a dozen people. How did he know that no one would act, and that he would get away with it? Was it a backup of friends lurking in the background that gave him the confidence?

Two weeks ago, someone I know was mugged outside an ATM. He told me that around ten boys had crept up on him and held him, beating him and emptying out his pockets. One of the boys had even tried to hit him on the head with an iron bar but was mercifully stopped by his friends in the nick of time. They stole my friend's phone and credit card and asked him for the code. When he refused to to give it to them, they produced box cutters and grazed him lightly, drawing blood. He mumbled an old code, which enabled him to escape.

It happened at night, but in a crowded street. However, because the gang had formed a wall around him, people passing by hadn't seen what was going on. Or, perhaps, they had chosen not to see.

Muggings and violence, especially in the streets of Male are now common place. Surely one of the highest priorities of the new government is to clean up the streets of Male and other urban centres.

For a start, increased police presence in areas where gangs operate would help. The police should also issue urgent directives to the public on how to act upon experiencing or witnessing an attack. Unfortunately, Male is no longer the safe place it was and the sooner we acknowledge it the better.

It appears that most perpetrators of the recent spate of violence are adolescents, drug-addicts and disenfranchised youth, Gayoom's legacy now passed on to the new government. What to do with these young offenders should be one of the highest priorities of the government of Anni's "Other Maldives".

I lived for four years in a city of 250,000 in western Europe, which supposedly has higher levels of violence than the Maldives. But in all that time, there was only one murder and I don't remember ever being afraid to walk alone in its streets.

I can't help comparing that city to Male, the number of murders in the past four years, and the rising violence. Apart from the highly-guarded political figures, I wonder if anyone is comfortable the city they've lived for so long.

I did not sleep last night, because I thought I kept hearing a horrible thumping sound. But there was no screaming.

Pension and protection

2008-10-29T09:42:00.000-07:00

Defeated dictator Gayoom is wasting no time securing his own interests. Following his loss in the country's first ever elections in 30 years that the dictator did not rig, Gayoom invited president-elect Anni to his office to discuss, officially, smooth transition.

In fact he was trying to save face and protect himself from a population which for three decades he persecuted.

In a joint press-conference, Anni called Gayoom "one of the most important leaders of this country" and suggested that his government would not go on a witchhunt or dig the past. Thirty years ago Gayoom did the opposite.

Asia's longest serving dictator caused unprecedented misery to the family and in-laws of predecessor Ibrahim Nasir, after he took office in 1978. He framed Nasir's in-laws of plotting a coup attempt, threw them into prison, including women, and had them tortured, bound and dragged round the streets of Male. For details check out prisoner of conscience Luthfy's YouTube messages.

For years Gayoom stifled dissent by locking up dissenters and torturing them. One of the earliest of his victims was Sheikh Ahmed Adam. Most of the journalists involved in the short-lived opposition press of the early 1990s were jailed and persecuted. Just before Gayoom took office for this last term, his police beat to death a prison inmate, Hassan Eavan Naseem, and shot at point blank range others who protested against it. Although he was head of police, the dictator never apologised to the families of the victims. Indeed shortly after the incident, he promoted senior police officers in a function held to mark the anniversary of the armed forces.

It was Eavan's death that exposed Gayoom's torturous regime first hand to Maldivians and the wider world. In Male people took to the streets leading to the formation of the opposition movement. The dictator continued to lock up any opposition to his rule and it was only when the EU threatened to boycott representatives of his government from entering its territories that he relented.

But Gayoom today does not want to remember any of this choosing, instead, to brag how he introduced a modern liberal democracy to this country. Never one to shy away from blowing his own trumpet, Gayoom is remaining true to his character even in defeat. He called his contribution "the greatest legacy anyone can give." No mention was made of the findings of the auditor general's recent report on Gayoom's spending of his office budget. When someone mentioned the tsunami funds the dictator is alleged to have stolen, Anni brushed it off and said it hadn't been proved.

I'm not sure what the many who bravely stood up for their rights, enduring Gayoom's brutality in the process, will make of all this.

Meanwhile Gayoom likened losing the election to losing a game: "Sometimes we win, sometimes we lose."

Anni is remarkable if he can forgive and forget Gayoom for everything he's done. It remains to be seen, however, whether the rest of the Maldivians, especially those that suffered and have still been unable to clear their names, will follow his example.

President-elect Anni seems to appealing to people to treat the fallen dictator with honour and dignity. Many would argue that Gayoom has none.

Democracy wins

2008-10-28T18:58:00.000-07:00

As a new day breaks, bathing the nation's capital in glorious sunshine, Maldivians are also waking up to the prospect of their first new president in 30 years.

At 7.00am, all the ballot boxes had been counted and Anni had a 54.21 percent lead over Gayoom, who got 45.79 percent of the votes in a final round of elections which has had a voter turnout of 86.58 percent.

Minivannews.com is reporting that Anni and Gayoom are having early morning talks about the handover, which suggests things are not going to be volatile like people feared. But it is difficult to imagine that a dictator with Gayoom's history, does not have a final trick up his sleeve. Many thought a military coup was in the offing, but it hasn't happened yet.

Although Anni is right to work with Gayoom to ensure a smooth transition, he must not accept any conditions from the fallen dictator. The new government has more important things on its hand, but it is likely that families who suffered under the dictator will want to hold him accountable, before the country can really move on.

Anni is also inheriting monumental problems from Gayoom, including high levels of corruption, drugs, youth and gang warfare, and a fractured society that may take some time to adapt to democracy. Then there's the question of what to do with religious hardliners who want to establish a clerical body, as in Iran, to oversee Islam in the Maldives and to control everything else in the process.

By voting for Anni, Maldivians have voted for democracy and human rights, and in the hope of a better quality of life.

But we must never again hold back criticism and lavish praise on a leader so that they forget that they are servants of the people. Many who today are with Anni know this all too well because they made the same mistake with Gayoom.

Dissent must never die.

Breaking news: another case of prisoner abuse

2008-10-24T23:34:00.000-07:00

Maumoon Abdul Gayoom is currently promising huge sums of money to the parents of an abused prisoner, to silence them in the final days remaining for the final round of votes.

Abdul Latheef, the young prisoner who is in his mid-20s, is said to be recovering from surgery on a broken collar-bone. He might have sustained the injury more than two months ago, from severe torture by prison guards, say sources, but police tried to treat him in prison.

It is now certain that Gayoom knew of custodial and prisoner abuse, even sanctioned it to curb dissent. Early victims include Maizan Ali Manik, the father of popular singer Fasy, and Masodi Ahmed Naseem.

In 2003 Gayoom, who was the head of police, could have stopped the murder of Hassan Eevan Naseem. Police officer Ashwan wrote a comprehensive report on torture in Maafushi prison and sent copies to Gayoom, Adam Zahir, and Ambary Abdul Sattar. None took action and a few months later Eevan Naseem was dead.

Gender minister Aishath Mohamed Didi and legal reform minister Mohamed Nasheed knew about Ashwan's report as they were part of of the commission which investigated the murder of Eevan Naseem and other inmates. But Gayoom effectively silenced them with the cabinet portfolios and other undisclosed benefits.

Well-known writer and historian Ahmed Shafeeg, who was himself tortured in prison for mocking Gayoom in a personal diary, says he has catalogued at least 111 custodial deaths during the dictatorship.

While MDP have been talking about reconciliation and forgiveness, it is unlikely that the families of the victims will forget what Gayoom and Adam Zahir did, or how Aishath Didi and Nasheed helped to protect them.

The Adhaalath stake

2008-10-23T23:10:00.000-07:00

After prostituting itself from party to party, the Adhalath Party is now trying to get back into bed with the Maldivian Demorcratic Party, and bragging about its supposed "stake" in an MDP government. But the religious conservative party, which does not even have enough support to function independently as a political party, had lost face somewhat in the run up to the first round of elections.

The Adhaalath Party enjoyed some support when it was first formed, probably for the melodramatic anti-Gayoom rants by its scholars thrown at a populace fed up of nearly three decades of the dictatorship. But the novelty wore off as Adhaalath slowly settled down to its staple themes of misogyny and women's clothing. It is said that no Adhaalath meeting takes place without a mention of the buruga.

But the democratic mood sweeping across the nation was at odds with the Adhaalath ideology. Women were an active, integral part of the demonstrations against Gayoom, and gender discrimination was slowly evaporating from the legislature. Despite vehement opposition by the Adhaalath Party and the MDP's own resident misogynist BA Ahmed Naseem, the constitution was amended to allow women not only to take up the post of magistrate but also the top job itself.

Finding itself increasingly out of touch in the shifting social and political dynamics, Adhaalath was silenced for a while. But the party soon started to tread on trickier ground by criticising Hassan Saeed's book Apostasy and Islam, even as its scholars failed to argue convincingly against the principal premise of that academic work. Having lost the argument, there was a point when Adhaalath was even supporting Saeed for president, before migrating to the Republican Party and all the money that the endorsement entailed.

However, with the opening up of the media and greater audience interaction, scholars of the Adhaalath Party found itself embroiled in yet another crisis. On their live shows, orrdinary citizens were irreverently questioning their positions and openly expressing contempt. The Party, which for so long had exploited people's fear and ignorance of religion, was not in the habit of having to provide evidence for its sweeping statements.

But their biggest defeat came when they challenged Gayoom in the Supreme Court with claims that the dictator was not a Sunni Muslim and, therefore, ineligible to run for office. Liberal scholars in Gayoom's payroll, however, easily tore into the arguments of Adaalath's Hussein Rasheed Ahmed and Abdul Majeed Bari. An observer remarked: "They didn't have either the academic background or the debating power to argue against Gubaad Abu Bakur and Afrasheem Ali." Fortunately for Adhaalath, their humiliating defeat was not publicised too much.

The Adhaalath Party was subjected to further ridicule when it stated its reason for endorsing the Republican Party. Gasim Ibrahim, they claimed, had demonstrated that he could "control" four wives and, therefore, could run a country. In the event, the Adhalath's professed influence over the electorate was not so great after all; Gasim secured less votes than Hassan Saeed in the first round of elections.

With the formation of the coalition, the MDP have unwittingly inherited the Adhaalath Party. Although the support of the religious conservatives may serve as a useful counter-argument to Gayoom's allegations that the opposition party is Christian, MDP insiders are saying the Adhaalath Party is more a headache than a blessing.

While the MDP want to be seen as a champion of democracy and human rights, they also want the conservative vote. Maintaining a balance can be challenging and Adhaalath are not helping with their persistent and, unconstitutional, rhetoric.

Abdul Majeed Abdul Bari recently said that women can be teachers, doctors and counsellors but not the leader of a country because "it is directly against Islam". But a position paper presented by the government of Saudi Arabia at the UN Conference on women in Beijing in 1996 stated that: "There is absolutely nothing in the Quran which directly or indirectly forbids a woman to become the head of a state, or even suggests that she is essentially incompetent for the position."

The Adhaalath Party are also unable to keep quiet about the role they think they will have in a future government. The MDP have pledged to create an independent council of Islamic affairs and the Adhaalath Party obviously want to head that body. But the Adhaalath's vision of the council may differ to MDP's.

The religious conservative party in 2006 called for a free and independent scholars council "that has priority over all the powers of the state." Moreover, the party's Abdul Majeed Abdul Bari has said that he supports the direct implementation of "hadd" punishments under Shariah Law, including the death penalty for apostasy if the person in question fails to re-convert.

But Maldivians have historically opposed "hadd" punishment and the death penalty. Indeed, no such punishment has been carried out in the country since the 1950s. The Maldives can also boast of having had one of first Islamic heads of state in the world, several centuries ago.

But a group of failed, incompetent misogynists is now vying to turn the clock back. They have shown that they will sleep with anyone to reclaim a position of power in the new government.

Where political prostitution goes the Adhaalath Party is the biggest slut in the Maldives.

Cash for votes

2008-10-13T11:41:00.000-07:00

It is emerging that Gayoom may have bought votes in the first round. Islanders of Hulhudhoo, Seenu Atoll, have reported to Minivan News that DRP representatives paid them 100-500 Rufiyaa to vote for the dictator. Meanwhile, there are similar allegations in Hulhumale, where MDP supporters claim to have seen Leela, a DRP supporter, paying out 500 Rufiyaa bills to residents to vote for Gayoom. In both cases, it appears that female DRP representatives have targeted mainly women voters.

An old hand at vote-rigging from a southern atoll, who has now defected to MDP, told me that a sizeable percentage of Gayoom's votes may have come from female voters. According to him, women's development committees were used by Gayoom on the eve of the elections to bribe women to vote for him. Blogger Abdulla Waheed has estimated that Gayoom may have got up to 20,000 votes through the work of loyal supporters in the island administration and the women's committees.

According to senior officials of island administrations, semi-governmental organisations such as the women's committees and the island development committee habitually rig elections. Indeed, that may be the sole reason for their existence.

The auditor general has also pointed out, in his latest report, that Gayoom made several appointments to the posts of atoll chief, deputy atoll chief and assistant atoll chief in the run-up to the elections. According to the auditor general, the appointments were made "to promote DRP's presidential campaign."

Attorney general Azima Shukoor vehemently denied the auditor general's findings, while her brother Athif Shukoor, the DRP media manager, has said complaints regarding vote-buying, illegal under the new constitution, should be "officially lodged at the appropriate bodies."

While both the Shukoors hold high offices in the Gayoom government, their father is a beneficiary of the controversial "loans" scheme operated by the president's office and uncovered by the magazine Adduvas two years ago.

The auditor general has now called for an immediate cessation to the issuing of loans by the president's office.

The Shukoors are typical of DRP supporters, people who only rally behind Gayoom for money, loans, or high government posts.

The Gayoom audit

2008-10-07T02:35:00.000-07:00

The auditor general's audit of the president's office is so damaging that it may cost Gayoom the presidency. Maldivians have long known of the dictator's use of state funds to amass the wealth of his friends and family and to sustain the dictatorship, but this report provides the actual evidence needed to remove the man from office and out of running.

According to the report the president's office has issued loans of millions of dollars to unspecified individuals and parties of which close to 4 million US dollars have not been paid back.

The report also reveals that the president's office made cash payments of more than half a million US dollars to two individuals in the armed forces most of it for undisclosed "government needs". The individuals may well be Anbaree Abdul Sattar and Adam Zahir, or the "chief torturer", believed by many to have been instrumental in setting up the culture of torture that has physically and psychologically abused Gayoom's opponents, even killed them, in Maldives prisons.

The auditor general has described these loans as politically influenced, warning that getting the money back will be tough.

The president's office, it emerged, has also been bribing the newspapers Haveeru, Afathis, and Miadhu.

But the most damaging thing in the report is the disclosure that the auditor general is currently investigating Gayoom himself: his possessions, money, business interests and loans.

This is political dynamite and MDP and New Maldives have already made statements in response to the report while former attorney general Azima Shukoor was on TV, at the time of writing this post, unsuccessfully trying to defend the dictator.

The opposition, including MDP who have been too soft on Gayoom lately, must call on the prosecutor general to take action against Gayoom.

This is no time for reconciliation. Gayoom must face justice for what he has done.

Anni or Hassan Saeed?

2008-10-03T18:44:00.000-07:00

The way I see things, either Anni or Hassan Saeed may win the presidential race, with Gayoom and Ibra following close behind. Umar Naseer, to my mind, will sink to the bottom with Gasim for company.

These are extremely subjective predictions based solely on intuition and observation.

I think the turning point came with the live broadcasting of a Q&A involving all presidential hopefuls, in which Hassan Saeed shone, Anni was tame, Ibra spoke well, and Gayoom, Gasim and Umar Naseer slipped into insignificance.

Since a previous post in which I said Gasim had the best chance to clinch the presidency the mood of the people has changed dramatically. The about turn is the outcome of growing engagement in politics by people of all walks of life.

So here's my new "chart".

1)Hassan Saeed

Saeed has been amassing huge support for months and this is manifesting itself in every poll. Given that he lacks direct access to the media like Gayoom and Anni, his campaign can be said to be doing extremely well. Saeed's speeches and rebuttals are direct, economic, and stinging (as Gayoom found out at the Q&A). Saeed is standing up well to criticism by his envious opponents, mostly Gayoom and Anni, and daily gaining more voters.

2)Anni

Anni has bounced back somewhat, the result of door to door campaigning by hardcore MDP supporters. But his partnership with DRP, to powershare the elections commission, and endorsement of the religious right may have lost him some voters. At the Q&A, Anni refrained from criticising Gayoom as a result of which the limelight was stolen by Ibra and Hassan Saeed. Both DRP and Adhalath have now dumped him, and it remains to be seen if Anni can be exciting again.

3)Gayoom

Nobody likes a dictator, but Gayoom will still get some votes because he gives orders to Atoll Chiefs, his stooges people the supreme court and the elections commission, and he owns the government media and the armed forces. I wouldn't be surprised if a contingency plan is already in place, should he lose the elections, for a military takeover of some kind involving Adam Zahir. Gayoom cannot accept defeat.

4)Ibra

Ibra may be a good orator and he clearly has the cleanest slate of the lot, but he just doesn't have the resources to step up his campaign. However, he can still expect a respectable share of the votes.

5)Gasim

Gasim had everything, money, manpower, and beneficiaries who would have supported him. Money can't buy everything, however, and his highly paid advisors and campaign managers have clearly failed him. Candidates with less resources are running better campaigns.

6)Umar Naseer

Totally out of touch with the mood of the people. The fight for democracy that this country has experienced in the last few years was the outcome of a reaction against police brutality on unarmed prisoners. But Umar Naseer is calling to empower the armed forces even more and, indeed, is alleged to have abused people in detention when he was in the NSS. His ill-informed reactionary rants are not helping either.

Gayoom: the biggest threat to human rights and the environment

2008-09-28T02:46:00.000-07:00

Maumoon Abdul Gayoom is in a marketing overdrive not only to sell himself to the Maldives electorate for a staggering 7^th term in office, but also to the committee that will award the coveted Nobel Peace Prize this year. After causing 30 years of human rights abuse and environmental degradation, Asia’s longest serving dictator is now demanding international acclaim for what he and his family regard as exceptional contribution to the advancement of the environmental cause and human rights.

Maldivians will find it incredulous that the Nobel committee can even consider Gayoom for the prize but there is reasonable ground to believe that they actually might laureate the dictator. Firstly, Gayoom’s foreign ministry team, headed by his daughter Dunya Maumoon, is arguing that it was Gayoom who introduced the idea of environmental rights as a human right to the world, and this concept has been gaining support among international developmental circles. Secondly, the Nobel Peace Prize has never been awarded to anyone in South Asian, a region comprising a sixth of the world’s population, and the organisors may well want to broaden laureates geographically. With co-ordinated effort by the foreign ministry, unscrupulous diplomats in South Asia, and perhaps even a Maldivian environmental NGO hastily put together for the purpose getting Gayoom laureated, the prospect does not seem so inconceivable after all.

Maumoon Abdul Gayoom in the 1980s embraced the environmental buzz sweeping the world, not really taking it to heart but regarding it as a means of earning international praise and aid, most of which is said to have been pocketed by his buddies with whom he ran the country.

Gayoom’s development policy has never in three decades ever seriously considered environmental impacts. For example, he has dynamited the fragile coral reefs of most of the country’s 200 inhabited island to build artificial harbours, and carried out dredging to reclaim land for the growing population. Gayoom also has a habit of building expensive artificial islands to move the population when there are several large island villages with perfect natural harbours. And, the dictator has resisted calls to protect threatened marine species such as sharks; shark teeth, for instance, are still allowed to be sold in souvenir shops even though ordinary Maldivians have long protested.

Moreover, Gayoom owns a fleet of 30-50 vehicles on the two-square kilometer capital of Male, as well as several speed boats for his personal transport, and can accurately be described as the biggest polluter in the Maldives.

In an article published in the International Herald Tribune Gayoom goes to lengths to market himself as a champion of the environment, deriding world leaders for appearing “content to allow countries like the Maldives to disappear beneath the waves, while they continue to make a deeply unethical trade-off between human lives and rights on one hand, and economic growth.” Gayoom, while criticising others, fails to realize the neglect by his own government in three decades to meet the basic needs of his people. As much as 60 percent of the Maldivian population has no access to adequate sewage disposal or, indeed, safe drinking water.

When the 2004 tsunami struck the Maldives the dictator downplayed its impacts on national radio and TV without checking on the plight of the people first. Later, when it emerged that several islands, most of which had had its reefs dynamited by Gayoom, were irreparably damaged, he used the worst natural disaster in the country’s living memory to get unprecedented foreign aid. Four years later, nobody has a clue where all the money went but most of the displaced tsunami victims are still in shoddy temporary shelters.

Gayoom’s human rights record is even worse. Ahmed Shafeeg, a respected historian who was jailed and tortured by Gayoom for writing unsavoury comments about him in a personal diary and sharing them with friends, estimates that the deaths of more than 100 people may have been caused by the regime. There are several well-documented cases of prisoner abuse, far more shocking than anything that ever emerged out of Quantanamo, in what can only be described as a culture of torture. As head of police Gayoom knew of the abuse and, indeed, may even have ordered it to force would-be opponents into submission.

One of the earliest opponents of Gayoom, Ahmed Adam, the dictator’s classmate in Egypt, died from years of torture. Madulu Ahmed Waheed, a brilliant writer of the now banned “Hukuru” magazine, which openly criticized Gayoom in the 1990s, didn’t die , but years of abuse in police custody and prison has reduced him to a state of autism. Today, Waheed can be seen walking on the streets of Male, mostly in Machchangolhi, seemingly unresponsive to anyone or anything.

The 2004 beating to death of Hassan Evan Naseem by Gayoom’s police and the point-blank shooting of unarmed prisoners who protested against the murder are also well-documented. Custodial deaths have been happening even as late as 2007, but inquiry by the shameful human rights commission, which comprises of Gayoom’s friends who pretend to be independent, have always cleared the dictator and his regime of wrong-doing. Of the members of the presidential commission which investigated the murder of Evan Naseem and others in prison, Aishath Mohamed Didi and Mohamed Nasheed were silenced with ministerial posts. At present they are the most fervent defenders of Gayoom.

Instead of buying Gayoom’s paltry propaganda, the international community should be helping Maldivians send Maumoon Abdul Gayoom to Hague, for crimes against humanity.

If you’re as outraged as I am about Gayoom’s nomination for the Nobel Peace prize, write to Professor Gair Lundestad, Director, Norwegian Nobel Institute. His email is gl@nobel.no

You may also want to sign a petition against the nomination

http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/No_Noble_Prize4_Gayoom/index.html

Gasim, Gayoom and the great Maldives election

2008-08-24T21:57:00.000-07:00

With the emergence of Gasim in the presidential lineup, Gayoom's 30-year-dictatorship is looking more threatened than it ever did. Of the 8 candidates contesting this year's presidential elections here's a list of the only contenders who, to my mind, have any chance of swinging the first multi-party elections of the Maldives.

1)Gasim Ibrahim
Filthy rich Gasim has the resources, the people, and the willpower to get the job done. Yes, he may employ questionable methods to achieve his goal, whether it means buying parliamentarians or voters themselves. But nobody can argue that his chances of success are very high indeed. As much as half the Maldives population may have benefited directly or indirectly from his health handouts or educational grants. Now, Gasim is effectively asking them to pay him back by voting for him. On the positive side, he's less despised than Gayoom, has more vision, and has qualified and experienced people working on his campaign.

2)Maumoon Abdul Gayoom
Regarded by most Maldivians as a washed out dictator and an object of ridicule, Maumoon Abdul Gayoom, nevertheless, thinks of himself as smart, handsome, young at heart, and loved by the people. This man continues to use state funds, TV, radio, and even the national football team for his campaign. He still has control over the armed forces, and has his stooges as Island Chiefs and Atoll Chiefs although the level of their influence over ordinary islanders has diminished somewhat. If Mohamed Amin modernised the Maldives through education and social change, Ibrahim Nasir continued the gains by laying the foundations for the country's greatest foreign exchange earners: tourism and fisheries. Gayoom basked in the results of the work of his predecessors but lacked the vision to build on it. On the positive side...no I can't think of anything good to say about him!

Gayoom will be remembered as the corrupt dictator who tried to crush every attempt by the people to bring democracy; the man who sanctioned the torture and killing of defenseless Maldivians; the advocate of child sexual abuse; and, most important of all, the bad cricket player.

3)Anni
Anni shone in the early 90, a true radical, unafraid to take on Gayoom's cruel and corrupt dictatorship to fight for democracy and justice. His work to expose Gayoom's dictatorship to the wider world is also commendable. But his misguided pandering to the religious right is downright shameful. He has ignored the role of women in the opposition movement, and in the formation and day to day running of MDP; gender equality is not part of either his "Clean Maldives" or his "Other Maldives". He lies when it suits him, patronizes ordinary people, and finds it hard to listen to anyone who disagrees with his views.

MDP today is a fragmented movement that has lost the ideals it stood for, ideals which were rooted in a widespread desire for democracy and human rights. Lately, Anni has taken to harping on Gayoom's positive contribution to the country and insists that the dictator can run for a seventh term in office, even though the amended constitution limits leadership to two terms in office. In return, Gayoom's apologist, information minister, and hearty blogger Nasheed has said the government does not consider Anni's sentence for petty theft a disqualification for his presidential bid. All very cozy indeed, but Anni may only be joining the enemy to fight Gasim.

3)Ibra
One of the first casualties of Anni's "dictatorship", Ibra is a brilliant orator who is slowly and steadily winning the confidence of the public. His unwavering contribution to amending the constitution, a process which he rightly called the slow, systematic stripping of Gayoom's powers, must be lauded. Unfortunately, like Anni, he never found the right balance between the contradictory ideologies of the religious right on the one hand and human rights on the other. Ibra also probably doesn't have the finances to push an aggressive campaign to get himself elected.

4)Hassan Saeed
I really liked this man, as he stood for liberal ideals such as the freedom of religion, a fundamental human right. He stood up not only against Gayoom, but also extremists, something Anni and Ibra were too spineless to do. But he's also said to be a bit of an elitist and out of touch with ordinary people. Lately he's been heard a lot on radio and has reportedly built himself quite a fan-base. Nevertheless, his campaign, like Ibra's, just isn't aggressive enough to win a substantial electorate at this point of time.

So what does the future hold for us?

As things stand I predict a close win for Gasim. This will get Gayoom out, but will leave the country in the hands of unscrupulous, capitalist who will not only control its wealth and its parliament, but will also by the country's fledgeling media.

There's a way out, however, and that is for Anni, Ibra and Hassan join forces. If they launch a joint campaign, have elections pushed back to December as Ibra suggests, they may, just may, win the hearts and minds of the Maldivian public, if not fill their pockets.

MDP's step backward

2008-08-17T22:37:00.000-07:00

Last week saw Maldivian Democratic Party MDP step back, yet again, on its stated commitment to gender equality.

Shortly after presidential candidate Mohamed Nasheed Anni announced Dr. Aminath Jameel as his running mate, the party's religious right reportedly went into a diatribe against the nomination. It didn't seem to take too long to convince Anni to withdraw the nomination.

The party's Islamic consultative council, headed by Adam BA Naseem, declared the nomination un-Islamic but failed, as usual, to provide any evidence for the pronouncement. Naseem and fellow-misogynists from the Adhaalath Party have a history of openly hurtling anti-women rants on the populace in the name of Islam, without necessarily furnishing a supporting argument. In fact Islamic scholarship is producing a number of academics who are successfully challenging conventional positions. But when people like Dr. Afraasheem Ali and, belatedly, Dr. Hassan Saeed, try to present alternative interpretations, BA Naseem and co are unable to argue convincingly against them and, as a result, resort to name-calling. In some cases, hardline 'scholars' have even called for the death of people's whose views they're incapable of debating.

These marginally qualified 'scholars' have only been able get their way in the "reform process" because of spineless politicians like Anni, who seem more fearful of offending a handful of Adhaalath supporters than safeguarding the rights of half of the country's population.

There will be those who jump at my dismissal of Adhaalath supporters. But even from a political point of view, they're not substantial enough to justify the surrendering of basic human rights. If these people comprised a significant proportion of the population, the Adhaalath Party and the Islamic Democratic Party would have the highest number of members, not the DRP and the MDP.

Many MDP sympathisers say they are 'disappointed' with Anni, and also Dr. Aminath Jameel and Maria for putting up with his shameful behaviour. But they should remember that MDP, despite professing otherwise, has a very poor record with regard to gender equality.

Early in 2007, the MDP's religious consultative council issued a fatwa against the party's assistant secretary Aishath Aniya, for an article in which she criticised 'scholars' for trying to lower the status of women through misogynistic interpretations of Islam. She was forced to go into hiding and resign from her post, while Anni and the party's president Munavvar didn't utter a word in public in support of Aniya's right to the freedom of expression.

Also in 2007, BA Naseem threatened to leave the party because of its support for the appointment of female judges, but Anni put his foot down. "The policies of our party are very clear," he told minivannews.com. "All men are equal."

The professed commitment to equality didn't stop MDP members from proposing an amendment to the constitution to bar women from running for presidency, which received the support of 'reformist' Mohamed Shihab and an abstinence by 'liberal' Ibra. Fortunately, Gayoom's unelected members defeated the motion and Maldivian women can now run for leadership, a right which the MDP did not want them to have.

In defense, MDP members have tried to throw the tired argument that gender equality is secondary at a time when all effort must go into getting Gayoom out. All indications are, however, that MDP may lack the tactics or the resources for even its number one task.

All is not lost though. Buruma Gasim and his Republican Party are reportedly buying all the politicians and voters necessary to dethrone Gayoom. If they succeed, MDP will become as 'insignificant' as the gender issue it tried to push under the carpet.

Gayoom scores another one

2008-06-17T06:23:00.000-07:00

If Gayoom hoped to score political points with the national football team's first gold, he must be a happy man today. He seems to have fooled everyone, including the opposition, as he led the nation to a dance calculated to garner maximum support and exposure for himself and cover up those uncomfortable day to day events that just aren't part of the reality he wants people to see, hear, or question.

An unconfirmed report suggests that the high profile child sexual abuse case involving a close ally of Gayoom at the President's Office, which was conducted behind closed doors, may have quietly reached a not guilty verdict.

At the same time, scores of people from Kulhudhuffushi, who did nothing more than demand why the government isn't keeping its promises, have been arrested for allegedly inciting and taking part in the violent removal of minister Ahmed Abdulla from their island. Given well-documented human rights abuses in custody, people have a right to be concerned about the plight of these people.

Meanwhile the economy, which has been in shambles for a long time, has taken another downturn. Maldives Monetary Authority governor Abdulla Jihad is warning of a massive drop in the country's foreign reserves as a result of government overspending, even as Gayoom continues his extravagant campaign handouts.

Each player and official of the national football team was paid an amount of over US$15,000 by Gayoom. The dictator later said that the SAFF trophy would travel to all inhabited Maldivian islands, the clearest signal that the dictator intends to milk the football glory for everything it's worth for his upcoming elections.

But this shameful bribery by Gayoom on national television, mounting reports of human rights abuses by the police, the release of pro-government paedophiles, and the collapse of the economy seem to be the last things on peoples minds as the mad frenzy of the football celebrations enters its third day---just as Gayoom planned.

It's a sad day for the country when no one will raise their voices against Gayoom, even though everyone can see through him.

The national football team should apologise to the Maldivian public for selling out to Gayoom by presenting him with the No. 1 football shirt. With DRP's top Gayoom arse-licker Hanim behind the move, the football association of the Maldives has allowed its members and players to show political allegiance to the dictator.

In the game against India, Maldivian footballers may have outshone in skill and tact, but in Gayoom's political game they've proved to be passive, greedy and gullible.

Father of football

2008-06-14T07:34:00.000-07:00

Maldivians, for a change, are dancing to dictator Gayoom's tune. As the sun set today, the entire country, if "Golha TV" is to be belived, was wearing red in support of its national football team in the SAFF final in Colombo tonight.

It should be noted that never in Gayoom's three decades has the Maldives football team clinched a championship, despite disproportionate spending by his government in a region dominated by cricket.

Maldivian football players showed their gratitude at the start of the championship by presenting Gayoom with a red football shirt emblazoned "Maumoon Number 1". This extraordinary endorsement of the dictator is, by default, an endorsement of his government's appalling human rights record and disregard to justice.

There are those who argue that sport is above politics. But this argument doesn't really apply to a country in which the government controls everything to do with sports, from who gets invited to sit on the stage in the national stadium to the hairlength of footballers.

When a TV Maldives announcer a few years ago expressed support for Gayoom, in a public broadcast, the public was quick to label her "Golha Waleed".

But when national football players endorsed the dictator, nobody called them "Golha Team".

Maldivians, by supporting the national football team, are turning their backs on the cold-blooded murder of Hassan Eevan Naseem and other inmates in Maafushi jail in 2003 by the dictator's police.

As I write this post, Gayoom is likely to be wearing his football shirt and watching Maldives play mighty India, hoping for a chance to call himself the "father of football".

If he succeeds, most Maldivians will have no right to make fun of him.

Bastardising Islam

2008-05-14T23:17:00.000-07:00

When Islamic Democratic Party leader Umar Naseer declared that only Muslims would have Maldivian citizenship, he was going against a fundamental right in Islam.

The Quran is very clear on its position on the freedom of religion. According to verse 2:256, "There is no compulsion in religion", while verse 109.6 states "Unto you your religion, and unto me my religion". A third, verse 18:29 says "Whosoever will, let him believe, and whosoever will, let him disbelieve".

Religious belief and practice, therefore, is a personal matter as, indeed, only Reeko Moosa Manik seems to have had the courage to say openly. Anyone who wants to force Islam on others are operating outside the religious mandate.

This is the central premise of "Apostasy and Islam", which presidential hopeful Hassan Saeed wrote with his brother. The book seems to have suddenly offended the Adhalath Party and the IDP and its spineless co-writer has chosen to bend down under the pressure and distance himself from the book, in much the same way Anni and Munawwar looked the other way when the religious right literally called for former MDP assistant secretary general Aishath Aniya's blood after her anti-buruga article.

The Adhalat Party, a political party that appears to devote most of its meetings to misogynistic rants and women's clothing, has declared the book anti-Islamic. As with their criticism of Afrasheem, the only openly liberal Islamic scholar in the Maldives, the party hasn't bothered to provide any intelligent argument against the book. Only ignorance and extremism can explain the Adhalat-IDP vilification of a book that so strongly argues for an essential Islamic right.

Umar Naseer, in his condemnation of Hassan Saeed for having been part of the book, has called for a ban. His main argument is that it might encourage Maldivians with lesser intelligence than himself to renounce Islam. In fact, its people like Umar Naseer and Abdul Majeed Abdul Bari that put people off Islam.

A former cop, probably still in Gayoom's payroll, Umar Naseer has been accused by 'backbone' Mahir of torturing him in prison. Although Naseer denies the allegation, he has always been pro-police. Recently, he even justified the notorious 2003 police shooting of unarmed prisoners, which sparked all the political developments in the Maldives and, in fact, allowed him to form a political party.

Maldivians have habitually been easy-going Muslims. But Maumoon Abdul Gayoom changed all that when he came into office in 1978. Together with his buddy Zahir Hussein, Gayoom spread religious right wing ideology to remote islands and is today under threat from this very ideology. MDP's Kalhube Abdul Latheef, among others, helped Gayoom in the campaign and has since switched sides to carry on with the same work inside MDP.

The Maldives today must surely boast the most number of political parties per capita in the world. Although fragmented, these parties show a strange unity when it comes to religious matters. The religious right, whichever party they may belong to, always joins forces to oppose any attempt to educated Maldivians in more liberal interpretations of Islam.

Some years back, when Amina Wadoud gave a lecture in the Maldives and 'scholars' of the religious right failed to challenge her, she was declared a lesbian. When Afrasheem started to introduce liberal interpretations of Islam, he was physically attacked and called a stooge of Gayoom.

The outlook doesn't look healthy for Maldivians who want true democracy, including the right to the freedom of religion. Although the New Maldives manifesto appears to promise liberal teachings of Islam, this is yet to happen. For now, the Maldives is in the hands of the religious right and extremists, who have hijacked and bastardised Islam, and no 'reformist' will utter a murmer against them.

Murdering music

2008-03-30T05:25:00.000-07:00

When former MDP chairman Mohamed Nasheed launched his campaign for the party's presidential nomination, he chose to call it "Thaahiru Dhiriulhun" or "Hygienic Life". While Anni may officially take hygienic existence to mean being able to afford ice cream every month, no one can fail to notice the right wing connotations in the phrase. It shouldn't, therefore, come as a surprise that Anni describes his party as a centre-right party.

The largest political party in the Maldives has long allowed itself to be ruled by right wing ideals, particularly the religious right. When MDP's assistant secretary-general Aishath Aniya received death threats for questioning the need to wear the buruga, or the headscarf, from conservative Islamists within and outside the party, neither Anni nor Munavvar uttered a word to condemn the threats or to defend Aniya's right to the freedom of expression.

Now, both these 'reformists' have openly gone against Article 18 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, by publicly saying Maldivian citizens can only practice Islam. MP Ibrahim Ismail or Ibra, head of the officially unrecognised Social "Liberal" Party, has also repeatedly said that the country can only have Islam as its religion. As a member of the UN, the Maldives should in theory support its declarations; unfortunately in practice the UDHR is not binding. In 2005 the Maldives, under pressure, signed the International Covenant on Civil and Political and Rights or ICCPR with reservation against Article 18, which regards the freedom of religion, thought and conscience. Dictator Gayoom, in his last terms in office---and let's hope they are his last---signed any international treaty he was asked to sign, but continues to violate them at will.

Meanwhile, the religious right has bullied its way into the Maldivian way of life, by infiltrating its every facet. From the media to education, from family life to politics no institution has been spared. When a man was slashed and burnt severely on the island of Himendhoo in Alif Atoll, allegedly by its religious militants, police dismissed the case as one of self-infliction. The Adhalath Party had earlier advised them to practice extreme caution in its resolution. Today, we're so scared of the religious right that even marriage between "Haaby" adult males and underaged girls are failing to register public protest.

Earlier in the year, when MDP members proposed an ammendment to the new constitution to bar women from running for presidency, its leadership failed to distance itself from the motion. Notable 'reformists' like Mohamed Shihab MP voted for it, while the 'liberal' Ibra abstained. Abstinence in this case can only be interpreted as siding with the misogynists, an accusation Ibra has repeatedly fail to address. Paradoxically, it was due to Gayoom's much criticised unelected members that this particular right of Maldivian women will now be preserved in the new constitution.

And now, the religious right are targeting the arts. A recent meeting by former pop singer Ali Rameez's NGO Jamiyyathu Salaf, with representatives from the MDP and the government's supreme council for Islamic affairs, proclaimed music as "haraam", or prohibited in Islam. Ali Rameez, who made a fortune singing hundreds of songs to tunes stolen from Bollywood, is a success story in the religious right's infiltration of popular culture. The right wing organisation held the meeting in a reaction against the emergence of more liberal interpretations of Islam, especially by Dr. Afrashim Ali, who holds a PHd in Fiqh or Islamic jurisprudence.

Failing to challenge Dr. Ali in public debates, the religious right have resorted to character assassination and, even, physical assault. But what is disturbing about these developments is the part played by MDP's 'reformists' in the systematic rubbishing of liberal views. Believing Dr. Ali to be a stooge of Gayoom because of Information minister Nasheed's backing for him, the opposition has effectively joined forces with the likes of Ali Rameez, and the odious and hyprocritical Mohamed Rasheed Ibrahim, to stem the spread of liberal interpretation of Islam at a time when the country most needs it.

Liberal scholars quote from Verse 2:256 of the Quran, and other texts, to argue that Islam prohibits Muslims to force any person into Islam. Interestingly, Dr. Hassan Saeed, in a book he co-wrote with his brother, "Apostasy in Islam', takes a similar position. In his manifesto, his first priority appears to be to strengthen Islam in the Maldives, but through moderate and liberal teachings. But Dr. Saeed has not come forward to defend liberal Islamic interpretation, suggesting that he intends to take a less risky road for his presidential campaign.

For musicians and artists who hold genuinely liberal views, the immediate future looks bleak. As democratic ideals and human rights get buried under pop-politics, and music overtakes the buruga as the latest target of choice of the religious right, it is becoming all too clear that Maldivians can expect little help from the self-proclaimed 'liberals', 'reformists' or 'human rights activists'.

Anni's "Hygienic Life" could well mean a life clean of democracy, human rights, and music.

Ibra for president

2008-03-19T23:28:00.000-07:00

Ibrahim Ismail, high-profile MP and leader of the Social Liberal Party, early this morning mass-texted Maldivians to announce his intention to run for the country's top job. Ibra is making the announcement less than a week after a parliamentarian committee he is chairing grilled police commissioner or "chief torturer" Adam Zahir over the treatment of detainees, particularly the custodial deaths of Hussain Solah and Muaviath Mahmood.

Ibra has been trying to address issues and bring change from within the framework of the parliament and the constitutional assembly, and has a high-level of support among discerning Maldivians. Moreover, he is easily the best orator amidst the "reformists" and "politicians" that have cropped up in post-Eavan Naseem Maldives.

Ibra beat Munnavar and Zaki to become MDP's first president, but was later isolated within the party due to differences with its chairman and populist trends. Some have commented that Gayoom's two ex-ministers cajoled Anni into making things so difficult for Ibra that he was eventually forced to leave.

But Ibra's commitment to human rights, particularly gender equality, has been questioned. When an MDP member introduced a bill banning women from running for presidency, Ibra chose to play safe by voting neutral. People who have worked with him claim that he considers women inferior to men; he has reportedly remarked to people that he believes women are unsuitable to be the leader of a country because they are "easier to manipulate".

Ibra has also repeatedly opposed the freedom of religion. Islam, he has publicly stated, must remain state religion, and the country's growing and, largely, closeted non-Muslims are understandably concerned about such attitudes coming from a leader of a party that calls itself social "liberal" party.

But with the right campaign, Ibra could well win the hearts and minds of a population not only disillusioned with Gayoom's dictatorship, but fed up of its fragmented opposition.

Teaching torture: from one Zahir to another

2008-03-12T00:59:00.000-07:00

Systematic torture, ranging from petty torment to gruesome murder, characterises Maumoon Abdul Gayoom's three decades of dictatorship, and the detention centres of Dhoonidhoo, Atholhuvehi and Maafushi prison have a notoriety, in the Maldives, that is equal to Abu Ghuraib or Quantanamo Bay. While sources leaning towards the Maldives Democratic Party or MDP tend to credit the commissioner of police Adam Zahir with much of the torture that goes on in those places, its foundation may have been laid much earlier, by another Zahir.

Old Gayoom faithful Umar Zahir, an ex-cabinet minister who held every portfolio under the sun, might have been the single-most important influence in the making of the monster we now know as Adam Zahir or the chief torturer. When the younger Zahir was a student at Majeediyya School, the older Zahir was its headmaster and the generation that went to school then has a host of stories about Umar Zahir's sadism.

Now widely regarded as a corrupt crackpot, Umar Zahir, as headmaster, would go round Male on his bicycle, to sniff out Majeediyya students violating their curfew. The next day, he would make them undress and wear gunny bags, and subject them to cruel public humiliation. Young boys also had to endure extensive detention at school, sometimes for weeks, in an era strangely reminiscent of a Charles Dickens novel. The little we know of those days is enough to illustrate that the young Adam Zahir would have witnessed, perhaps even have been victim of, systematic torture, at an impressionable age, by a master sadist.

The former president Ibrahim Nasir eventually wised up to what was going on and relieved Umar Zahir, widely suspected to be a psychopath, of his duties. But in Maumoon Abdul Gayoom's government Umar Zahir found ways to continue his exercises in tormenting young boys. In his years as home minister, he established a culture of abuse on deprived boys in a reformatory. Directly under his supervision, well-documented incidents of child sexual abuse, horrific punishment, and even death due to negligence occurred there. Umar Zahir appointed a known sadist and paedophile to supervise the reformatory, and had tiny cells built to lock up boys for durations of over a month, in solitary confinement, for minor offenses. During this period, one boy "fell into the water tank" and died while another's short life ended in a lorry accident in which the driver employed by Umar Zahir didn't have a license. The abuse and the deaths were never criminally investigated and when things hotted up Gayoom just reshuffled Umar Zahir.

Even as sports minister, the sadist devised ingenious ways to torment. He famously refused to allow a top footballer on the field because he would not cut his hair to the length prescribed by the minister. He would also detain athletes inside sports ministry compounds, threatening them with bans if they didn't do as he ordered.

Less known are Umar Zahir's actions as a supervisor overseeing the building of Kurumba Village, the first tourist resort in the Maldives. A waiter, tending to newly arrived guests, accidently split water on them in Umar Zahir's presence. The ex-headmaster ordered the young man to kneel down on the beach in full view of all the guests for hours, only pardoning him when flabbergasted guests begged on his behalf.

Umar Zahir may no longer able to practice torment on the scale he enjoyed. But he's left a legacy that is being followed by a faithful student. Of course it's a bit simplistic to assume that the commissioner of police learnt his craft from his former headmaster.

I'm just introducing an idea here and hope readers with information will post their views and stories in the comments.

Coming out of the closet

2008-02-20T21:08:00.001-08:00

When MDP's official press Minivan News announced that Mohamed Nasheed, or Anni, was quitting as chairman of the party to enter the presidential rat race, nobody was surprised. It's well known that Anni was always a closet presidential hopeful and, as the only thing keeping his disintegrating party together, this may be the right and inevitable move. Unfortunately, Anni is not the exciting political upstart he was in the early 1990s and his speeches and tactics no longer resonate with the populace as they did, say, even three years ago.

He is, of course, a better choice than Munavvar or Zaki, but Hassan Saeed and Ibra?

Hassand Saeed is courageous in the way he stands up to the religious right, genuinely seeming to embody liberal views, but he is yet to come clean on his part in Gayoom's crackdown on dissent. Ibra is charismatic, and a great orator, but as the founder of a party that calls itself the social "liberal" party, his lack of support in the constitutional assembly for gender equality leaves much to be desired.

Anni should be credited with much of the change taking place in the Maldives now. He played a crucial role in mobilising international intervention against Gayoom's atrocities, his courage and fighting spirit have been an inspiration for the younger generation, and he may be the sole force holding together the country's largest opposition party.

But his inability to take criticism, his patronising attitude towards people, and his distortion of the truth for political convenience need to be taken into consideration. His lazy responses to questions regarding MDP policy, or the lack of any, are also a bit of a joke. "Get Gayoom out" seems to be his policy for everything.

It's taken Anni a long time to come out of the closet. Ironically, in that time, he may have grown more like the man he wants to get rid of.

The Maldivian hunt for an Obama is still on.

Gayoom's Nasir complex

2008-02-18T23:33:00.000-08:00

People can't have failed to notice that Gayoom has a Nasir-complex.

Ibrahim Nasir, the second president of the Maldives was a man of vision and didn't hanker after attention like Gayoom. Much of the wealth achieved by this country, that Gayoom takes credit for, was in fact due to Nasir's far-thinking economic policies and implementation.

Unlike Gayoom, Nasir knew when he had outlived people's support and exited gracefully, paving the way for the Egypt-educated young(er) man. When Gayoom gleefully assumed power, illegally it seems, if his own admissions of having carried a firearm to the swearing in are to be believed, he inherited, amongst other things, an international airport, a tourism industry, and a high-quality fish processing plant that were already earning huge foreign revenues.

The narcissistic Gayoom, on the other hand, was more interested in showing off his supposed intellectual abilities to his ignorant brothers-in-law and a horde of cronies, all of who played on his gigantic conceit for personal gains. It is said that Gayoom would gaze at the night sky and quote the distances between the earth and the moon and the stars, which enormously impressed his barely-literate audience. Gayoom's love for trivia-dropping now mostly manifests itself in the Heyyambo riddles, an avenue for the fast-deteriorating dictator to still feel he has something of an intellect.

Although Gayoom was initially all praise for his predecessor who, in fact, helped him get the top job, he soon started using the nation's resources in an attempt to lower the status of a man he obviously felt inferior to. Using people who would do anything for money and power, Gayoom launched a massive campaign to undermine people's admiration for Nasir. Stories of the ex-president's supposed pilfering of the nation's wealth, manufactured with the help of Gogo Latheef, co-founder of the MDP, who is said to have got a resort for his trouble, resulted in a threat of lawsuit by Nasir's lawyers.

Gayoom's government was forced to stop the circulation of stories about Nasir's thefts, so it commissioned cheap cartoons, mostly drawn by Chiliya Moosa Manik, and low-grade music albums to spout abuse on the former president. Abbas Ibrahim was instrumental in the production of this cheap culture for Gayoom, and it's no coincidence that no significant cultural creation has emerged during Gayoom's dictatorship.

Gayoom also commissioned songs, articles, and books praising himself, to cover his increasingly apparent lack of vision and innovation. The president's office would fund government schools like CHSE to send congratulatory cards to Gayoom. It is said he even wrote a few songs himself.

Nasir has survived despite Gayoom's many attempts to character-assassinate him. Look at Nasir's photo and you can understand why he is regarded as an enigmatic leader, a man of integrity, and the person who laid the foundation for the wealth Gayoom and his cronies are today pocketing for themselves. Look at Gayoom's photo and you see a practically decomposing dictator struggling to still be valid in a country and a world that can't wait to see the back of him.

Gayoom may have succeeded in demolishing Velaanaage, Ibrahim Nasir's property in the centre of Male, but he will always pale in comparison to the his predecessor.

MDP double standards

2008-02-18T03:19:00.000-08:00

One of the reasons MDP may not have been able to draw on the considerable opposition to Maumoon Abdul Gayoom in post-Eavan Naseem Maldives is their own double standards.

When Hassan Saeed and co resigned from Gayoom's government MDP suporters, who had only the day before heckled them at a debate organised by the newspaper Haveeru, couldn't hold back their joy. But when Saeed's growing popularity became a threat, MDP members began to call for Saeed to publicly apologise for his actions while he was part of the regime, a demand they never bothered make on their own president and vice-president.

Mohamed Munavvar and Ibrahim Hussein Zaki in their time with Gayoom opposed all democratic reforms and, less than a week after police murdered inmates of Maafushi prison, supported the dictator, then also head of police, in his bid for a fifth term in office.

Accusations of corruption leveled at the two have never been answered satisfactorily and it should be noted that Munavvar is the architect of the flawed constitution currently taking so much resources and time to ammend. To my knowledge neither have said sorry in public for anything they've done while with Gayoom. After Sandhaanu Zaki dramatically shouted at Munavvar, at his MDP leadership campaign, that he was responsible for the online editor's years of torture and suffering, the former attorney was forced to come up with with a half-hearted explanation. Apparently, Gayoom forced him to do all the bad things he did in office, while he was fully responsible for all the good things. In a laughable early speech at an MDP rally Munavvar blamed Gayoom for the constitution but took the credit for himself for creating the law school.

Unlike the New Maldives trio, the Old Maldives duo did not resign from office. They joined MDP when they were sacked by Gayoom and had no other option.

When the two made their way into the inner workings of MDP, the party had an indisputable command over the vast majority of Maldivians. But under their power, that command has diminished, the party has lost many of the key persons who helped to set it up, and MDP today is a fragmented entity given to emulating Gayoom tactics on the populace of the Maldives. The latest, the ridiculous Arumaaz trips, are a case in point.

That MDP couldn't come up with a decent opposition figurehead of its own to lead Maldivians into a post-Gayoom era has meant they have over-relied on the dictator's discards, which may have cost the party irreparable damage.