Aniya carried within her a deeply profound sense of commitment and duty. To the community, to her family, and to the world she wanted to leave better than she found it. Even as illness began to take its toll, she refused to yield. I had the honour of working with her to the end. Unyielding, purposeful, and unwavering in her devotion until her body finally demanded that she rest.
I first met Aniya in the bustling offices of the Maldivian Democratic Party. She was the Deputy Secretary General, and it was my third year running the Maldivian Detainee Network. Her request that day was simple but urgent – how could the party organise itself so that it could help MDN support people arrested from the protests? Many of those detainees were party members or generally, democracy supporters. That question, posed with her usual clarity and conviction, was the start of something far greater than a working relationship. It was the beginning of a friendship, a shared purpose, and a bond that transcended politics and organisations.
To this day, I have not known another Maldivian who gave as much of herself to survivors of torture and to detainees as Aniya did. Her commitment was not an occasional gesture. It was the core of who she was. She found ways to connect with prisoners. Until the day she lay down, she called me every few weeks asking to help someone in prison.
At that first meeting in Male’, the country was still under the last, desperate years of Maumoon Abdul Gayyoom’s thirty-year dictatorship. Change was coming, but those who had clung to power for decades were using every tool within their reach to crush it. The police were their most brutal instrument. Armed with impunity, they descended on peaceful protests, beating, arresting, and dragging people away. Every day, dozens were detained. Yet from within that darkness of fear and pain, Aniya saw light.
She radiated hope. It wasn’t naive hope, but the kind that comes from understanding the cost of freedom and still choosing to fight for it. Her anticipation for change was contagious, moving us to work harder, to take risks. She reminded us that we were finally approaching the moment when Gayyoom could no longer gag the people while he drained our country dry. Our people would no longer “vanish” behind bars. The world would know about what happened inside detention centres and prisons. She had so much hope for our country. For the parents and children no one spoke of. She dreamed of freedom for the thousands of young people languishing in prisons. Of a country that would listen to its people.
Marking one year since we lost Aniya, Humay described Aniya, rightfully, as “a woman warrior. A mother, teacher, educator, journalist, broadcaster, pro-democracy activist, human rights defender, women’s rights defender, defender of the media and the constitutional right to freedom of expression.”
I will add some more. Aniya was the voice of this nation, quite literally, for thousands of listeners of Minivan Radio across the country. She brought the truth to the people at a time when it was thought impossible. She single-handedly ran and hosted the radio that the people loved, and the government hated. It was no small feat. Young and old alike, so many of us waited for her voice every day. Her unconventional style, her quick wit with Ahmed on air, their exchanges a mix of fondness and sharp political banter, and her unflinching choice to speak about what no one else dared to. Everything about her radio programs was something to look forward to.
When Ahmed Rilwan was abducted and disappeared in August 2014, it was personal for her. “Rilwan is not only a fellow journalist to me. He could have been my son, my brother”. She was heartbroken and angry, full of questions and frustration. From the day MDN released the results of our private investigation into his disappearance, she read the report on her radio station every single day for years. She vowed to keep Rilwan’s story alive, and she did. With Aniya gone, one seldom hears about what happened to Rilwan anymore.
She was, to me, a sister who chose me as her family. When MDN was attacked and so many turned their backs, Aniya stayed. She checked in, she guided me, she reminded me of my own strength. I still hear her voice: “No one will defend you if it means taking a risk to do it. The truth won’t matter to them. You must defend yourself this time.” She recalled how she was abandoned by everyone after she was targeted by religious radicals back in 2007. Despite everything, Aniya’s commitment never wavered. She carried the weight of the struggle with grace and determination, year after year. But in 2022, even her unshakable spirit met its breaking point. She could no longer reconcile herself with the way President Ibrahim Mohamed Solih had diminished the sacrifices of thousands of her fellow party members and supporters. To her, it was not merely a political disappointment. It was a betrayal of the very people whose sweat, tears, and hope had built the movement.
Aniya lived her life in defiance of silence. She loved her people fiercely, fought for them relentlessly, and left behind a voice that will echo long after her absence. May Aniya receive an eternal place in Jannah.
Independent, principled, uncompromising, fearless and fiercely committed. These are just a few adjectives to describe the amazing qualities of one of the most formidable women activists in the Maldivian media, politics and public life. She is the unforgettable and admirable Maldivian woman warrior, Aishath Aniya. Gone at 57.
Aniya sadly departed the battlefield of our earthly persisterhood on 20 August 2023 after a short illness, succumbing to cancer. One year has passed since her passing. The silence of her absence resounds in the Maldives, especially among those who value her unwavering qualities and inimitable contribution in a conservative, patriarchal, misogynistic and increasingly hostile environment to women – especially those in public life.
She is a woman warrior that must go into the country’s history books, for she fought on many fronts. As a mother, teacher, educator, journalist, broadcaster, pro-democracy activist, human rights defender, women’s rights defender and a staunch defender of the media and our constitutional rights to freedom of expression and assembly. Her social and political activism spanned across fast-moving historical changes in the Maldives in the early 2000s. From deadly authoritarian persecution and dictatorship to the fleeting hopes of democracy in the late 2000s, and back again to the darkness of uncertainty, insecurity and instability in the present time. She invoked the wrath of political conservative ‘clerics’, becoming the target of their harassment for questioning the alleged requirement to wear the hijab for women in a nation that had an Islamic history for centuries without this practice.
Throughout these social, cultural and political convulsions, Aniya weathered the political scene with dedicated commitment to the Maldivian Democratic Party (MDP). She was an active party member, administrator and organiser, coordinating and managing women-led grass roots street protests for MDP during its toughest trials. She confronted state lawlessness and police brutality with fearless conviction and pragmatism, suffering imprisonment and the inhumanity of being strip-searched in police custody. None of this broke her formidable spirit as she continued to fight for her democratic beliefs, in the pursuit of human rights, dignity and freedom. She fought with her body, her voice and her pen. Despite this commitment, Aniya found herself compelled to leave MDP a few months before her passing. She could no longer recognise what it stood for as the party became riddled with infighting among its leadership. She was always the principled woman. Like many loyal party members, leaving MDP is something she never imagined she would have to do. But that is the present reality of the landscape of democracy in the Maldives, which Aniya was a foundational part for at least two decades of her life, cut short too soon by cancer.
Through the toughest and most insecure times for journalists in the Maldives in the early 2000s, Aniya worked for the pro-democracy newspaper Minivan News. During the 2010s, the Maldives moment for democratic hopes rose briefly and fell back into authoritarian regression. At this time, Aniya held together a radio station, Minivan Radio, that continued to provide the public with sharp critiques of a lawless government with institutions operating with impunity against dissenters. Under great personal threats from the most unsavoury and dangerous operators in the Maldives’ political scene, rampant with conservative Islamism and political gangsterism, Aniya chose to forge ahead, unfazed.
Subsequently, when the space for independent media shrank further, Aniya took to the social media application Clubhouse where she curated a space and gathered a loyal audience to whom she provided her analysis and insights into the day’s politics. She had no funders. She was always giving, not taking. Always principled in her deep belief in human dignity, freedom, humanity and love for the Maldives. Her country. Her people. She continued to fight the good fight, until she could no longer use her voice through illness. And then fell silent forever, a silence and loss still felt.
Aniya’s contribution to the Maldives political scene as a fearless critic of the establishment is undeniable, uncontestable and in my opinion, absolutely admirable. This is why her absence is so acutely felt as Maldives went to the polls to elect the country’s next government in September 2023. Aniya’s departure means that Maldivians, who relied on her sharp political analysis, are suddenly bereft of these insights. The absence of her fearless vocabulary of dissent leaves our media weaker. Her capacity to call out those deserving such treatment in no uncertain terms, based on her deep knowledge and experience of the country’s socio-political landscape and its many questionable actors is an irreparable loss.
With her departure, Maldives has lost a national treasure. That is what Aniya’s loss means to me. She is irreplaceable. She left us too soon, too young, with too much still to do. I was hopeful that she could run for the Peoples’ Majlis in 2024. It is a place lacking principled, committed, fearless and good people like Aniya. But that is not to be.
Aniya leaves behind a family, children and grandchildren. She leaves behind many friends and compatriots who feel her absence and the unwelcome silence of a cherished dissenting voice of reason and humanity. Thank you Aniya for all that you were and for all that you did, taught and gave to the Maldives. You will always be remembered as an inspirational woman warrior of our time.
إِنَّا لِلَّهِ وَإِنَّآ إِلَيْهِ رَٰجِعُونَ
20 August 2024 Humay Abdulghafoor
Photo: Aniya protesting with a group of women outside Velaanaage government offices, calling for the resignation of the then head of the Civil Service Commission, Mohamed Fahmy Hassan, after allegations of sexual harassment against him came to light. 2012.
This letter, penned by Humay Abdulghafoor, volunteer for the Save Maldives campaign, addresses the people of The Netherlands with a story little-told: how their nation’s business enterprise has produced another’s destruction and demise, through dredging, reclamation, and port development.
This letter, penned by Humay Abdulghafoor, volunteer for the Save Maldives campaign, addresses the people of The Netherlands with a story little-told: how their nation’s business enterprise has produced another’s destruction and demise, through dredging, reclamation, and port development.
January, 2023
Dear Netherlands,
New Year’s greetings from the Maldives. You may have heard about our country: an earthly “paradise” that is home to luxury tourism. That’s the marketed image, representing a “sunny side of life”. We also have several, less sunny stories. This particular one is about the endangered and finite ecosystems of the Maldives that have an unhappy connection to your country, the Netherlands.
You and us – we are all in the same predicament, even if we are not in the same hemisphere. We are all experiencing a great earth-heating climate crisis that is breaking down global climate systems. Scientists tell us that we humans are causing this Earth crisis. The United Nations tells us the situation is “code red for humanity.” Our actions and inaction have been creating an existential and extinction crisis.
Of course, the Dutch people would be very familiar with what this means.
You will no doubt remember the landmark decision of the Dutch Supreme Court on 20 December 2019, the Urgenda Climate Case, which decided that the Dutch government had obligations to “urgently and significantly reduce emissions in line with its human rights obligations”. All governments have these obligations, although most choose to do little or nothing. The Netherlands is very lucky to have a judicial system where redress is available in court for serious grievances raised by concerned people, against unlawful and irresponsible decisions of the government, in our time of catastrophic climate crisis.
The Urgenda decision seeks to protect not just yourselves, but all of us inhabiting the Earth.
While we in the Maldives may be thousands of miles away, this decision in the Dutch courts is a big deal.
The whole world knows today that politicians around the world have consistently failed to address the climate crisis with decades of failed and farcical international conferences. This is why the Dutch Supreme Court’s decision in Urgenda stands out.
As you know, global climate breakdown is an existential crisis for many of us living in coastal nations, especially low lying small islands like the Maldives. Most of our 1,200 or so islands are less than one metre above sea-level. Our islands are made of coral and sand. Every island is an organic, living entity, protected by a living reef-defence-system, sometimes with the additional security of seagrass meadows and mangrove ecosystems which, when healthy, are teeming with marine life and biodiversity. We are just beginning to understand the richness of this biodiversity, which remains poorly studied.
Less than a year ago, a species of fish new to science was discovered in the Maldives. Who knows how many more are waiting to be discovered?
But our life-giving ocean, marine life, and biodiversity which collectively make up our critical natural reef defence systems have been under increasing threats due to many factors involving destructive and unsustainable development practices. Many of our reefs and lagoons have been completely and irreversibly destroyed. You may wonder who or what is destroying the reefs of the Maldives? The simple answer is that, primarily, it is the government and political decision-makers of the Maldives. But the government has been able to do this with the help of global dredging corporations and banks, although today, Maldives also has its own state-owned company, MTCC Plc also doing enormous damage.
The leading giants of the trade are two notable companies, Royal Boskalis and Van Oord, from the Netherlands. They are the expensive and profitable tools deployed to destroy our living environment, irreversibly and permanently. This story is mainly about the activities of Boskalis.
Royal Boskalis has over a decade-long history of reclamation that has destroyed community reefs and livelihood assets in several islands of the Maldives. Some of these activities are labeled as ‘climate adaptation projects’. The cost of that destruction is enormous, running into millions of US dollars of public debt, often loaned from the ING Bank of Netherlands. In 2010, Royal Boskalis and MT- Hojgaard of Netherlands engaged in reclaiming five islands in the Maldives at an estimated US$43 million, borrowed from the ING Bank of Netherlands. These are the kinds of funds that are not available locally to develop community-based initiatives that improve people’s lives. You may be surprised to learn that this reclaimed land from over a decade ago remains unused and unavailable to local people.
This is, of course, a problem of the Maldives government. The point is that the big reclamation contracts to big companies, paid with large amounts of public debt, continue with relative ease, while no funds are available to do anything with the reclaimed land. Reclamation destroys sustainable livelihood resources and undermines the basic security functions of the living island reef systems irreversibly. Once an ancient reef is lost, it cannot be brought back. The partial or complete destruction of the natural reef defenses exposes islands to erosion and climate change disasters.
More recently in 2019, Royal Boskalis was contracted to undertake the largest and deepest reclamation project thus far in the Maldives: the Gulhifalhu Port Development project, which is estimated to cost Maldivian taxpayers US$120 million just for the reclamation. Notably, the project was contracted to Boskalis before an environmental impact assessment (EIA) was produced to understand its impacts. It was also contracted without a bid, which media reported was being probed by the Maldives Anti-Corruption Commission. Whether anyone has been held to account about such irregularities is not known in the murky governance environment of the Maldives.
The Gulhifalhu project will dredge an area of 13.75 sq/km in northern Malé Atoll, extracting 24.5 million cubic metres of naturally formed biogenic sand from the ocean to reclaim the Gulhifalhu lagoon.The environmental and eco-systemic loss and damage of this project was poorly evaluated, and the loss and damage have not been properly costed environmentally or financially. This may be because the project’s initial EIA noted that the project was a foregone conclusion even before the EIA was commissioned. It is also a sad fact that the EIA processes in the Maldives are deeply flawed and do not serve the public interest.
What is also a foregone conclusion is that the project will destroy a marine protected area (MPA) in Gulhifalhu lagoon, called the Hans Haas Place and designated in 1995. It is also accepted that the project will negatively impact approximately 30 dive sites in the area, having significantly damaging impacts on reef ecosystems, including the reefs of several resorts in the area. The project is expected to destroy the last remaining natural reef freely accessible to local people in the area, located in Villimale island a few hundred metres from the Gulhifalhu lagoon. It will also negatively impact small businesses and fisherfolk.
In June 2020, when Boskalis first began dredging the lagoon, a significant sediment plume damaged the Villimale reef. However, concerns expressed by local people and civil society stakeholders about the project, which was submitted for parliamentary scrutiny, was largely ignored by the Maldives government and the parliament. Instead of protecting Gulhifalhu and its threatened surrounding marine ecosystems, the parliament’s Environment and Climate Change Committee instead chose to justify the project.
This is a satellite image of the #Gulhifalhu sediment plume in July 2020 when Boskalis began dredging to reclaim the lagoon. This is documented in the #AdduAtoll reclamation EIA, Additional Information, September 2022.
A few months prior to this, the Maldives parliament had passed a motion to declare a Climate Emergency in the Maldives. At the same time, the Maldives suffers deeply from political instability, poor governance, policy poverty, endemic corruption and even poorer environmental protections of its own finite natural resources and assets. This may be a surprise to anyone reading about the Maldives’ leading role at climate conferences and global victim-status from impending climate catastrophe. The story on the ground is far removed from that politically manufactured image of the ‘sinking Maldives’ with ‘no higher ground’ to climb. That political rhetoric is disseminated around the world by the international media, on behalf of well-connected politicians who receive copious amounts of column inches and broadcast coverage.
In June 2020, during the Covid-19 pandemic while the country was in lockdown, Boskalis arrived on site and engaged in a greenwash initiative to “relocate corals” from the Gulhifalhu reef. The company said this was conducted as a CSR (corporate social responsibility) activity!
Is it really so noble of a global corporation taking on a multi-million dollar project financed with foreign loans that must be covered by public debt to offer CSR to that same foreign state? It is evident that this is part of the company’s marketing strategy of presenting an image of ‘eco-friendly’ credentials.
The notion suggesting that a reef can be ‘relocated’ is unintelligible, with no scientific credibility as any Maldivian or visitor to the Maldives who has seen our natural reefs would know. This idea is absolutely untenable, has no substance and is nothing but a corporate smokescreen. Coral gardening, involving the removal of coral fragments to grow elsewhere, is an experimental tourist attraction in some resorts in the Maldives, which is also a type of corporate greenwashing. However, the project’s official website considers “coral relocation” a triumph of the project!
Due to the enormity of the destruction planned by the Gulhifalhu reclamation project, civil litigation action to stop it was lodged at the Civil Court of Maldives in September 2021, which remains pending to date. Sadly, the Maldives courts do not have a good history of protecting the country’s fragile environment or holding the government accountable for environmental crimes. This is so even if some of our laws on environmental protection are reasonably progressive. Unlike the Netherlands, the courts in the Maldives are yet to be tested to address environmental destruction and our common climate crisis. This is the case despite the country’s extreme vulnerability and position at the forefront of global climate breakdown. This is in spite of the Maldives’ political pleas to the world at international fora to act on the climate, through its projected image internationally as a ‘climate champion’.
A significant amount of inconsistent, opposing and opportunistic narratives are created by Maldivian politicians with short-term goals who willfully risk the health and life of entire ecosystems, people’s lives and sources of livelihood. But they cannot do this without the active support of global corporations like Boskalis and the ING Bank of Netherlands. As the European Union strengthens its laws and law enforcement to do due diligence on climate change related matters, European corporations are finding poorly governed nations like the Maldives to exploit.
In June 2022, undeterred by its people’s concerns, the government of Maldives took out a loan of €101 million from three European banks, including the ING Bank of Netherlands, to continue with the second phase of the Gulhifalhu reclamation project. Boskalis is expected to be back in the Maldives in 2023 to inflict extreme damage to the north Malé region with the next and most destructive phase of the reclamation project. Since its initial estimate of 20 million cubic metres of sand use, the project has increased this to 24.5 million cubic metres using an addendum to the EIA in November 2021. What the project will eventually extract is anyone’s guess.
This is a situation where information is withheld from the public and Boskalis’ sand-search survey for the Gulhifalhu project is considered a ‘trade secret’, even from the Maldives parliament! We do not know the scope of damage this project will cause to the region when a massive dredging vessel deploys its destructive forces into a marine environment rich with life from the seabed to the surface. The after-effects of a string of expensive, historical reclamation projects under Royal Boskalis’ belt in the Maldives have never been studied. There are no funds to study the loss and damage. There is never enough funds to obtain accurate baseline data for these projects either. The funds are instead available from corporate banks for corporations like Boskalis to inflict permanent irreversible and unstudied damage at great financial and debt costs to the people of Maldives.
These are highly lucrative multi-million dollar projects, taking just a few short months for the contractor to impose untold ecological harm. The direct and collateral damage inflicted by Boskalis will be suffered by present and future generations of Maldivians. This will happen after the vessel has made its money and safely left our shores, leaving us to deal with the debt, destruction and damage as the climate crisis unfolds before us.
As the new year breaks in 2023, the news breaking in the Maldives is that two of the most damaging marine contractors from the Netherlands will be actively destroying critical marine ecosystems with unknown losses and damage to communities and people in the Maldives. Van Oord is planning to dredge Addu Atoll Biosphere Reserve, endangering multiple MPAs, marine habitats of mega-fauna such as manta rays and undermining the climate resilience of the entire atoll. Royal Boskalis will be preparing to destroy Gulhifalhu reef and lagoon.
These are the untold stories of Maldives on the frontline of the global climate crisis. As we become increasingly conscious of our interconnectedness on earth, it is necessary to tell the story of how one nation’s business enterprise has become another’s destruction and demise.
If you have come this far, thank you for reading. And thank you for Urgenda.
That decision carries with it a spark of hope for many.
Sincerely,
The Maldives, Indian Ocean
#savemaldives is a citizen-led environmental campaign by concerned individuals from diverse backgrounds who are extremely worried about irreversible environmental destruction in the Maldives.
This open letter was first published on Contested Ports. Re-posted here with author’s permission.
