White sand, crystal water, surreal sea life: that’s why people from all over the world visit Maldives. How about repression, corruption, fundamentalism and judicial murder? Tourists at pristine resort enclaves may come away completely oblivious to complex political and social struggles played out behind the scenes in the island republic. They may not know, for example, about decades of corrupt, despotic and dissent-stifling rule by President Mamoon Gayoom, temporarily reversed in 2008 through election of Mohamed Nasheed, leader of the reform-minded National Democratic Party (NDP), as successor president. Nasheed had spent many stays in prison, where he suffered repeated torture at the hands of Gayoom’s goons for daring to speak out against both the autocratic political order and its creepingly Islamist social agenda.
Over the course of Nasheed’s three-year reform presidency, Gayoom’s cronies resisted efforts to investigate corruption and human rights abuses. Things boiled over in early 2012 when Nasheed arrested the chief criminal court judge for obstructing prosecution of such cases. Calling the arrest unconstitutional, Nasheed’s opponents took to the streets in protest. Nasheed resigned the presidency but subsequently claimed he was forced to do so in a military coup led by his vice president, Mohammed Waheed, who assumed the presidency pending a new election.
Amnesty International observes that police carried out “beatings, arbitrary detentions, attacks on the injured in hospitals and torture,” in connection with this change in government.
Later that year, Waheed arrested Nasheed for ‘terrorism,’ calling his arrest of the judge an act of kidnapping. A court found Nasheed guilty, sentencing him in 2013 to 13 years in prison. In the election later that year, his rivals joined hands to elect Abdullah Yameen, Gayoom’s half-brother, as the new president. Gayoom and Yameen supporters now stand as ‘frenemies’ to each other: official allies but mutually distrustful. Yameen’s reign seems an intensification of Gayoom’s: corruption blooming, dissidents jailed, Islamism accelerated.
Despotic practices have drawn unusual international attention to Maldives. The United Nations Working Group for Arbitrary Detention calls Nasheed’s ‘terrorism’ conviction lawless and politically motivated, while the European Parliament calls for targeted asset freezes and travel bans on Maldivian officials unless Nasheed and other political prisoners gain prompt release. Since-resigned United Kingdom Prime Minister David Cameron announced that he might favor targeted sanctions. The United States Senate has decried Nasheed’s conviction and urged release of all political prisoners. In February, the Commonwealth Ministerial Action Group (CMAG) called for release of political prisoners, steps to secure an independent judiciary and an end to prosecutions of dissidents. Frustrated by lack of progress, it announced in September moves toward suspending Maldives from Commonwealth meetings, one step shy of outright expulsion. Both Yameen and his supporters in parliament have hinted that they would accept severance rather than comply with the CMAG agenda.
Repression shows no signs of abating. Last November, Yameen declared an ‘emergency’ authorising extraordinary police powers, just on the eve of a planned anti-government rally. Critics contend that 1800 political prisoners currently languish in Yameen’s jails. Yameen recently ordered closure of Maldives’ only opposition print newspaper. Opposition rallies and meetings have elicited police pepper spray and arrests on multiple occasions over the past year while pro-government rallies go unmolested. Police have even seized sound trucks announcing MDP rallies. In early July, Yameen derailed a rally celebrating the MDP’s 11th anniversary. Just before the parade’s kick-off, police blocked access to the site. They detained MDP leader Mohamed Shifaz for ‘questioning’ until MDP crowds dispersed.
[pullquote]International support has encouraged Maldivian resistance to Yameen. In late August, Nasheed visited Sri Lanka for meetings possibly aimed at Yameen’s prompt removal[/pullquote]
Late last year, the legislature passed an ‘anti-terrorism’ law even more draconian than the one used to convict Nasheed. Besides continuing to define ‘terrorism’ over-broadly, it allows the president to declare any organisation a terrorist group and thereby threaten any member with up to 15 years in prison. Authorities can prosecute anyone giving a speech deemed supportive of ‘terrorism,’ along with anyone in media who reports on such a speech. Suspects can be held for prolonged periods without a court hearing and can meet with their lawyers only if police are in the room.
In August, Yameen’s parliament rubber-stamped legislation which escalates the danger of criticising the government. This ‘Law on Defamation’ makes virtually any strong criticism of officials a criminal act, punishable by heavy fines and jail terms. Offending media outlets may be shut down and appeals from convictions are banned. The MUO contends that the new law’s immediate purpose is to stifle allegations that president Yameen stole US$80 million from a state-owned corporation. News editors warn that the law “will prevent journalists and citizens from speaking out over serious accusations of corruption and integrity of state officials.”
Yameen has doubled down on Gayoom’s initiatives to ‘Islamize’ the culture, supplanting a previously moderate Islam with something more Wahhabist. Over the past two years, the Saudis have opened an embassy in Maldives for the first time and Yameen has paid three visits to the prophet’s homeland. The Saudis have promised financing for mosque-building and imam-led religious instruction throughout the islands. In May, Yameen renounced Maldives’ 40-year diplomatic ties with Iran, citing the Shi’ite republic for threatening regional peace and security. This of course follows the Saudi renunciation of relations with Iran earlier in the year.
International support has encouraged Maldivian resistance to Yameen. June saw the launch of a ‘Maldives United Opposition’ (MUO). Meetings of the MUO’s ‘shadow cabinet’ for an alternative government have focused on restoring and advancing political freedom and the rule of law. In late August, Nasheed visited Sri Lanka for meetings possibly aimed at Yameen’s prompt removal. He revived charges that the coup against his own presidency came in direct response to discovery of a black market deal handled by Yameen during Gayoom’s rule. Nasheed contends that price-subsidised OPEC oil, shipped to Maldives out of Islamic solidarity, was diverted on the high seas into highly-profitable sales to Myanmar’s military junta, which lay at the time under international boycott for human rights violations. More than a hundred million dollars may have found their way into private bank accounts.
The politicised judiciary behind Nasheed’s ‘terrorism’ conviction can do much worse to small fry like young Hussain Humam, who now sits under sentence of death for the gruesome murder of Dr. Afrasheem Ali back in 2012. Before being brutally slashed to death, Ali was a prominent Islamic scholar and member of parliament. Though aligned with Yameen’s political party, he was disenchanted with Yameen’s underworld reputation and he loomed as a potential rival for leadership. Though Yameen’s government called his murder politically motivated, it never reported out any specific political motive or culprits. Arrest fell quickly on Humam, a thug with a history of violence and mental instability, who had no apparent motive other than that someone probably paid him. He confessed to the murder during police ‘interrogation,’ then retracted his confession at trial. Further confession and retraction ensued, with increasing signs of mental illness, during the course of his appeal. With his last appeal rejected earlier this year, he now stands to be the first Maldivian executed in some 60 years, ending a long death penalty moratorium. The government has gone to the trouble of constructing a lethal injection chamber but has so far failed to secure the chemicals for ending Humam’s life.
[pullquote]In August, Yameen’s parliament rubber-stamped legislation that escalates the danger of criticising the government. This ‘Law on Defamation’ makes virtually any strong criticism of officials a criminal act, punishable by heavy fines and jail terms[/pullquote]
Prior to trial, Humam’s main alibi witness turned up dead in a park. Critics castigate the trial for grave due process defects, including failure to allow testimony from defense witnesses and inattention to inconsistencies among government witnesses. If Humam was not intellectual author of the murder, Yameen’s government must count as a suspect, as Humam has suggested in his post-arrest mutterings. Tariq Ramadan, professor of Islamic studies at Oxford, argues on a number of grounds that executing Humam would contravene Islamic law. He voiced concern in a letter to Yameen this past summer, just after the Maldivian Supreme Court officially approved Humam’s death sentence. Several points he raises would count heavily in any system of organised jurisprudence, not just Islamic law. He stresses an overall lack of fairness and transparency in Humam’s trial.
He points out that in the absence of any physical evidence, the case rests substantially on the accused’s confessions, which Humam claims to have made under threat of harm to his family. He highlights Humam’s apparent mental illness and the absence of any independent psychiatric evaluation. He argues that under Islamic jurisprudence doubts about a defendant’s mental fitness should count toward exonerating him. Lastly, he stresses that the victim’s father and brother object to Humam’s execution, which under Islamic law means that the death penalty should be suspended. (This may be stretching a bit, since the family’s plea for sparing Humam’s life emphasises “incomplete investigation” of the murder more than clemency toward Humam.) Of course, Humam’s lawyers had already raised most of Professor Ramadan’s points in their unsuccessful brief to the Supreme Court. Upon Humam’s execution, the Court’s fingerprints will lie at the scene of a homicide possibly perpetrated to silence a witness.