Maldivians say no to Adhaalath

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

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

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

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

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

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?

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.