Category: People

Operation Anbaraa – human rights abuse at a music festival

by Mushfique Mohamed

A lot has been written about the music festival on the desert island of Anbaraa attended by local and international DJs, some tourists and 198 partygoers. According to the event organisers, Tourism Minister Ahmed Adheeb and certain officials of the Yameen government allegedly approved the event in an unofficial capacity. Most of what has been said in the Dhivehi media is framed to make it appear that these young people at the music festival were engaging in an orgy of illicit activities on the island, and that the authorities acted rightly by raiding the event and arresting one female minor, 19 women and 59 men present at the festival. Unfortunately, the susceptible majority of the Maldivian public do not see the political and unconstitutional underpinnings of these arrests, and most often than not, wholeheartedly accept such narratives. This proves beneficial for certain politicians in the Maldives, known for garnering support along ultra-nationalist and Islamist lines, as the Anbaraa incident provides an opportunity to generate just such rhetoric. Their understanding is that the youth are to be blamed for testing the limits of an increasingly conservative society. The awful truth is that people in positions of power indulging in similar behaviour, and much worse, are not subject to the same laws.

The Maldives Police Service claims it raided the island around midnight on Friday night. Detainees have described the operation as a hypocritical, aggressive and excessive display of brute force and psychological warfare. Many of the detainees claim the police used stun guns, grenades, tasers, taser guns, batons, guns and rubber bullets during this operation. Initially flares were shot and the authorities used amplifiers to announce – “you will all be killed if you don’t calm down” while charging at the partygoers. “They shot stun grenades at the centre of the dance floor in front of the main stage”, one of the detainees said. “Rubber bullets were shot in the air and a lot of people were tased with tasers and taser guns,” he continued.

Many detainees said they were all verbally abused and humiliated. Talking of the religious and cultural undertones of this operation, one female detainee said an officer yelled at her, “Are you a European?” A male detainee alleged that two officers grabbed him by the neck and called him an infidel. Another female detainee claimed she was pulled by the hair and ear, and hit on the back. Some of the male partygoers intervened when police resorted to sexualised violence against women – these men are now being detained separately from other detainees, although not in solitary confinement. Some detainees allege they were beaten and showed visible scars. Many detainees note disturbing police actions such as some officers allegedly stealing detainees’ belongings and, in the presence of some detainees, consuming illicit substances found on the island.

After the island came under police control, the detainees were rounded up and brought to the main stage. They were cuffed using plastic clips and kept kneeling down. The island did not have enough water and the Maldives Police Service did not bring any food or water with them for the detainees. When the detainees asked for water it was not provided to all, and some were humiliated for requesting for water. At this point, detainees were allegedly asked to go to sleep. On Saturday morning around 6-7am the police allegedly ordered the catering service to provide food for 198 detainees while the island was under police control. Even at this time, the Maldives’ police did not facilitate rights afforded to those accused or detained under Article 48 of the Constitution. Although police claim that the detainees were informed of their rights, the fact that these men and women were kept incommunicado for about 14 hours proves that the authorities failed to facilitate their inalienable fundamental rights to acquire legal counsel or information regarding the arrest.

Another factor that deviates from standard police practice in such cases is that, according to the detainees, belongings and persons on the island were searched on Saturday afternoon, and none of this was done in the detainees’ presence. Most detainees claim their tents were searched or dismantled while they were handcuffed. And, they claim, not only were their belongings rummaged but articles of clothing and money went missing after the police went through them. Article 161 of the 2011 Drugs Act requires police to split urine samples into two — one sample is to be tested by the Maldives Police Service while the other is to be tested by an institution stipulated by the National Drug Agency. This procedure was not followed, nor were the urine samples collected or processed according to the Urine Specimen Collection, Transportation and Testing for Illicit Drugs Regulation 2012, meaning that many detainees’ urine samples were taken after their remand hearings. Another irregularity is one that contravenes the Judicature Act – detainees were brought to the Criminal Court in Malé even though the alleged offences occurred in Vaavu Atoll. According to the male detainees, only female detainees were given lifejackets while they were being transferred to Dhoonidhoo Custodial Centre from Anbaraa.

During the remand hearings the police claimed that 119 people present at the island were released because they did not find any illicit substances on their person or belongings. This argument does not make sense as the police claimed that the entire island was a crime scene. The argument is further weakened by the fact that some of the detainees currently in custody did not have any illicit substances on their person and only have urine tests as evidence against them. Such contradictions in the claims made by the police suggest that the 119 were released because the police would not have been able to process all detainees within the specified time limit. Law requires all detainees to be brought before a judge within 24 hours of arrest.

These events are reminiscent of infighting among cabinet ministers during ex-dictator Maumoon Abdul Gayoom’s regime, which then spills over into the public sphere. If the Yameen government – even if in an unofficial capacity – gave assurances to the organisers of the music festival that it could go ahead, why has the Home Minister Umar Naseer vocally reacted to this incident as if to say the police were working under his orders? The feud between the current president Abdullah Yameen Abdul Gayoom; half brother of ex-dictator and Umar Naseer; the current Home Minister, has been at the forefront since the onset of the presidential election campaign in early 2013.

Some of the detainees are also of the impression that the government may have raided the event to create a distraction from the arbitration proceedings being held at the Singapore Court of Appeal regarding the cancellation of the GMR agreement during the coup appointed presidency of Dr. Mohamed Waheed, which ended in December 2013. In early 2010, the Indian infrastructure company GMR was contracted to build Ibrahim Nasir International Airport by the Mohamed Nasheed administration, which was toppled by his deputy Dr. Waheed and Gayoom loyalists. If the infrastructure giant GMR wins the arbitration case, the Maldives’ government will be subject to approximately US$1.4 billion in compensation.

All these factors create the public perception that current government is not fully in control of the security forces due to infighting, or that the security forces can be mobilised by the current government to carry out politically motivated attacks that have very little to do with morality, crime prevention, implementing the law, or protecting the youth from illegal drugs. Neither perception creates trust or confidence towards the current regime in power, but both highlight the human rights abuse and inconsistency of the implementation of law in the Maldives.

Maldives: the hypocrites’ paradise

raveMore than half of the Maldivian population is under the age of 25 and, with over a third of the population aged between 18-35, the Maldives has one of the most youthful populations in the world. This weekend around 200 of them assembled on the desert island of Anbaraa for an overnight music festival.

All elements that any reasonable person expects at a modern event of the sort were present—great DJs, young people up for a good time and, unsurprisingly, party drugs. On Friday night, when most revelers were at the peak of their enjoyment, a Maldives Police Service (MPS) team in riot gear raided the island. Apparently they were in possession of an arrest warrant, issued by one of many farcical courts that comprise the so-called judiciary.

The MPS asked no one’s permission to get on the island, respected no laws, followed no due procedure. Police statements have made it clear they were aware of the plans for the music festival, and also that it would take the form of a rave. They made no move to stop it from going ahead. When they raided the island on Friday night, they were fully aware of what they would find — a bunch of young people in a highly vulnerable state — and proceeded to assert their supremacy on them as aggressively as possible.

The MPS could not have acted more triumphantly if they had managed to bust the world’s biggest drug cartel. According to eye-witness accounts, they threw smoke grenades onto the unsuspecting revelers, barged into their tents without permission, searched their personal possessions without their knowledge, and handcuffed everyone deemed ‘guilty’ before holding them in custody for 14 hours without the right to counsel. Once they had been humiliated, and by some accounts several beaten up in custody, it was time to turn the whole affair into a media circus. Pictures of various partygoers were splashed across computer and television ‘news’ screens as if they were members of a newly busted paedophile gang deserving the most forceful of today’s naming and shaming techniques.

The worst of the humiliation was reserved for the women, as can be expected of the misogynistic society the Maldives has become today. First came the reports across the entire media spectrum—from the mainstream to the most obscure—that several of the women had been found ‘naked’, ‘nude’, ‘everything bared’, etc. Pictures of laughing policewomen in headscarves marching the young female partygoers in handcuffs and sarongs appeared on all print and online newspapers. As it turned out, all reports the women were naked were total lies, engineered to belittle and humiliate ‘the weaker sex’ as much as possible. The women were made to wear sarongs to court — not to cover their nudity, but to cover up the lie that none of them were naked. Wearing shorts, apparently, is now tantamount to being naked in the tropical island ‘paradise’.

The treatment of these young people is a supreme example of the hypocrisy that defines modern Maldives. It is one of the worst kept secrets of Maldivian politics that most of the Maldivian cabinet, and a substantial number of parliamentarians in the Majlis all drink alcohol and/or take recreational drugs. Several government Ministers not only drink but also facilitate parties and raves for young people they know. On the more sleazy side of things, several do so with the goal of getting sexual favours from young people in exchange for the illegal substances provided.

Quite apart from the disgusting hypocrisy of those in power, and separate from the widespread heroin addiction that has afflicted an entire generation of Maldivian youth since the 1990s, it is also a fact that social drinking and indulging in recreational drugs are common among young Maldivians, especially in the capital Male’. In recent years the use of party drugs such as Ecstasy, and even more recently LSD too, have increased as it has in most cities across the world.

Meanwhile, in a country where alcohol is only meant to be available to tourists who holiday in the exclusive resort islands, it is commonplace for copious amounts of alcohol to be sold and bought in and around Male’ every weekend. Government officials—and police—are fully aware of this. Many, in fact, have a share in the profits, which are invariably huge. Young people who want a drink are forced to pool their resources and shell out as much as MVR2000 approximately  (USD 130) for a bottle of alcohol, regardless of its make, size or contents. Where else do the bottles come from except tourism industry tycoons with a license to import them? Today several of these tycoons are also running the government and the country. To pretend they are unaware of how much their profits are pumped up from selling alcohol to young Maldivians is a sham that any thinking person can see right through. Yet they keep up the façade so that a) they can keep making profits, and b) continue claiming that such things do not happen in a ‘100 percent Muslim country’ like the Maldives.

Fact of the matter is, Muslim or not, drinking alcohol and taking recreational drugs are as normal among a large section of the Maldivian population as it is in any other 21st Century society in the world.  To believe that what happens in the rest of the globalised world does not happen in the Maldives is the height of idiocy. Being such a small country with deliberately weakened cultural and historical roots has made us more, rather than less, vulnerable to global influences than most other countries. Nowhere is this more evident than in the number of Maldivian youth who have found themselves bending to the radical Islamist winds that have swept across the globe since the beginning of the century. If we are to be honest, we have to admit that the big black burugas that so many Maldivian women have come to wear in the past decade have as little affinity with our culture and religious practises as the hot pants the women at the rave were wearing – yet the former is not just embraced but almost forced upon everyone as ‘the right thing’ while the other is criticised as ‘alien’ and even criminal.

Yes, the use of drugs are against the law. But since man began to live in societies, there has been no place on earth where youth have not bent the law for their fun and enjoyment. Their infringements—if they cause no harm to society as a whole—need to be dealt with concern and understanding, not handcuffs, brutality and long sentences. Drug laws are meant to punish traffickers and dealers and to stop dangerous substances from becoming a menace to users and society. Young people at a rave on a desert island, whether tripping or not, poses no threat to society whatsoever. To treat the Anbaraa revelers as criminals, to set out to publicly shame them, and to punish them with imprisonment demonstrate nothing but intolerance and ignorance. And the hypocrisy of those meting out such punishment, while happily indulging in worse behavious themselves, boggles the mind perhaps even more than some of the substances said to have been available at Anbaraa could have.

#FuckAdhaalath

shaheemImran

by Azra Naseem

The Adhaalath Party, Maldives’ chief ‘Islamists’, is one of the worst things to ever happen to the country and its people. Although it was three years of free expression under Mohamed Nasheed that finally gave the men of Adhaalath a voice after about a decade of violent repression, they were instrumental in bringing an abrupt end to democratic rule on 7 February.

In the eighteen months since, party leaders have been whoring out their ‘religious learning’ to the highest bidder and have already been in, or tried to get in, bed with the secular Mohamed Waheed, former oppressor Gayoom, and is now flapping about in an orgy of hatred with multimillionaire tourism tycoon Gasim Ibrahim.

Last night’s speech by Adhaalath Party leader Imran Abdulla at the Jumhooree coalition rally was a spectacular example of these men’s hate-mongering using Islam. Imran described MDP supporters as a crowd of hapless, irreligious and malicious imbeciles who have fallen under an evil spell cast by their Godless master Nasheed.

Imran explained away his obsession with Nasheed and his inability to stop ranting about him as a religious duty.

It’s not personal. I am devoting so much time to Nasheed because the Qur’an says the ignorant should be made aware […] Nasheed is an enemy of Islam. He is an agent  trained, briefed and sent here by people who want to destroy Islam and our nation.

Imran also said there is a verse in the Qur’an that applies to Nasheed. Here is a translation:

surah

The whole affair ended with the other limelight loving Fake Sheikh, Ilyas Hussein, who shed crocodile tears while praying to Allah that the Maldives be saved from  Godless Nasheed and his evil. It was a performance that would have put even the most accomplished of televangelists to shame.

While Imran and Ilyas are wheeled out to entertain big crowds, the other Adhaalath high-flier, Shaheem Ali Saeed, now the Islamic Minister, provides the ‘intellectual’ backing through hate-filled speeches to less prominent crowds which are then duly covered by Adhaalath mouthpieces in the media.

One such platform, Dhiislam.com reported yesterday, for example, that Shaheem told an audience in the island of Mahibadhoo that he regularly prays to Allah for misfortunes to befall on Nasheed. Shaheem was kind enough to share the details of what he asks of Allah when he is on his knees, praying:

“Oh Allah! Set a dog from among your dogs on this man [Nasheed]!”

To supplement his prayers Shaheem uses social media:

 

Kenereege Nasheed is worse than Lord Budhha [sic]…wake up and think, Maldivians. Let’s defeat Lord Budhaa [sic] on 7 Sep

All this may have been understandable even if not justifiable if these men actually believe in what they preach. They don’t. If they did, they would have called for the removal of Ali Hameed from the Supreme Court bench after half the population were subjected to a video of him having sex with three prostitutes in a Colombo hotel.

These are the same people who were out on the streets of Male’ in November 2011 when UN Human Rights Commissioner Navi Pillay dared to call for an end to the cruel practise of flogging for fornication that Adhaalath so enthusiastically promotes. These are also the people who in February this year said a fifteen year old girl, a victim of repeated rape and sexual abuse, ‘deserved’ to be flogged for a separate incident of fornication.

These same people, who want the Maldivian legal system to comprise entirely of Sharia, have not only remained silent about Ali Hameed, they have also failed to say a single word about the alarming increase in sex crimes registered in the last few months. You would think that this is a time when religious leaders, so obsessed about punishing people for consensual sex, would counsel their followers to stop using sex as a tool of violence against women and children.

There is little doubt in my mind that a Supreme Court judge getting away with Zinah—one of the most serious of Sharia offences—is a contributing factor to the impunity with which sex offenders are now operating on our little islands.

Another strong indication of how fake these Sheikhs are is the type of alliances they choose to make. There was the 2008 alliance with the ‘Laa Dheenee’ MDP, then the 2012 alliance with the pseudo-American Waheedh, and now the backing of Gasim Ibrahim as their presidential candidate. Not only did Gasim defend Ali Hameed’s position as a Supreme Court judge, he is also the biggest seller of alcohol the country has ever seen.

I have no problem with Gasim running tourist resorts and selling alcohol/pork. But Adhaalath does. In 2010 they ran amok in Male’ protesting against government plans to allow the sale of alcohol at tourist abodes in inhabited islands. Witnessing it, one would have thought that even looking at alcohol would have left the Muslim faith of Maldivians as legless as a drunk stumbling out of a bar at closing time. Plans to sell alcohol is also one of the reasons Adhaalath cited when severing its alliance with MDP in September 2011. But now here they are, arm in arm with Gasim, vowing to ‘Defend Islam’ with their candidate as president.

The double-standards are just astounding. Here, for example, is a picture that emerged in the social media yesterday of a Jumhooree Party function on one of Gasim’s resort islands.

Have you seen the many signs that Adhaalath Party put up everywhere in Male’ and all surrounding islands banning bikinis? Is it the case that Maldivians can be as free as they like in what they wear or not wear as long as Adhaalath approves?

Recall all the flesh on display at the re-opening ceremony of Olympus in March this year. That was all okay, too, because at the time Imran was in bed with Waheed who was going through his Mujaheddin phase, which was preceded by his Siri Siri phase, which itself probably came after his Scientology days.

And let’s not forget Gasim’s—and therefore Adhaalath’s—running-mate. Dr Hassan Saeed co-authored the book Freedom of Religion, Apostasy and Islam, arguing that the law of apostasy and its punishment by death in Islamic law conflicts with a variety of fundamentals of Islam. It is a position directly in contrast to Adhaalath’s which is that all apostates should be put to death. Unless the only thing Hassan Saeed contributed to the book was his name on the cover, this man has done one of the most astounding volte-faces I have encountered in the academic community. Adhaalath banned his book in the Maldives but there he is now, sharing not just a podium but the same views with Adhaalath.

Adhaalath continuously speaks about Laa Dheenee [irreligious] Maldivians damaging the ‘social fabric’ of the country. But it is they who have ripped our tight-knit communities apart, and unravelled the thread of quiet faith that bound Maldivians together in an invisible yet strong bond for as long as anybody alive today can remember.

Of course, criticism of Adhaalath is a sin punishable by death (by Adhaalath, in this world). Some have been killed, others have been almost killed, and several others are under constant threat from the militant wings of these gangsters operating as ‘Jihadhists’. It is thus online that most dissent against Adhaalath takes place, and it is on Twitter that #FuckAdhaalath began and continues to grow.

As the campaign’s chief architect noted last night:

It’s good that more people are standing up to Adhaalath on social media. But that’s not the only place for the sentiment to remain. It is one worth expressing. Not for some gratuitous love of profanity but to let Adhaalath leadership know there are many Maldivians who will not be cowed by them and see them for the hate-mongering gangsters they are.

Fuck Adhaalath.