Author: JJ Robinson

Industry fears easing over impact of protest publicity on Chinese market

Industry concerns that last week’s protests and Hong Kong’s subsequent travel alert would affect the growing Chinese tourism market in the Maldives have eased.

Sources at the Arabian Travel Market held in Dubai last week expressed concern at a number of cancellations from tour operators in the Asian region following the issue of the alert, which placed the Maldives alongside Israel, Iran, Indonesia, Russia and Pakistan.

A major Shanghai-based tour operator said today that despite 10 cancellations last week during the widely publicised protests, the situation had improved and bookings were improving this week.

However Minivan News understands that one major international airline operating to the Maldives suffered a 20 percent cancellation on booked and reserved tickets from several countries in the region last week, and expressed concern that communication with operators regarding future business had also suffered.

Locally, Manager of Traders Hotel Ester Marcaida said the hotel had received no cancellations as a result of the protests, “although it is possible it may have affected future bookings. So far so good.”

Traders is a bellweather as it accommodates many charter passengers from China transiting to seaplane after arriving from the Asian region – most international airlines arrive in the evening and passengers must overnight in Male.

“It’s a sizeable business for us,” Marcaida said, adding that “charters from Singapore and Malaysia haven’t been affected.”

The Maldives Ambassador to China, Ahmed Latheef, said he had been assured by Chinese tourism authorities that it did not intend to issue a travel alert for the Maldives, unless advised to do so by the country’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

“It is true there was some effect from media coverage of the protests in Male’,” he said, “but it was not as bad as it could have been. The travel alert was only for Hong Kong – there was no alert for mainland China.”

There had been some concern expressed by travel agencies sending tourists to the Maldives, he noted, although the numbers were down as it was not high season for Chinese travellers.

“One tour operator called to say he’d seen a travel alert in Hong Kong and wanted to find out the situation,” Latheef said. “We did what we could and sent out a circular explaining that the tourist resorts were far from Male’ where the protests were occurring.”

Rise of the dragon

China is a major emerging market for the Maldives and is now the country’s leading tourism market in terms of arrivals, eclipsing the UK last year and offsetting a slump in the European market due to the economic recession.

The Maldives received 120,000 Chinese visitors in 2010, an increase of 96 percent on 2009.

Most tourists from the region stay relatively briefly – four nights is the average stay – and spend an average of US$2500: a gross input to the economy of US$300 million.

“If you look at the numbers they speak for themselves,” Latheef told Minivan News. “The Chinese market will be very important – there is so much interest in the Maldives.”

Latheef explained that the Chinese market was attracted to the Maldives not only because of the beach and the sun – a major drawcard for those trapped in the European winter.

“It also carries a lot of prestige in China to say you have been to the Maldives,” he said. “It carries status. A lot of people have increasing spending power, and have been to many European countries. The Maldives is much sought-after and very popular.”

Resorts had been slow to react and cater to the market, but had noticeably increased efforts to hire Mandarin-speaking staff, he noted.

“The Chinese have specific requirements of which we have to be mindful,” he said. “They prefer Chinese food, and they feel safer if there are staff who speak Mandarin as many only speak their own language. There are a lot of things that need attention.”

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JSC abolishes complaints committee in name of efficiency

The Judicial Services Commission (JSC) has abolished its Complaints Committee citing “efficiency”, with complaints against judges now being forwarded for review by the legal section and Commission head Adam Mohamed.

Last year the JSC received 143 complaints concerning the conduct of judges. By its own statistics none were tabled in the commission, and only five were ever replied to.

Chair of the former complaints commission, the President’s Member of the JSC Aishath Velezinee who was stabbed in the street in January this year, said the complaints committee had been unable to operate as the chair had persistently scheduled meetings “during the same days and hours as the committee meetings, and it came to the point where it was impossible for the committee to meet and work.”

“Several members including Dhivehi Rayyithunge Party (DRP) MP Afrashim Ali also boycotted the meetings making it difficult for the committee to function,” Velezinee said, claiming that no procedure had been followed in abolishing the committee, and intention was to stop complaints against judges from being investigated.

“The JSC recently adopted house rules, which gives extraordinary powers to the chair. The chair decides whether to table complaints, routinely withholds information from the Commission and responds [to complaints] himself,” she said.

The JSC has failed to table or even acknowledge receipt of a report on the judiciary produced by the International Commission of Jurists (ICJ), which questioned whether the JSC’s possessed the technical ability and knowledge to investigate complaints and hold the judiciary accountable, as well as its independence.

The opposition-majority parliament has meanwhile yet to back the government’s request that the Maldives join the International Criminal Court (ICC), of which half the world’s nations are members. Velezinee has previously accused certain opposition MPs of manipulating the judiciary through JSC in an attempt to retain control of the legal impunity provided them under the previous government’s Ministry of Justice.

Central to the International Criminal Court’s mandate “is the principle of complementarity, which holds that the Court will only intervene if national legal systems are unable or unwilling to investigate and prosecute perpetrators of genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes,” the ICC’s international NGO coalition said in a statement.

“Perpetrators of genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity must be held accountable. Greater support for the ICC in Asia is needed in order to increase the region’s commitment to the fight against impunity. The Coalition therefore encourages Maldives to assert its commitment to ending the culture of impunity by acceding to the Rome Statute of the ICC.”

Parliament has meanwhile been deliberating on an amendment to the Clemency Act whereby death sentences issued by judges would be acted upon when all appeals failed. The last person be judicially executed in the Maldives was Hakim Didi in 1953, who was executed by firing squad after being found guilty of conspiracy to murder using black magic.

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“Is this Malaysia?”: Authorities playing a blame game over modern-day slave trade

Authorities in the Maldives are engaged in a “blame game” over human trafficking in the country, and have been “pointing at each other and going around in circles” observed Professor Mondira Dutta, of the Central Asian Studies Programme at Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi.

“The Maldives is on the tier two watch list in the US State Department’s trafficking in persons report. This means that there are enough policy recommendations in place to combat human trafficking, but there isn’t much evidence in the field to show the government is working towards it,” Dr Dutta said.

Dr Dutta presented a lecture on human trafficking yesterday at the invitation of the Human Rights Commission of the Maldives (HRCM), after spending a week interviewing stakeholders.

“There are cases of elderly men going to India and marrying young women, and returning [to the Maldives] with a free domestic servant,” she said. “I know of one such woman who was returned to her home country at the expense of the Indian High Commission.”

In other instances police had conducted raids on massage parlours, “but they are unable to do anything as there is no law against human trafficking in place.”

The Maldives was primarily a destination country for traffickers, she said, “with workers trafficked into forced labour or commercial sexual exploitation.”

With human trafficking not expressly prohibited and the only prescribed penalty for labour trafficking a small fine, unregistered rogue employment agents were” rampant” in the country, she said.

“Immigration attests that in one case a quota for 99 workers was issued in the name of an 80 year-old disabled Maldivian man, not in his senses, who knew nothing about migrant workers being brought to the country in his name. This was sanctioned not just for one year, but year after year.”

Immigration officials told Dr Dutta that a common question asked by many workers arriving in the country was “Is this Malaysia?”

“They do not know the agent’s number or even his name. You cannot blame this on them,” she said. “They are told they have work in a resort, but it turns out to be a small restaurant in Male’.”

Whenever fraudulent agents were arrested, the maximum sentences handed out were no more than three months in prison, “and then it’s back to business again.”

Even the Ministry of Education was retaining the passports of expatriates, Dr Dutta said, “in order to ‘ease out the visa application system’, which is not something I’ve heard happen anywhere else in the world. This contributes to the conversion of legal migrants into illegal ones.”

The Tourism Ministry had acknowledged that there were “cases in resorts that were not normal”, however the Ministry claimed these were outside its jurisdiction, Dr Dutta added.

“Hospitals also attest the fact that low numbers of expatriates [attend hospital] because they have no money to pay, so they are left to the mercy of God.”

Even the number of migrant workers in the country was unknown, Dr Dutta said, with the only estimates based on data from 2008. According to that information, 85,000 foreign workers were in the Maldives, approximately 28,000 Indians with the majority Bangladeshis.

“More that 50 percent of workers are illegal – why?” she asked. “Because they are paid irregular salaries, go without pay for months, work extremely hard for long hours in inhuman living conditions and face constant insecurity. The majority are illiterate and the poorest of the poor from the developing world.”

False promises of “rosy scenarios” overseas compelled many to seek a better life in countries such as the Maldives, Dr Dutta said, but placed them at high risk of exploitation by unscrupulous employment agents in countries where the authorities were disinterested or laws and regulations protecting workers did not exist.

“Law enforcement machinery for trafficking does not exist – there are no laws for human trafficking in Maldives, and existing laws can even be a hurdle for booking culprits,” Dr Dutta said, using the example of a trafficked sex worker who local laws viewed as a criminal rather than a victim.

Trafficking – “trade in flesh” – was one of the “world’s most heinous crimes” and “a modern-day slave trade,” Dr Dutta said.

“We used to living in a society that accepts the barbaric treatment of men, women and children, that this starts to become accepted. The initial shock of these outlandish crimes wears off quickly in an environment where rape, murder and humiliation are not only a staple of the news, but an important cornerstone of the nation’s entertainment,” she added.

HRCM is currently working on a report on human trafficking in the Maldives.

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Negotiations between government, protesters, “very upsetting”, says Mahlouf

‘Peace talks’ held yesterday between the government and the ‘youth movement’ the opposition Dhivehi Rayyithunge Party (DRP) has claimed were responsible for organising last week’s protests have reportedly ended poorly.

Spokesperson for the opposition’s youth movement, Mohamed Ahusan, told Minivan News that their demands had been “dismissed” by the government representatives, who included Shauna Aminath from the President’s Office and State Finance Minister Ahmed Naseer.

Ahusan said the group’s demands included “reinstating the dollar rate, eliminating the dollar blackmarket, reduce political appointees and cutting at least some of their allowances, terminating foreign consultants, reducing water and electricity bills by reducing the fuel surcharge, and reducing the cost of living to the same level as 2010.”

However he said the government was not supportive of their requests, and accused Shauna of “making it political.”

‘’She said there were two solutions: one was an economic solution, and the second was a political solution,” Ahusan claimed. “She said the political solution was to arrest [former President] Gayoom.”

DRP MP and the party’s youth-wing leader Ahmed Mahlouf, who did not attend the meeting but requested police arrange the meeting with the government, described the meeting as “very upsetting.”

“Shauna, the Maldivian Democratic Party’s newly-elected youth-wing leader, represented the President’s Office and said the only solution would be to arrest former President Gayoom and his political leadership,
if there were any more protests,” he claimed.

“The President promised to bring the cost of living down in 2008 and to reduce electricity bills, and he has not delivered,” Mahlouf said, alleging that the government had “increased expenditure by 40 percent.”

Shauna would not comment on whether she had suggested Gayoom be arrested, and said the government was unable to officially respond to the group’s demands as they had no formal recognition as an NGO, committee or other such body.

“We met with four people who claimed to represent youth,” she said. “They presented a piece of paper they said was a youth proposal, but there was almost no discussion of what was on it.

“They talked a little about youth unemployment, and the rising price of milk, cooking oil and petrol. They said that young people did not have enough money to pay for coffees or petrol for their motorbikes.”

The group of four had “repeated the same messages being aired by [opposition] political parties: that the government had sold the airport to GMR, Dhiraggu to [Cable and Wireless], and that six people had control of the entire economy.

“Then they said they understood that the government’s [managed float of the rufiya] was necessary, but were concerned the government had not spoken about it beforehand.”

Minivan News understands that the proposal presented by the group included closing the national offices, ensuring government offices were not open after working hours, sacking foreign consultants, closing utility companies running at a loss, and reviewing expenditure on foreign diplomatic missions.

“The State Minister for Finance tried to explain the economic situation but it was not clear if they understood,” Shauna said.

“He explained that three billion rufiya had been printed, leaving the country with an artificial balance, and that the situation today was a result of economic policies of the past.”

“We explained that it would be very easy for us to keep printing money,” Shauna said, adding that the government had instead introduced new taxes such as the corporate tax and tourism goods and services tax (TGST) to bring long-term stability to the economy, despite knowing that it would be very difficult and unpopular.

Mahlouf said the protesters had not yet decided whether to continue the protests next Friday, “and would be working with parliamentarians this week to decide if we should go ahead.”

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Day of protests ends with pepper spraying of Umar Naseer

An opposition protest held last night near the artificial beach was dispersed by police after the group tried to make its way towards the intersection of Majeedhee Magu and Chandanee Magu, the focal point of last week’s violent demonstrations.

Earlier this week police had announced they were restricting protests to the artificial beach and tsunami monument areas, and have since quickly dispersed those conducted elsewhere.

Demonstrators at the artificial beach last night carried placards written in English reading “Remove sex offenders/drug addicts from government”, and “Resign now”.

As the demonstration took place, five rows of police and Maldives National Defence Force (MNDF) personnel armed with heavy wooden batons stood between the 300-400 demonstrators and the route down Majeedhee Magu.

At around 11:30pm demonstrators, attempted to reach the intersection and were forced to split up by groups of police with interlocked arms.

Police eventually used pepper spray to subdue several protesters who attempted to force their way into the intersection, including dismissed Deputy Leader of the Dhivehi Rayyithunge Party (DRP) Umar Naseer.

Placards at the artificial beach

“Five or six people who tried to force their way through our shield line were arrested and taken to police headquarters, and then released,” Sub-Inspector Ahmed Shiyam said.

Minivan News observed a light police presence all over the city, with larger squads of riot police stationed near key locations such as the President’s Office and the Chandanee Magu intersection. Several MNDF troop trucks stood ready outside the MNDF headquarters, but the military presence appeared minimal.

Besides the opposition protest and groups of young men hanging around the intersection heckling police, Male’ was unusually quiet for late evening. Entire city blocks in the north-east of the city were closed off and Republican Square was deserted.

An opposition protest in the square that morning involving several hundred people was quickly dispersed by riot police, and covered by foreign media including Associated Press and Al-Jazeera. The protest was subsequently rescheduled for the evening.

Later in the afternoon, a somewhat carnival atmosphere descended over the city as the Maldivian Democratic Party (MDP) staged a flag-waving counter-protest of several thousand people near the tsunami monument, alongside a concert stage and a police road safety campaign consisting of upturned cars and burned motorcycles.

Five lines of police blocked off Majeedee Magu.

“Anti-government protesters claim the uprising is inspired by the Arab revolution, that people power is rising up,” reported Al-Jazeera. “But here on the other side of town are thousands of voicing pointing out that the revolution has already happened.”

In an interview with the news network, President Nasheed accused the opposition of trying to reinstate authoritarian rule.

“I don’t think these are spontaneous demonstrations. If you look at the events and incidents [this week] it is very easy to understand this is very well stage-managed and fairly well played,” he said.

Al-Jazeera observed that “while leading opposition figures are clearly at the forefront of these demonstrations, they deny this,” and interviewed DRP Leader Ahmed Thasmeen Ali.

“It is not attempt overthrow or change the government, it’s just raising voices,” Thasmeen told Al-Jazeera.

Note: Maldives coverage begins at 0:50

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UN’s Sri Lankan war crimes report “singularly counterproductive”: Foreign Minister

Maldives Foreign Minister Ahmed Naseem has told journalists in Colombo that the UN report into human rights abuses in the closing days of the country’s civil war is “singularly counterproductive.”

The report was leaked to the Sri Lankan media several weeks ago and contains allegations that the army shelled hospitals, UN facilities and aid workers with the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) in the final days of the civil war between the army and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE).

The report also accuses the Sri Lankan government of intimidating and in some cases abducting journalists “in white vans”. The LTTE was criticised for allegedly using civilians as human shields.

A former UN spokesperson based in Sri Lanka told media after the report was leaked that it “damns the government of Sri Lanka’s so-called war on terror, which incidentally killed many thousands of civilians. The Tamil Tigers were equally rotten in their disdain for life.”

“The focus should now be on how the country can move forward,” Naseem said, during a press conference at the Galle Face Hotel.

“As a responsible member of the Human Rights Council, the Maldives believes it is imperative that the international community closely examine all aspects of the report before taking any further action.”

The UK’s television network Channel 4 has meanwhile said it will air what it claims is “probably the most horrific” footage the station has ever shown, after obtaining “trophy” videos of what it claims are Sri Lankan war crimes.

According to the network, footage obtained by the station includes “extrajudicial executions filmed by Sri Lankan soldiers as war trophies on their phones; the aftermath of shelling in civilian camps and hospitals alleged to have been deliberately targeted by Sri Lankan government forces; dead female Tamil fighters who appear to have been systematically raped; and pictures which document Tamil fighters alive in the custody of Sri Lankan government forces and then later dead, apparently having been executed.”

The Sri Lankan media has overwhelming supported the government against the UN report, contrasting war crime accusations from the West with the triumphalism displayed following the death of Osama Bin Laden.

“We suffered 30 years of ruthless terror, our innocent villagers were massacred, our security officers, innocent men, women and children were killed by suicide bomb blasts and snipers, our ministers, parliamentarians and presidents were killed or disabled for life, our children were massacred in trains, innocent travelers in buses were bombed, a bus load of our Buddhist priests were butchered,, our airports were bombed and terrorism restricted our daily existence,” wrote one commentator on the Lankaweb social media website.

Under the UN’s own regulations a formal war crimes investigation can only be launched on the invitation of the host country, or through a mandate voted by a body such as the UN Human Rights Council.

The Maldives has been a vocal member of the latter, and was quick to sever diplomatic ties with the Libyan government following “clear evidence that the Gaddafi regime is guilty of crimes against humanity and war crimes.”

“I’m concerned the UN report is a bit belated. Why say it now? Why not when the war was going on?” asked President Mohamed Nasheed’s Press Secretary, Mohamed Zuhair, speaking to Minivan News recently.

“My point is that this report only appeared after the war was over. We support the Sri Lankan government’s desire for peace and harmony, and any government that brought about that peace should be held in high honour,” Zuhair said.

If an investigation was to take place, Zuhair suggested, “it should happen in an independent manner, with reconciliation on both sides.”

Read the full UN report (English)

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Parties launch protests as foreign media descends on Male’

Police this morning dispersed a rally of several hundred anti-government demonstrators who gathered at Republican Square near the headquarters of the Maldives National Defence Force (MNDF), amid a somewhat carnival atmosphere that settled over other parts of the city on Friday.

Dismissed Deputy Leader of the opposition Dhivehi Rayyithunge Party (DRP), Umar Naseer, and MPs Ali Arif and Ahmed Mahlouf were detained for an hour after allegedly shoving police.

After a run of demonstrations across Male’ this week in protest against the government’s decision to implement a managed float of the rufiya, effectively devaluing the currency, police on Wednesday announced that any protests not held in the open artificial beach or tsunami monument areas would be immediately dispersed.

The DRP, which insists the protests are ‘youth-led’ despite the apparent leadership of its MPs, has tried to replicate the ‘Arab Spring’ protests across the Middle East, painting President Nasheed as a despot to the international media and dubbing a busy Male’ intersection ‘Youth Square’.

The DRP announced that the protest would continue this evening at the artificial beach from 8:45pm.

Meanwhile, the ruling Maldivian Democratic Party (MDP) held a counter-protest this afternoon, with several thousand people gathering near the tsunami monument carrying banners and waving yellow flags.

Speaking at the rally, President Mohamed Nasheed stated that the government’s currency decision was backed by the International Monetary Fund (IMF), and challenged the opposition to defeat him in an election rather than attempting to topple the government illegitimately.

Nasheed claimed that the budget deficit had improved since the government took power, and that it had also introduced state pensions, health insurance and benefits for single parents and the disabled.

A concert stage and a number of upturned and smashed vehicles in the area, part of a police ‘Speed Kills’ campaign, provided a surreal backdrop to the pro-government demonstration.

An upturned car near the MDP rally, part of a police road accident campaign.

A number of foreign media outlets, including Al-Jazeera, have arrived in Male’ to cover the demonstrations after violent protests last week were widely publicised internationally.

Passing the DRP headquarters this afternoon and assumed to be foreign media, Minivan News was approached by an opposition supporter who compared the pro-government demonstrators to “pro-Mubarak supporters” who “beat us at night.”

Former Egyptian President of 30 years Hosni Mubarak was deposed by a democratic uprising in Egypt, leading to a tide of similar pro-democracy rallies across the Middle East.

Maldivian tourism representatives attending the Arabian Travel Market in Dubai, the region’s largest such expo, claimed this week to be receiving cancellations because of safety fears amid the ongoing demonstrations.

“Travel operators in Taiwan have said they are postponing and cancelling group bookings because of negative perceptions [of safety] in the Maldives,” a tourism source attending the expo told Minivan News.

“We just had another two confirmed bookings cancelled today because of reports of riots and instability. We worked hard to get these bookings and the potential domino effect is really worrying – people panic.”

Economic problems

An ongoing dollar shortage, reluctance of banks to exchange local currency, and a flourishing blackmarket that reached Rf 14.2-14.8 to the dollar, culminated in mid-April with the government finally acknowledging that the rufiya was overvalued – after a short-lived attempt to crack down on ‘illegal’ exchanges.

High demand immediately led to most banks and companies dealing in dollar commodities – such as airline ticketing agents – to immediately raise their rate of exchange to the maximum permitted rate Rf15.42.

With the Maldives almost totally reliant on outside imports, including fuel and basic staples such as rice, the government’s decision has effectively led to a 20 percent increase in the cost of living for most ordinary Maldivians.

In an article for Minivan News, Director of Structured Finance at the Royal Bank of Scotland Ali Imraan observed that ‘growth’ in the domestic economy had been driven by the public sector and “paid for by printing Maldivian rufiya and clever manoeuvres with T-Bills, which the government has used since 2009 to be able conveniently sidestep the charge of printing money. In simple terms: successive governments printed/created money to drive domestic economic growth.”

With the introduction this year of a 3.5 percent tourism goods and services tax, a business profit tax and a revision of the rents paid for resort islands, the government now has a number of economic levers it can pull to increase revenue in the future.

However, it has struggled to explain that to people now paying up to 20 percent extra for basic commodities – an affront to the MDP’s pledge to reduce the cost of living – and was caught unawares by this week’s populist protests.

Both factions of the opposition have seized the political opportunity to take the focus off the party’s internal troubles, but have offered few alternatives beyond demanding the government “reduce commodity prices”.

Read more on the Maldivian economy

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IFJ releases South Asian “Press Freedom in Peril” report

The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ)‘s 2011 ‘Press Freedom in Peril‘ for South Asia has claimed there are “several matters of detail on which discord between journalists and the government is rife” in the Maldives.

The report, produced on behalf of the South Asia Media Solidarity Network (SAMSN) of which the Maldives National Journalists’ Association (MJA) is a member, states that “going beyond the perception-based indexes of press freedom that have put Maldives among the most rapidly improving countries, there are certain difficulties that journalists in the nation continue to face, even if these are not reflected in the broad numerical indexes, which are admittedly of limited value.”

The reports claims that journalists covering opposition demonstrations in October 2010 were been “beaten with batons, some of them shackled and a number briefly detained,” with police claiming that this occurred because “some of the journalists covering the demonstration had started engaging them in a confrontational spirit.”

The report also noted the opposition party had blamed the alleged assaults on journalists on Parliamentary Group Leader of the ruling Maldivian Democratic Party (MDP), “who had, in the weeks preceding the event, made a number of public statements that suggested a deep antipathy towards the media.”

Manik referred to private TV channels in the Maldives as the fruit of ‘ill-gotten’ wealth and vowed to teach them a lesson,” the report claimed.

Subsequent findings from the Maldives Media Council (MMC) had “sought to be all things to all people, calling on journalists to follow a certain code of practice when covering events such as opposition led demonstrations, while at the same time, reprimanding the police for not giving adequate space for the media in their effort to record the protests.”

“Journalists needed to adhere to a certain standard of discipline, and the police needed to provide sufficient leeway for honest journalistic effort,” the report said, citing the MMC.

Attempts to devise a code of ethics and self-regulation for the country’s journalists by the MJA had been derailed by the state-owned media, the report claimed, “which was indifferent to this initiative, [and] which has rendered the code inoperative.”

The report noted a protest in October where four journalists from the private radio station DhiFM “were compelled to undertake a protest against their own employer when it turned out that the management had revealed the identity of a source used for a report on a tourist resort.”

“Irked by the content of the report, the resort management sacked the employee. The journalists who protested against their management’s unethical decision to reveal the identity of a news source, were in turn fired,” the report noted.

The report also highlighted the arrest of two Haveeru journalists in February 2011 “for interrogation” over leaked pornographic videos obtained from a Facebook blackmailing ring, which reportedly included material involved known public figures, and police efforts to obtain a warrant to search the newspaper’s offices, which was not executed.

A consistent concern throughout the year was the government’s decision to remove all government advertising from the media and publish an official gazette, depriving the industry of income, the report noted.

“By limiting the visibility of government advertisements, it has led to fears of bid-rigging and corruption in the award of official contracts. It has also caused considerable financial distress to the independent media,” the report stated.

The Miadhu newspaper had been compelled to move offices as a result of the decision, it claimed.

Read the full report: Free Speech in Peril: Press Freedom in South Asia 2010-11

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Tour operators cancelling bookings after protest coverage

The impact of four nights of violent protests in Male’ has been felt by Maldivian tourism representatives attending the Arabian Travel Market in Dubai, the region’s largest such expo.

“Travel operators in Taiwan have said they are postponing and cancelling group bookins because of negative perceptions [of safety] in the Maldives,” a tourism source attending the expo told Minivan News.

“We just had another two confirmed bookings cancelled today because of reports of riots and instability. We worked hard to get these bookings and the potential domino effect is really worrying – people panic.”

The source noted that the average spend of couple holidaying to the Maldives was US$7000.

Reports in major newswires Associated Press (AP) and AFP on the Maldives’ protests were widely syndicated in world media, drawing largely from comments made by spokesperson Gayoom’s spokesperson Mohamed Hussain ‘Mundhu’ Shareef.

“Police are chasing protesters. Some of those injured have been rushed to hospital,” Shareef told AFP by telephone after last night’s protests, adding that scores of people had been arrested, “including parliamentarians Ali Arif and Ahmed Mahloof.”

“Arif and Mahloof were later released, but we have no news of Naseer’s whereabouts. Our legal team is trying to trace him,” Mundhu said.

Police said that Naseer was released at 1:30am, an hour after he was arrested. Minivan News spoke to Naseer today.

The previous evening, Shareef informed AP that 5000 people were demonstrating in the capital and dozens had been “crushed brutally”, including women.

“The opposition also blames Nasheed for failing to manage the economy – worth over a billion dollars – by recently devaluing the currency, while food prices have risen by as much as 30 percent,” AFP reported.

“Shareef said the protests aimed to emulate those across the Middle East and North Africa, pushing for political reforms in dictatorial regimes.”

Hong Kong yesterday became the first country to put out a travel warning on the Maldives, raising the country’s threat level to ‘amber’ alongside Israel, Iran, Indonesia, Russia and Pakistan.

China’s Xinhua news agency reported a government spokesperson as saying that “Those who plan to visit the Maldives or are already there should monitor the situation and exercise caution.”

Chinese visitors to the Maldives now constitute the greatest number of tourism arrivals, and are a major emerging market. A sharp increase in recent years offset a decline in European arrivals caused by the global recession in 2008.

The Maldives Association of Travel Industry (MATI) has meanwhile issued a statement claiming that reports on the situation were “exaggerated and ill-informed.”

“The series of demonstrations and public unrest by political groups opposed to the government of the Maldives have, over the last few days, led to some reports in the international press of civil unrest in the country.

“The Maldives is safe for visitors and remains peaceful and stable. The police and other authorities have the political situation well under control,” MATI stated.

Further protests – which the opposition maintains are ‘youth-led’ despite the active organisation of opposition MPs – are planned for the weekend, with reports of islanders travelling to Male’ to participate.

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