Political bias limiting right to information: panel

The biased editorial practices of media outlets owned by politicians is one of the major impediments preventing the right to information from being upheld in the Maldives, journalists and civil society actors highlighted during discussion panels organised by the US Embassy this week.

Maldivian journalists and NGO leaders met with representatives from the US Embassy, the UN, as well as a US attorney representing the American Society of News Editors, Kevin Goldberg, to discuss the current status and future efforts needed to protect this human right in the Maldives.

The state is the guardian of information and the public have a right to access that information, according to the forum.

This is essential for not only holding the government accountable to the public – so residents of the Maldives can understand what the government is doing for the people – but also for instilling public trust in government institutions.

Any type of information, including documents, electronic records, audio, video, etc., produced, held or maintained by a state institution should be easily accessible. Uninhibited access to events held in the public domain, such as protests, are also protected, the forum was informed.

Journalists and NGO representatives alike noted the lack of cooperation from government institutions as well as the shortcomings of media outlets in disseminating balanced information.

The media discussion panel held Monday (August 12) was nonetheless poorly attended, with three journalists from Sun Online, one Maldives Media Council (MMC) official, and one Minivan News representative participating.

While two Maldives National Broadcasting Corporation (MNBC), also known as Television Maldives (TVM), reporters were present during part of Attorney Kevin Goldberg’s opening remarks, they left prior to the group discussion taking place. No representatives from the Maldives Broadcasting Commission (MBC), Raajje TV, Villa TV (VTV), DhiTV, Haveeru News, Channel News Maldives (CNM), Miadhu News, or Minivan Radio attended the event.

Although the panel was small, discussion was lively, with everyone in attendance concerned about editorial policies that catered to the government or a specific political party, which they said had staunched the flow of information reaching the Maldivian public.

Unbalanced reporting in favor of the state during the February 2012 controversial transfer of power that followed former President Mohamed Nasheed’s resignation, as well as government authorities cutting Maldivian Democratic Party (MDP) aligned-Raajje TV’s feed, were highlighted as concerns.

In addition to the need for a culture of balanced, ethical reporting, journalists highlighted the difficulty in obtaining information from various government representatives and institutions.

Goldberg noted that “information delayed is information denied”, and that procedural mechanisms should be in place to allow the public, including journalists, easy access information. The state should “proactively disclose” information of public interest, individuals “shouldn’t have to ask for it”, he said, explaining that readily available information was as much a means for public officials to protect themselves from the media as it was for the media in conducting investigative journalism.

Goldberg, as well as the Human Rights Advisor to the UN Resident Coordinator’s Office, Safir Syed, stated that MBC’s requirement that journalists be licensed to enter a protest was a human rights violation.

Goldberg emphasised that it takes time to build enough collective momentum to effectively pressure a government to uphold the right to information, and that collaboration between media outlets and civil society was essential to do so.

NGO representatives echoed the concerns noted by journalists during the discussion panel held Tuesday (August 13) and emphasised that unethical reporting and the media’s lack of cooperation with NGOs had limited civil society’s trust of local media outlets.

The inability to appeal to the judiciary to obtaining access to public information was also highlighted as a problem.

Transparency Maldives Project Director Aiman Rasheed explained to Minivan News that while Article 19 of the Maldivian Constitution guarantees the right to information, current practice was limited to the executive. He added that the right to information regime needs to be spread across all state institutions, including the judiciary, parliament, independent commissions and state companies.

Furthermore, the Maldives is a signatory to the International Convention on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), which also protects this human right.

“The right to information is important for citizens to make informed choices, participate in the democratic process, and hold the government accountable,” said Rasheed. “Freedom of information is a key prerequisite for democracy.”

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Media needs to introduce “peace journalism”: MP Nasheed

Former Legal Reform Minister MP Mohamed Nasheed has recommended Maldives-based journalists introduce “peace reporting” in order to stop violence against local media.

Nasheed claimed that the Maldives media is exploited by politicians to a great extent and that reporters needed to start looking at the similarities between politicians as opposed to their differences, the Sun Online news agency reported.

The Kulhudhuffushi-south MP told local media that a new kind of “peace journalism” should be introduced into the system as the level of rivalry, anger and hatred that exists in the Maldives is too much for people to endure.

“One thing journalists can do is introduce peace journalism, promote peace journalism.

“Instead of making a big deal out of the differences between two people, and spreading information about those differences in the society – they could present the similarities. We should go for peaceful journalism,” Nasheed was quoted as saying in local media.

Nasheed claimed that political leaders prepare quotations in certain ways in order to make the headlines and therefore exploit journalists.

“There is a limit even to political influence. There is a limit to how much journalists can be exploited to obtain political advantages.

“If all journalists unite and establish certain policies, politicians will have no choice but to follow those policies,” Nasheed told Sun Online.

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Comment: The mixed story of the rise of Islamism in the Maldives

One of the many lessons of the Canadian philosopher Charles Taylor’s magisterial book, A Secular Age, is how religion continues to exist and continues to be relevant.

The relevance is not only limited to religion’s potential for creating identity and meaning in life.

Religion’s relevance also lies in the moral and epistemological limitations of the virulent forms of atheistic exclusive humanism and hardcore naturalistic ‘science’ that Richard Dawkins, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, and their ilk seem to be promoting.

Religion’s potential for solidarity and taking the cause of justice and vulnerable forms of life, is as relevant as ever.

Its potential for an ultimate explanation against an unfounded scientific reductionism cannot be blindly and arrogantly dismissed.

Rise of Islamism and electoral democracy

During the last seven or so years, coinciding with (or in response to) democratisation, the most spectacular religious phenomenon in the Maldives is the rise of Islamism. At least twelve Islamic/Islamist NGOs were registered between 2004-2010. Prior to 2004, there were no more than three organisations with the specific goal of religion.

But re-Islamisation led by Islamism itself should not be taken as alarming for at least ‘electoral democracy’.

If popular participation in politics can be an indication of support for democracy, the voter turnout in February 2011’s local elections stood at around 70%, which is comparable to past turnouts for parliamentary elections. Equally important, Islamist Adalath Party fared quite badly in all three elections since 2008.

However, re-Islamisation seems to have had, and will continue to have, mixed results for the society and politics.

Questioning religion

As late as the mid-1970s, ethnographic research in the Maldives could conclude that Islam of the people was largely limited to ‘washing, praying and fasting’.

What this means can best be contrasted by describing what James Piscatori and Eickelman call ‘objectification of Muslim consciousness’. They explain that this is ‘the process whereby basic questions come to the fore in the consciousness of large numbers of believers’.

This process has become a salient feature of all Muslim societies. Similarly, this growing objectification of consciousness, largely over the past decade, became the most important religious development in the Maldives. Its main feature includes fragmentation and pluralization of religious discourses.

For sociologists like Jose Casanova this could ultimately mean an Islamic aggiornamento, or a sort of reform that took place in the Second Vatican when Catholicism finally endorsed democracy and human rights in the 1970s. But should we be so optimistic?

Judging from data and people’s comments, often here on Minivan News, it would be hard for some of us in the Maldives to see any positives from objectification of our religious consciousness.

Indeed, in the Maldives what we have seen is a sort of reflexive re-Islamisation: through responding to the terms of alternative discourses (e.g. democracy and human rights) and processes of global modernity, the society seems to be undergoing a new re-traditionalization.

Mixed Results of Islamism

We could observe two parallel processes led by Islamism in the Maldives. It seems to be a striking reversal of what had happened since the 1970s.

First, there is an attempt at de-secularising the actual community. The most obvious example is public piety such as the Muslim veil.

But there is also an attempt at re-Islamising the functional spheres like the economy. Islamic banking or riba-free business is a case in point.

Call for re-Islamising the national curriculum, call against music and entertainment, and rise in ‘creationism’ pseudo-science, are important examples too.

Perhaps a more important example is greater de-privatisation of religion: Islamist organizations and Islamist media outlets have proliferated in the public sphere. Their influence in the political society and the state has increased (e.g., a religious ministry led by Islamists).

But here is the other side of the picture. Islamist attempts at ‘rationalisation’ and ‘objectification’, or in short ‘purification’ of the society, seem to have mixed results for the dominant national consciousness.

The powerful motif of a ‘100% Muslim nation’ may no longer serve as a taken-for-granted, internalised background. It may no longer be a largely unconscious sacralised background understanding of the nation.

The signs of this change could already be seen from the increased sarcastic deployment of ‘sattain satta muslim qaum’ (e.g., ‘are we really a 100% Muslim nation?’), especially by Islamists to decry the alleged failure of officials to make the society ‘Islamic enough’.

If this is so, there is not only de-secularisation. There is a sort of ‘secularisation’ taking place too. This is a secularisation of the imagined community, of the taken-for-granted national consciousness. Ironically, reflexive re-Islamisation is driving this secularisation.

Now, why does this matter? Here is one reason why it matters.

Freedom of religion

This sort of secularisation of the national consciousness seems to be a condition of effective religious liberty. Even if political secularism was to be enshrined in the Constitution, freedom of religion might not be effective without this sort of secularisation of the ‘imagined community’.

The poignant suicide of a young man, possibly because he felt he betrayed his ‘comrades-in-identity’ (i.e. the rest of us Muslims) is a case in point. His desperate email is telling: ‘Maldivians are proud of their religious homogeneity and I am learning the hard way that there is no place for non-Muslim Maldivians in this society.’

One cannot only legally be non-Muslim; but more importantly such a person may be dismissed as unworthy. If this is so, political secularism itself may not be a sufficient condition of liberty without secularisation now seemingly driven by reflexive re-Islamisation. (Here then is also a lesson for the arrogant global (i.e. the US) project of bringing freedom of religion to the world.)

Awareness of the Other

If the above interpretation is correct, we could increasingly experience these phenomena:

i) Through objectification of the taken-for-granted national consciousness, an increased awareness of the existence of some fellow Maldivians with different worldviews and faiths.

ii) Through a process of de-secularisation of the actual community, intense reflexive and political bulwarks (especially by Islamists) against this cross-pressured awareness.

I think both of these things are taking place.

Political Reconciliation of the Cross-Pressure

How we finally politically reconcile this awareness is the ultimate condition of the possibility or impossibility for democracy – and therefore equality, liberty, fraternity – in this over two-millennia-old country.

This is not a place for advocacy. But for this political reconciliation, a necessary, but not sufficient, condition is a dose of humility from the full political and social spectrum.

As a colleague at the government once pointed out, as a first step, the government needs to get over with its ‘hubris’ of going it alone.

Azim Zahir has a BA in Philosophy and Politics and is completing his MA degree at the University of Sydney.

All comment pieces are the sole view of the author and do not reflect the editorial policy of Minivan News. If you would like to write an opinion piece, please send proposals to [email protected]

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Police investigate allegations that politicians physically attacked and threatened officers

The Maldives Police Service yesterday issued a press statement saying it was now investigating allegations that politicians had physically attacked and threatened its officers.

Police have claimed that “some” politicians were seeking to mislead the public over recent conflicts in Kaafu Atoll Thulusdhoo and Shaviyani Atoll Funadhoo.

”The conflicts occurred when the Atoll Councilors entered the former Atoll Offices in these islands which are under charge of the Finance Ministry. The President has already allocated an administrative office for the council under Decentralisation Act article number 127,” said Police in the statement.

“When the Atoll Councilors started to use the state assets like this, the Home Ministry requested police to protect the state assets and to take necessary actions.”

The investigation follows a war of words between the government and some recently elected local councils over their right to move to offices other than those assigned to them

Atoll councilors had been told repeatedly that if they wish to use state assets, they should be used in line with proper procedure, police claimed.

”But rather than solving the issue peacefully, they [Atoll Councilors] have vandalized and used some state assets, while the police were taking necessary measures,” the statement read.

Police therefore said they were calling on politicians not to use the elected councilors as a tool to create splits and civil strife in society.

”Although some politicians told police to act in a way that would politically benefit them, the responsibility of police to uphold the constitution will be carried out within the laws and for the best interest of the society, whilst preserving peace and harmony,” the statement added.

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