Category: Politics

Domestic violence accepted and justified in the Maldives, says report

The proposed Domestic Violence Bill will nullify some “God given rights” that no man-made law should be allowed to take away, according to some of the objections raised by MPs when it was debated in the Majlis last week.

“Do not to call upon us to make haraam (forbidden) something that God’s law has permitted us to do. It is when we try to forbid things that God allows us to do that problems begin”, Thimarafushi MP Mohamed Musthafa said, according records of the debate.

Several MPs said various parts of the Bill were against the teachings of Islam, and criticised it for “unduly favouring” women while at the same time making life “extremely difficult” for men, who they said, were wronged by women.

A Ministry of Gender and Family study, the first comprehensive nationwide survey of domestic violence in the Maldives, showed that one in every three women between the ages of 15-49 has been a victim of domestic violence.

It also showed there is general acceptance of domestic violence across the country and among both sexes, as ‘normal’ or ‘justified’.

Seventy percent of Maldivian women believe, for example, that there are circumstances under which a man is justified in beating his wife. Infidelity and disobedience, most women accept, are valid reasons for taking a good beating from the husband.

A majority of women also accept that women have a subordinate role to men, according to the report.

One in every three Maldivian men who commit acts of domestic violence against women do so for ‘no reason’. One in four does it to punish the woman for disobedience, and one in five does it because he is jealous.

One in every ten man beats up his partner because she refused him sex, and the rest of them do it for any number of reasons  – lack of food at home, family problems, because they are broke or unemployed, because they are having problems at work, or because the woman is pregnant.

Seven per cent of the men do it when they are drunk or on drugs.

Continuing his objections to the Bill on religious grounds, MP Musthafa said the Bill would allow the legalisation of abortion, and something that would pave the way for ‘Satanist laws’ to replace the law of God, which the Maldives should be following.

“We are being swayed by non-Islamic people and their beliefs”, he said. He also told the Majlis that Maldivians are allowing the contamination of the society by marrying ‘foreigners from all sorts of places across the world,” he said.

“It is”, he said, “destroying our culture, our Islamic way of life, bringing in all sorts of poisons and viruses into society.”

Islam, he said, recognises the importance that women should be given in society, as is evident from the fact that “it forbids men to wear any jewellery at all while encouraging them to adorn their women with gold and silver”.

Other objections to the Bill were raised on similar religious grounds. MPs Ibrahim Muththalib was concerned that it would become an impediment to the Muslim practise of polygamy. “This is a right accorded to every man by Islam,”
MP Muththalib said.

MPs also expressed concern over what they described as the “unduly harsh” punishments proposed in the Bill.

MP Muththalib said that such punishments would mean the criminalisation of a man’s rightful actions against his wife’s infidelity.

Agreeing with Muththalib on the harshness of the penalties proposed in the Bill, Vilufushi MP Riyaz Rasheed said he feared being locked out of his own home for the day due to his objections to Bill.

“The Bill criminalises too much – the way it is, the particular way a man enters his house may be judged a crime. There are some situations where wives take other men as lovers. In such situations they may make false reports about their husbands – these are things that have happened in this society”, he said.

Hoarafushi MP Ahmed Rasheed, who also voiced strong objections to the Bill, said some of the injuries suffered by women were the result of accidents caused by cramped living conditions rather than the result of violence by men.

“A woman walks down a narrow alley. She trips over pots and pans. In reality, it is not that some one deliberately tripped her…The reality is the circumstances – how can a fat person walk on a two feet alleyway without tripping?” MP Rasheed said.

According to the Gender Ministry report, one in every three Maldivian women are subjected to violence – sometimes physical, sometimes sexual or, more often than not, both. Most of the violence is committed by the man they are married to, or are in a relationship with.

Much of the physical violence to which they are subjected is ‘severe’ rather than ‘moderate’ – they are punched, kicked, choked, or burnt. Most of the violence is also long term, some times life-long.  Many are often beaten into consciousness, and most victims never receive medical treatment for their injuries.

Several are brutally beaten up while pregnant, causing miscarriages or still births. Women who suffer domestic violence are more likely to have unwanted pregnancies than those who are not. Their children are also more likely to suffer long term psychological damage due to the violent environment to which they are exposed.

Women who have suffered domestic violence are twice as likely to have suicidal thoughts than women have not. 14 percent of women who had experienced such violence have attempted to take their own lives. The prohibition of suicide in Islam, the Gender Ministry report says, is one the reasons why the suicide rate among such victims is not higher.

The violence is more common in long term, cohabiting relationships than in short-term or non-cohabiting relationships.  Almost half the women who are abused have never been to school or only have a primary level education.

Women who are divorced or separated are more likely to have suffered at the hands of their partners, suggesting that violence is an important cause of the large number of divorces in the Maldives.

Most women never complain, because there are no mechanisms available for them to do so. Or they feel that complaining would stigmatise them socially. Or they fear retaliation by the husbands if they do so.

Over ninety percent of the women who were abused had never gone to the police and almost fifty percent of the women said no one had ever helped them.

The Gender Ministry study also found that women only find the strength to escape, to leave the house and to leave the abusive relationship they are in when they felt they could not endure any more.

It is when they feel that they are in mortal danger that they manage to start the long drawn out process of finding a life outside of the home in which they had suffered for so long.

In the Majlis debate over the Bill, many MPs objected to what they perceived as a bias against men in the Bill.

“We accept that some husbands do beat their wives. But there are women who commit more extraordinary, bigger acts of violence against men. Violence is not always a physical fight. One woman wants to marry a younger man after she has had 10 or 12 children”, Vilufushi MP Rasheed said. “This is also violence”.

Despite the objections, MPs actively promoting the Bill, introduced by Opposition Dhivehi Rayyithunge Party (DRP) MP Rozaina Adam, told Minivan last week they were optimistic it will be passed after it is sent to a special committee to refine the particulars.

The Parliament is currently deadlocked after the Supreme Court granted the government a temporary injunction on Monday, blocking the endorsing of cabinet ministers until a ruling on the process can be issued.

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Court refuses whistleblower’s evidence in JSC professional negligence case

The Civil Court has refused to hear additional evidence offered by a member of the Judicial Service Commission (JSC) who alleges that the JSC is withholding information in the ongoing professional negligence case against it.

The Civil Court decision was based on the grounds that any information obtained by a member of the JSC in their official capacity cannot be used for any other purpose than that of executing their official duties.

JSC member Aishath Velezinee applied for leave to enter the proceedings as a third party, saying that the JSC had not made full disclosure in its submissions to the court on the professional negligence case brought against it by Treasure Island Limited earlier this month.

“Aishath Velezinee applied to enter the proceedings in her capacity as a member of the JSC and the additional information she has offered was also obtained as a member of the JSC”, Judge Nihayath said.

Referring to the JSC Code of Conduct, Judge Nihayath said, this meant Velezinee could not share the additional information with the court.

To do so would be to breach the JSC code of conduct, Judge Nihayath said, as it would mean that Velezinee was revealing the information for a purpose other than the execution of her official duties.

In reply, Velezinee said that by sharing the information with the court she would be executing her responsibilities to the nation and to the State. The duty of the JSC, she said, is to serve the people.

Judge Nihayath granted Velezinee the right to appeal, were she dissatisfied with the ruling.

Treasure Island Limited is suing the JSC for failing to execute its responsibilities by neglecting to investigate three complaints it made to the JSC in 2009, alleging professional misconduct by two judges – Judge Ali Naseer and former Interim Supreme Court Justice Mujthaz Fahmy.

At the time Treasure Island made the complaints to the JSC, Justice Fahmy was the Commission’s deputy chair. He later went on to become its Commissioner before being replaced by Judge Adam Mohamed Abdulla in early September this year.

The cases in which Treasure Island alleges misconduct by the judges involve some prominent figures of the tourism industry, including the Ministry of Tourism, and a sum of money amounting to over a million US dollars.

The JSC denied the allegations of professional negligence at the first hearing on 7 October 2010, saying that the complaints made by Treasure Island Limited against the two judges were outside of its constitutional mandate.

The JSC is an independent institution with the Constitutional mandate to oversee the judiciary, investigate complaints against it, and taking disciplinary action if required.

The JSC also told Judge Nihayath at the hearing that it had the power, granted by the Constitution, to ignore any complaints that it deemed were neither valid nor genuine. The complaints made by Treasure Island Limited fell into this category, it said.

The JSC has not investigated any of the 118 complaints submitted to it this year, and the commission’s complaints committee has not met for five months.

Treasure Island refused the offer of an out of court settlement by the JSC at the hearing, saying it would prefer the court itself to make a decision on the matter.

The hearing is now scheduled for 26 October next.

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Deadlock deepens as Supreme Court grants government injunction over ministerial reappointments

Parliament has deadlocked after the Supreme Court granted the government a temporary injunction last night, blocking the endorsing of cabinet ministers until a ruling on the process can be issued.

The injunction derailed parliament on Tuesday morning, after opposition Dhivehi Rayyithunge Party (DRP) MPs raised points of order claiming that the sittings could not continue until the cabinet appointments were resolved.

The sitting was called off this morning by Speaker Abdulla Shahid.

In June this year, the entire cabinet of the Maldives resigned in protest against “scorched earth politics” of the opposition-majority parliament, leaving only President Mohamed Nasheed and Vice President Mohamed Waheed Hassan in charge of the country.

The cabinet ministers complained that parliament was blocking them from performing their constitutional duties, leading to protests and deadlock.

Nasheed reappointed the ministers several weeks later, however parliament has yet to formally endorse their appointments due to a disagreement between the government and the opposition and over whether ministers will be endorsed individually or collectively.

Press Secretary for the President Mohamed Zuhair said that endorsing ministers individually would amount to a series of no-confidence motions.

Last week there were unconfirmed reports that the DRP has a list of six members of the 14 member cabinet that it does not intend to approve.

“There is already a process in place for a no-confidence motion when a minister is deemed untrustworthy,” Zuhair said, arguing that individual appointments would bypass this procedure and allow the opposition to use its “brute-force parliamentary majority” to pick off ministers who had displeased it.

Parliament’s endorsement of cabinet was intended “to be ceremonial”, he stated.

“There is precedent. When the laws were being enacted by the Special Majlis drafting the current constitution, if you look at the debate, [former] Attorney General Husnu Suood proposes two ways of approving ministers, both of which are defeated in favour of asking for approval collectively.”

Writing in his personal blog, Independent MP Mohamed Nasheed, former legal reform minister, characterised the government’s appeal to the Supreme Court as “very harsh” and “pointless”.

The Attorney General’s (AG’s) office has contested the constitutionality of article 171(i) of the parliamentary rules of procedure, which states that presidential nominees must be questioned by a parliamentary committee to determine qualification, educational background and competence.

However, as ministers refused to appear before committee and the issue has now been proposed to the parliament floor, MP Nasheed argues that the Supreme Court ruling would not have any bearing on the matter.

“At most, wouldn’t the Supreme Court rule that article 171(i) is null and void?” he writes. “The Supreme Court would not instruct Majlis how to proceed with the approval issue. Wouldn’t that be determined by the Majlis?”

Article 98(a) of the constitution requires cabinet ministers to attend proceedings of parliament when requested, answer any questions put to them by parliament, and produce relevant documentation.

However the government has been reluctant to allow ministers to attend committee meetings ever since the head of the national security committee, leader of DRP coalition partner the People’s Alliance MP Abdulla Yameen, was released from detention pending an investigation into charges of treason and bribery.

Upon release, the committee promptly summoned the Police Commissioner Ahmed Faseeh and Chief of Defence Force Major General Moosa Ali Jaleel for questioning in committee hearing, outraging many MDP MPs.

In August, the cabinet approved new regulations limiting ministers’ interactions with parliament to the chamber itself, and then only with 14 days prior notice.

DRP Deputy Leader and MP Ali Waheed claimed the approved procedures were “against the spirit of the constitution” and would be void.

‘’Actually, parliament has yet to approve a cabinet. When a cabinet is established we will summon them to committee meetings as well – ministers must appear before committees in the interest of the people – the constitution is very clear. Without doubt these new procedures are void – nobody can narrow the summoning of cabinet ministers to parliament.’’

Writing on his website, leader of the opposition DRP Ahmed Thasmeen Ali said that the failure of ministers to attend committee meetings meant that “parliament is unable to effectively provide the checks and balances necessary for the system to work democratically and ensure that the executive branch is accountable for the exercise of its powers.”

On many occasions, “repeated calls from the parliament to these officials have gone unanswered,” Thasmeen said.

“In a democracy, it is through effective oversight that the parliament can ensure a balance of power and assert its role as the defender of the people’s interests. The government’s action is disrupting the functioning of the parliament.”

Zuhair today claimed that the government’s interpretation of the law was that ministers could only be summoned and questioned on the floor of parliament “before all members.”

“Nowhere does it say ministers must attend committee meetings, unless the whole house is a committee,” Zuhair said. “[The opposition] points to another clause that requires any Maldivian citizen to attend summons to respond to questions in committee hearings, but cabinet ministers do not attend in their capacity as private individuals.”

Meanwhile at yesterday’s sitting, DRP MP Mohamed Mujthaz proposed a resolution to seek the Supreme Court’s legal counsel on the refusal of the Chief of Defence Forces and the Commissioner of Police to appear before the national security committee.

Mujthaz proposed the resolution during a debate on a report by the committee, which was presented to the Majlis floor by the committee chair, DRP Deputy Leader Ali Waheed.

The report states that the committee has been unable to conduct any inquiries due to the refusal of the security chiefs to appear before the committee.

Both officials have argued that the committee should summon either the Defence Minister or Home Minister, as the army and police answer to the cabinet.

Hulhu-Henveiru MP ‘Reeko’ Moosa Manik, MDP parliamentary group leader, accused opposition MPs of attempting to summon the police and army chiefs for politically-motivated reasons.

He added that the report did not specify which issue of national importance had been left unattended by the committee due to the refusal of the chiefs to appear.

Referring to the practice in the United States, Yameen said that senior pentagon officials were routinely summoned before senate committees.

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EC disputes blame for lack of public awareness of referendum

The Elections Commission (EC) has issued a statement condemning the remarks made by President of the Adhaalath Party Sheikh Hussein Rasheed, after he criticised it for failing to raise adequate public awareness about the recent referendum.

Sheikh Rasheed said that as a result, the state had spent more than Rf 11 million (US$856,000) holding a referendum on administrative consolidation that most of the country’s eligible citizens had failed to vote in.

“My intention is to make institutions more accountable. It’s not a problem if the commission issues press releases about me, but I would prefer they listen and learn something from what I said,’’ Sheikh Rasheed told Minivan News.

He claimed that most citizens were unaware of what the referendum was about – a proposal for grouping smaller islands to form large population centres – which led to a 30 percent turnout across the country. Of 88,882 eligible voters, less than 27,000 participated in the referendum.

However the EC stated that it would contradict the commission’s independence  if it was required to inform citizens about the benefits and disadvantages of a referendum’s topic, and described attempts by political figures to disgrace the commission by suggesting otherwise as “irresponsible”.

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Comment: Skeletons in the closet

As darkness fell over the cramped city of Male’ on the eve of January 3 this year, a woman’s body was found in a suitcase dumped in a construction site. She was 30 years old.

A few days later, her boyfriend was charged for her murder.

On June 22, a little boy lost both his parents. His father was stabbed with a knife and died in a hospital. His mother gave herself up to the police for the brutal offense.

At the age of 21, she now sits in a cell, her dreams crushed and her hopes dead. The prospect of spending her long life in prison would torment her. Perhaps a more agonising pain for her is the fear of facing what her son might think of her when he grows up. Her fateful act was the tragic climax in her struggle to leave a disruptive relationship that was a daunting trap for her.

The pain and suffering these two women endured represent the lives of many others in the Maldives. They include women, children, girls and boys, aged parents and also men. They are the victims of domestic violence – a social reality locked up as a family secret and never discussed by lawmakers in the country until Monday.

Rozaina Adam, MP, young and educated, explained what she meant by domestic violence as she presented her bill to the heavily lopsided parliament – with 72 men and only five women as its members.

“Domestic violence is the violence or acts of violence that occur between married couples or between divorced couples or between family members or between members in a household”, she said. “It may be someone inflicting violence on his/her wedded partner, it may be a guardian inflicting violence on a child or someone inflicting violence on his/her elderly parents… like any other society in the world, it’s a reality in our society too.”

Her definition outlined the space where domestic violence occurs. She also brought the relationships between the victims and offenders of these horrendous actions into public focus.

A home is meant to be a safe and happy place for everyone. In Maldives, like many traditional societies, people grow up and spend their entire lives surrounded with family, relatives and neighbors. It is however, a place of indescribable horror for the victims of domestic violence.

The victims live their lives in constant pain and fear, insecurities and uncertainties, distrust and breakups. The gruesome realities they face make them strong enough to bear the pain but often,  too weak to get out of it or end it.

Home is a boundary known to them, no matter how gross it is. Sometimes, leaving home means crossing over to uncertainty and face a greater fear of the unknown. They absorb the worst atrocities in their homes, imposed on them by their supposedly loved ones. In effect they hide their woes silently behind a smile or a deadpan mask, until life is forced out of them or it dies within on them, like it did for these two women.

Research, media reports and official records indicate a staggering level of domestic violence in the Maldives.

A study in 2007 showed, one in every three women aged 15-49 experienced physical or sexual violence at some point in their lives.

According to an official source, 620 cases of abuse were reported to them from August 2005 to 2009. They include 200 cases on sexual abuse, 150 cases on physical abuse, 50 cases of rape and 50 cases on neglect and more. The number of cases reported to them on average stands at 145 per year since 2006.

On Sunday evening, the Deputy Minister of Health and Family, Ms Mariya Ali informed that the number of reported cases on domestic violence now stands at 100.

These statistics reveal a shocking truth, considering the clandestine nature of domestic violence, the stark absence of relevant legislation and the lack of necessary support for victims. It confirms the high prevalence of domestic violence in our small Muslim society and the urgent need to address it through law.

Since July this year, the local media has reported 9 incidents of rape including two cases of gang rape in the past week alone. Health officials warn that the incidence of rape could be much higher as rape is far more common among married couples.

Meanwhile, the political and social space in Maldives continues to get filled by a religious narrative that reinforces women as sexual objects. For instance, a question and answer posted on the website of Ministry of Islamic Affairs dominated by a religious pressure group called the Adhalaath Party reads:

“It has become very common for a woman to tell her husband ‘I do not want to sleep with you’, ‘I won’t do as you say’, ‘I will live my life the way I want’. What does Islam say about such women?”

The answer was provided by Sheikh Usman Abdulla – a renowned and respected Islamic scholar.

It says: “the main purpose of being married is to fulfill your sexual needs. In reality, the woman cannot say that. She has to obey her husband. Islam says if your husband wants you, you have to go (to him) even if you are cooking (in the kitchen). While this is how it is (in Islam), what the woman said is not acceptable in Islam.”

The impact of such narrative on women and children should not be under-estimated – especially in view of the general profile of the victims and the offenders. According to the reports on abuse, 9 out of every 10 victims were females and nearly 6 out of every 10 victims were below 18 years. It also revealed 8 out of every 10 offenders is a friend or a family member of the victim. And in 5 out of every 10 cases, the offender is the victim’s boyfriend or husband.

The horrific reality reflected by the records of abuse emphasizes the dire need for legislators to get their act together and treat domestic violence as a nonpartisan issue. It requires unequivocal support for the proposed bill by all parliamentarians. No one desires a repeat of the violent actions that unfurled at the beginning of this year.

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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Local council elections scheduled for February 5, 2011

The Elections Commission (EC) has announced that the local council elections will take place on February 5, 2011, two months after the period stipulated in the Local Council Election Act.

EC President Fuad Thaufeeq told Minivan News today that the commission took into consideration the number of public holidays, including the end of the year school holidays, as well as the rights of candidates.

“If we ignored these holidays and conducted the local council elections, many people will experience difficulties,’’ he said.

He added that the courts and government offices would face difficulties if the EC did not take public holidays into account.

“If the commission decided if a candidate was not eligible, the person would have to file the case at the High Court and the court will determine whether he is eligible,” Fuad explained. “But if that sort of issue was raised when the courts are closed, that would be a much bigger problem. So we decided to hold the elections in February next year.’’

While the constitutional deadline for council elections elapsed in July 2009, enabling legislation for the elections was ratified by President Mohamed Nasheed on July 29, 2010.

The Local Council Elections Act stipulates that elections must take within a 122-day period after ratification.

”Dates are not applied, all the due dates have been passed,” said Fuad. “If we have to conduct it according to the deadlines we cannot do this at all.”

In accordance with the Decentralisation Act, the list of 184 administrative constituencies was published in the government gazette on Thursday.

Following the public referendum on October 9 on the government’s proposal for administrative consolidation, Addu Atoll is listed as a single island.

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Minivan News now an iPhone app

Minivan News is pleased to announce that readers with Apple iPhones can now follow news and views in the Maldives with our very own iPhone application.

Designed and programmed by avid Minivan reader and app developer Martin Barr of AppIT, the ‘Minivan Lite’ iPhone application allows easy, on-the-run access to all categories covered by Minivan News, as well as comments.

Please post thoughts and suggestions for future versions of the app, in the comment form below.

Minivan Lite can be downloaded for free via the in-phone Apps Store, and is compatible with the iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad. Requires iOS 3.1.2 or later.

Click here to go to Minivan News on iTunes

Note: The Minivan Lite app requires iPhone users have access to iTunes.

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Women earn half as much as men in the Maldives, finds WEF report

A report by the World Economic Forum (WEF) has ranked the Maldives 99th out of 134 countries for gender disparity, narrowly beating Azerbaijan.

The Global Gender Gap Index examines the gap between men and women in four fundamental categories: economic participation and opportunity, educational attainment, health and survival and political empowerment.

Of the Maldives’ neighbours, Sri Lanka ranked 16th, Bangladesh 82nd, and India 112th.

Scandanavian countries Iceland, Norway, Finland and Sweden led the index, while Pakistan, Chad and Yemen were ranked last.

The Maldives ranking has changed little in three years, and scores fairly well for health and educational attainment in comparison with the region.

However data in the WEF’s report identifies a significant under-representation of women in business (to the point of negligible at a decision-making level) and politics, especially parliament and ministerial positions.

Moreover, men earn almost twice as much as women for the same level work, at a per capita income level, with an average annual wage of US$3,597 compared to US$6,714 for men.

Labour force participation for women is at 59 percent, compared to 79 percent for men.

The mean age of marriage for women in the Maldives is 23, the report found. It also noted that contraceptive prevalence among married women was 39 percent.

“The Global Gender Gap Report demonstrates that closing the gender gap provides a basis for a prosperous and competitive society,” observed the WEF report’s authors, Laura Tyson, and Angela Chan Professor of Global Management at the Haas School of Business, University of California.

“Regardless of level of income, countries can choose to integrate gender equality and other social inclusion goals into their growth agenda – and have the potential to grow faster – or they can run the risk of undermining their competitive potential by not capitalising fully on one-half of their human resources,” the authours noted.

“The economic incentive for closing the gender gap in health, education, economic opportunity and political power is clear.”

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19 year-old alleges torture in police custody

A 19 year-old has alleged that he was arbitrarily arrested near his home on Monday night and tortured in police custody.

Ali Shuaib, 19, showed Minivan News bruises and swelling on his leg, hand and nose.

“Police arrested me while I was waiting near my house to have a chat with my friend,’’ he explained. “While waiting there, before the police squad arrived, we saw a group of people fleeing; we did not knew what was going on and we did not pay much attention.’’

Shuaib claimed a squad of police officers arrived after a short while and told him not to move.

“Unaware of the situation, I stayed calm, they came and checked me, told me I was clear and had nothing with me,’’ he said. “But they said their superiors had ordered them to detain me for 23 hours and they handcuffed me and took me to Galolhu Police Station first.’’

At the Galolhu Police Station, he continued, police officers filled his detention form and transferred him to the ‘Atholhuvehi’ custodial in Male’.

‘’While I was there, a police lance corporal came and asked ‘what the hell I was doing there’. His voice was aggressive and he spoke rudely,’’ he claimed. “I told him it was none of his business because police custodial is not his property.’’

After some verbal sparring, Shuaib claimed that the police officer hit him in the face.

“I hit back and fought in my defence,” he said. “A while later the whole duty shift came and attacked me, they hit me in the chest and back with their ankles, hit my foot with a tin trash can.

“Then when I was almost unconscious they put me in solitary confinement, handcuffed in a cross position with both hands and feet locked together. They even stepped on my back and pressed hard while I was kept in that position.”

The next duty shift came in after about two hours, he continued, and removed the handcuffs and transferred Shuaib to another cell after offering him water and medication.

“When I was released from the handcuffs I could hardly breathe; the next duty shift came and gave me water and poured water on my head and kept me on a chair till I felt better,’’ he said.

Shuaib was released without being presented to court.

“It is very common now, police arrest any person they wish and keep them in custody for 23 hours,” he claimed.

According to the Constitution of the Maldives, any person detained should be presented to court within 24 hours of arrest.

Police Sub-Inspector Ahmed Shiyam told Minivan News today that if such a case was filed with the police, “police will investigate the case applying professional standards and take necessary action.’’

Shiyam said if Shuaib was not confident with the police he could file the case with the Police Integrity Commission. No case had been lodged, he said.

Shuaib was recently arrested on suspicion of crimes including murder, robbery and assault, but was released without charge.

Press Secretary for the President Mohamed Zuhair said that custodial torture is “strictly prohibited” by the president.

“It is not something that should happen, and there are many ways [Shuaib] could pursue the case,” Zuhair said. “He could file the case at the Human Rights Commission, and Police Integrity Commission, and the case would be investigated.’’

On July 15, police and the Maldives National Defense Force (MNDF) arrested almost 60 people, including minors, in a joint special operation to curb escalating gang violence in the capital.

Many of those who were arrested  in the special operation alleged that they were mistreated and abused during their arrest and detention.

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