Category: Society & Culture

Queen of the Netherlands moves islands, causes shock and awe

The sheer speed at which the enormous dredging vessel Queen of the Netherlands has been reclaiming land at various islands has left some islanders open-mouthed with astonishment.

“People were truly in awe,” Hinnavaru Councillor Adam Yousuf told Minivan News.

Yousuf said it had previously taken nine months to dredge six hectares of land in Hinnavaru. The rate of the current reclamation project – 28 hectares of land reclaimed in less than ten days – was hard to believe for most islanders.

Currently Queen of the Netherlands is docked at Haa Dhaal Kulhudhuffushi where, within two weeks, it increased the size of the island by about a third. The growth of the island has left islanders a little disconcerted, Kulhudhuffishi Councillor Jamsheed Mohamed told Minivan News.

“When we wake up in the morning, the island is bigger than we left it the night before,” Mohamed said.

The welcome extended to the reclamation project on Kulhudhuffushi has not been completely unadulterated, however. The impact of the island’s rapid expansion has left the fishermen more than just disorientated.

“One week the harbour was on the West of the island, where it had been for generations. The next, it had moved to the north west,” Kulhudhuffushi fisherman Mohamed Iqbal, Dhinaashaa, told Minivan.

Added to the disconcerting switch is the lack of facilities at the new harbour.

“It is very far from where people live, which means that anybody wanting to buy fish has to walk a longer distance on Kulhudhuffushi than they ever have had to before,” Iqbal explained.

The newly reclaimed area is also far from residential areas, and does not have any electricity either, which makes running a fish market there extremely difficult, he said.

Councillor Mohamed told Minivan that while all the islanders are not happy with the way things are at the moment, they are all expecting them to improve. All islanders had wanted the new land.

“We are all hoping that things will change soon. We are hoping to have a new harbour within less than a year”, Councillor Mohamed said.

Bad weather, combined with unfamiliarity with the new harbour, caused an oil carrier accident as it approached the island on Sunday night.

The state-funded Rf109 million project to reclaim Kulhudhuffushi began on 21 September 2010, and is being carried out by Netherland’s Boskalis International. The Queen of the Netherlands is a trailing suction hopper dredger in its fleet.

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MPs sacrificing core Maldivian values for personal political mileage on Gitmo issue: Dr Shaheed

Political self-interest and false assumptions are behind some MPs’ opposition to the government’s plans to resettle a Guantanamo Bay detainee in the Maldives, Foreign Minister Dr Ahmed Shaheed has said.

Opposition to the plan, Dr Shaheed said, amounts to “a couple of MPs and their sponsored press” who “shot first and asked questions later”. Their objections to the plan, he said, do not reflect “core Maldivian values and are based on false assumptions.”

It is assumed, he said, that “everybody at Guantanamo is a lethal terrorist” and that “this government is going to break laws to accede to the United States’ request”.

Both assumptions are false, he said, and are backed by a third – again false – premise that “whatever Shaheed does, must be attacked”.

“Last year I was pilloried because I spoke to the Israelis… Last year the problem was that I did not care about Palestinians. This year the problem is that I care too much about the Palestinians,” Dr Shaheed said.

“When you remove this politicking and the madness from the surface”, he said, “you are left with a lot of people who think it is good to help people find a better life”. Helping Muslims, helping Palestinians, Dr Shaheed said, are values that Maldivians have long believed in.

Dr Shaheed was speaking to Minivan on the government’s plan to resettle a Guantanamo Bay detainee in the Maldives. The detainee is a Palestinian national who has remained in United States custody at Guantanamo Bay for the last eight years.

The detainee was taken into United States custody in Karachi, Pakistan, and transferred to the prison in Guantanamo Bay in 2002. “He was a non-political Muslim preacher, a Tablighi”, Dr Shaeed said.

“By all accounts, and from what I have seen, he is an innocent person,” Dr Shaheed said. No criminal charges were ever brought against him, nor was he tried at any of the US military tribunals that determined the “enemy combatant” status of detainees.

The Bush administration refused to grant ‘Prisoner of War’ status to any of the detainees held in United States custody as part of the War on Terror, denying them all the rights guaranteed by the Third Geneva Convention.

The decision allowed the United States government to detain prisoners indefinitely without charge and without legal representation. Despite the Obama administration’s decision to close Guantanamo Bay in 2008, close to 200 detainees still remain at the facility.

No money exchanged hands

The Maldivian government’s decision to assist the current United States administration in closing Guantanamo Bay by resettling one of the detainees, Dr Shaeed said, was not going to break any laws of the country, nor was it a decision made on a quid pro quo basis.

“The United States has not come with a bag full of money and said: ‘here’s your reward for doing this’, but because we work with the US on this and other issues, they will try to help us where we need help,” Dr Shaheed said.

He denied that the Maldives had been complicit in the Bush administration’s controversial practice of extraordinary renditions in which suspected terrorists were transported from one country to another without due process.

The Maldives, however, had acquiesced to the United States request to allow its planes to refuel at her airports during its military invasion of Afghanistan that began in October 2001.

Although the permission was granted, Dr Shaheed said, it was not utilised. It was more a pragmatic move which allowed the United States to add the Maldives to the list of countries that supported its War on Terror.

“It was also important for them to be able to say that Muslim countries were backing them also, because they were not attacking Islam, they were attacking Al-Qaeda.”

Proceeding with caution

Dr Shaeed said that until both the Maldivian parliament and the United States Congress were satisfied that the detainee did not pose a threat to the national security of either country, he would not be brought to the Maldives.

The invitation to resettle in the Maldives has been extended to the detainee on the basis that he agrees to abide by certain conditions, Dr Shaheed said. And the agreement with the United States to resettle him in the Maldives is dependent on the fulfilment of three conditions.

“We have to first satisfy ourselves that the person poses no threat to the Maldives; that our laws are compatible with the resettlement; and that the United States will meet its costs. That is the basis from which we started the negotiations, and that is what we are still maintaining,” Dr Shaheed said.

He denied any possibility that the detainee might establish links with the increasingly radical elements of Maldivian society. “There is no such danger”, he said.

Nor was there any evidence to suggest that detainees who are resettled in third countries associate with, or contribute to radicalisation of host societies, he said.

A “Mullah environment”

Dr Shaheed agreed that the Maldives lacks, and needs, an integrated and coherent anti-radicalisation policy that addresses the issue as a whole.

“It is too fragmented to say that there are nine in Pakistan doing Jihad, four in a park exploding a bomb, five in the park calling for the murder of a High Commissioner in another country – these are all fragmented – we need to see where we are in a more coherent manner,” Dr Shaheed said.

He said the Maldives needs to take stock of where it currently is, and to gauge how far the education system has become “atrophied into an instrument of radicalism”.

What is needed is to assess the extent to which democracy has “opened the floodgates of radical ideas”, he said, and how far the society itself has become a handmaiden of radicalism.

The ‘operating environment’ in the Maldives, he said, is “a Mullah environment”. Any development plans or any plans for change, unlike in other developing countries such as those in Latin America for example, he said, have to take “the Mullah environment into account”.

Grand narratives that currently dominate the Maldivian society, such as that of treating women as second class citizens, Dr Shaheed said, need to be addressed and changed.

A policy document that targets these problems in a coherent manner is needed, without which “we have not yet fathomed the scale of the problem”, he said.

“What we do know is, every day it is increasing”, Dr Shaheed said. “I believe women in this country are in great danger”.

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Sacked DhiFM journalists protest over unfair dismissal, editorial interference

Six journalists from private radio station DhiFM launched a protest outside the media company’s offices today, claiming unfair dismissal and editorial pressure for negative coverage of the government.

The journalists began protesting this afternoon outside Champa Guest House, which houses DhiFM and DhiTV, holding up placards that read: “Protect the rights of the journalists” and “Stop using media as a propaganda machine”.

“We are all protesting because our organisation terminated its staff in violation of the Employment Act and because it has also broken media ethics,” said one of the journalists. “Four of us here were sacked and the other two resigned.”

The journalist claimed that the sacked reporters were not given notice and were owed unpaid salaries.

“We cannot work freely. This is a very biased media,” he continued. “The management has a lot of influence on our work. We have to write stories the way that they want, according to their idea of politics.”

He added that the journalists did not accept the reason for the dismissals given by the management, which was reportedly to cut costs, as the station was presently hiring more staff.

Gufthaq Ajeel, 19, told Minivan News that he quit the station in protest after management allegedly leaked the source of a news report he filed about unhappy employees at the Hulhule Island Hotel (HIH).

“They went into my personal folder and leaked it,” he said.

As Article 28 of the constitution protects journalists from being compelled to disclose sources, Gufthaq said that he had filed a complaint with the police on Wednesday.

Moreover, he added, reporters at DhiFM were occasionally told to skew reports for an anti-government slant.

Following DhiFM’s coverage of a large rally in Male’ by the ruling Maldivian Democratic Party (MDP) in July, Qufthaq explained, the DhiFM newsroom was shut down and four of its journalists fired.

Response

The protesters called for the resignation of DhiFM CEO Masoodh Hilmy and other senior management.

Speaking to Minivan News today, Masoodh denied the claims of his former employees.

“We had to terminate three of them due to punctuality and disciplinary issues, and the other three resigned of their own wishes,” he said. “We provided all the allowances and salaries mentioned in the Employment Act for the staff we terminated.”

He added that prior warnings were given to the staff verbally before the decision to dismiss was made.

“Nobody can handle it when one is too much,” he said.

Masoodh further denied the allegations of bias and undue influence on journalists working for the private broadcaster.

“If you asked a staff here you will understand, we have no influence on the journalists,” he said.

President of the Maldives Journalists Association (MJA), Ahmed Hiriga Zahir, told Minivan News that one of the journalists had contacted the MJA this morning notifying him of the intent to protest, “but otherwise we know little about it. We have not yet spoken to DhiFM management to get their side.”

The MJA was willing to assist the journalists by lobbying DhiFM management if requested, he said, but noted that the MJA had yet to evolve into a  journalists’ union and was more focused on promoting issues such as media freedom.

Asked if the MJA was concerned about allegations from the sacked journalists of editorial interference, he observed that “media organisations have the freedom to decide whether they want to be pro or anti-government.”

“In countries like the US it is common for media [outlets] to even endorse political candidates, but that should not affect the [ethical] standards of their news reporting. Media’s role is still to keep the government accountable,” Hiriga stated.

Visiting journalism trainer Tiare Rath, Iraq Editorial Manager for the Institute of War and Peace Reporting (IWPR), last month identified resistance among senior editorial leadership in the country to evolve away from politically partisan media.

“I have been really impressed with news judgement here, and the understanding of the basic principles of journalism,” Rath said of her experience training young reporters in the Maldives.

“But on the other hand, one of the major issues all my students talked about is resistance among newsroom leadership – editors and publishers. Even if the journalists support and understand the principles being taught, they consistently tell me they cannot apply them,” she said. “This is a very, very serious problem that needs to be addressed.”

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Comment: What happens if we leave Afghanistan?

This article was originally published on the website of the Islamic Foundation of the Maldives. Republished with permission.

A month ago I was shocked to hear the news of an 18-year-old woman from Afghanistan who was punished by slicing her ears and nose, for running away from her abusive husband’s house.

The news was carried around the world by the leading news agencies for many days, especially the western media. A few days later, I was shopping at Ashrafee Bookshop – one of the largest bookstores in Male’ – and happened to see the mind-disturbing image of the abused woman named Aisha.

The image was published on the cover page of the TIME magazine. I did not have the courage to gaze at the horrifying picture for long, because the beautiful girl’s nose was missing. A maroon coloured shawl partially covered her head while her ears were covered with the beautifully combed black hair.

The image would certainly create hatred against the Taliban, the previous rulers of Afghanistan, before the US forces occupied the country to hunt Osama Bin Laden. Like any other reader, the bold letters on the image also caught my attention. It read: “What happens if we leave Afghanistan?”.

The message was very clear.

What I understood from it was that if US forces withdrew from Afghanistan, the country’s condition would worsen as seen in the picture. Every woman would be abused likewise, as we see Aisha in the image.

The article was written by the famous writer Aryn Baker. I read the whole article twice. My conclusion is that the purpose of publishing the article was to criticise Islamic Sharia and to blame the Taliban because they are gaining victory over the US forces in many of the districts in Afghanistan.

One line in the article read: “Under the Taliban, women accused of adultery were stoned to death; those who flashed a bare ankle were whipped”.

The whole article was in favour of Islamaphobia, and creating abhorrence against Islamic customs, principles and jurisprudence. The article was very much in support of the occupied forces while failing to bring all the sides of the story.

Although I am not a professional journalist, I had the opportunity to report from Pakistan and Indian controlled Kashmir. To my knowledge all the parties involved in a sensitive story should be given a fair chance to respond.

But the writer has failed to bring the comments of Aisha’s husband and in-laws, and Taliban. The whole article was single sourced, breaking journalism ethics. It may be hard or impossible to get an interview from the victim’s husband and in-laws. But if the writer wished, she could have got a comment from Taliban.

The writer also could have mentioned Taliban’s denial statement made through internet. The whole story is totally a biased one. Aisha’s case may be true, or it is possible that the story was created. There is no way to prove the accusations made by Aisha.

She might have been abused by her family or by muggers. Who knows what is behind the picture? Aisha might have blamed the Taliban by posing for the cover image of TIME, as it may be her only chance for reconstructive surgery.

In the editorial, Managing Editor Richard Stengel wrote: “Aisha will head to the US for reconstructive surgery sponsored by the Grossman Burn Foundation, a humanitarian organisation in California. We are supporting the effort.”

This statement proves that TIME has bought the story by funding for the surgery to some extent.

Since US and its allies invaded Afghanistan in 2001, hundreds of innocent civilians have been killed and many were made disabled by ‘accidental’ attacks. But these incidents have failed to catch the attention of the international news media.

On 19 September, the Washington Post reported that the US military was investigating a case where three civilians were killed for fun by a group of US soldiers. The newspaper also reported that the culprits even posed for pictures with the amputated body parts of the dead Afghans.

I want to question the western media as to why stories involving abusive acts of US military are not covered in the same manner as the story of Aisha? Like Afghanistan, the unlawful invasion by the US has killed hundreds of thousands of civilians in Iraq. A report published by Iraq Body Count Project (IBC), an independent UK-US group reveals that nearly 1,989 civilians have been killed in Iraq only in 2010 by coalition military action, Iraqi insurgency and excess crimes.

According to IBC, 106,072 civilians have been killed since Iraq was invaded in 2003. This is also an under estimated figure as the information was based only on those reported by media organisations. IBC project’s director John Sloboda has said earlier “We’ve always said our work is an undercount, you can’t possibly expect that a media-based analysis will get all the death.”

As witnessed in other countries, the US Embassy is investing money on lots of projects in the Maldives under the banner of promoting democracy, human rights and free media. But the reality is that there is a hidden agenda behind these investments.

The purpose is to influence and control the country through modern methods of colonialism. My answer to the messy writer is, if you (US and other coalition forces) leave Afghanistan, tens of thousands of lives would be saved, so leave Afghanistan and other Muslim countries.

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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Body of UK tourist found on beach at Kuredhoo Island Resort

The body of a tourist from the UK has been found on the beach of Kuredhoo Island Resort in Lhaviyani Atoll.

Police reported that the body of the 42 year-old woman was  discovered at 12:30am on Friday night. She was a guest at the resort, police said, adding that the Serious and Organised Crime Department was now investigating the matter.

A staff member working on the island told Minivan News that the woman had no injuries on the outside of her body.

“Her body was found just after midnight, on the seashore,” he said. “Police have now arrived at the resort and are investigating the case.”

Another staff member working on the resort told Minivan News that the body had been transferred to Male’ Mortuary.

The Front Office Manager at the resort said he was not allowed to comment on the issue.

Kuredhoo is situated on the northern reef of the Lhaviyani Atoll, 80 miles north of the international airport at  Hulhule.

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Comment: Kitchen maids step out to business and up to leadership

It was 3:00 pm in the afternoon last Ramazan when someone called and asked me to do a translation. He said that I could charge for the work. I told him to mail it to me so that I could have a look.

What I got was a five page contract with legal terms to be translated from English to Dhivehi, and it had to be done by that night. I called up and quoted him my official price and he flipped out.

“Oh man,” he said, “you are crazy. I am doing this for a friend. Go to the kitchen. It is time to cook for breaking the fast.”

My mind raced! Would he have said something similar in the same tone to a man?

Kitchen maids step out to business and up to leadership!

I grew up with a mother who sold material and tailored to earn money. She worked from home. In many households while men are the official breadwinners, the women work from home to earn an income to make ends meet.

Today farmers in the islands are made up of 60 percent women. In other words, women in the Maldives have a long history of entrepreneurship. When I was growing up, there were a couple of ladies in trading and I saw them in the man’s world. I wonder how they felt and what kind of challenges they had. Today with Maldives advancing into the modern world, more Maldivian women have stepped out into the business world.

Globally, the 1920s were a turning point for women to move from traditional roles to modern ideas. In these years the role of women changed, with gender-defined work such as cooks, dressmakers and farm hands moving to professional and technical jobs like doctors, bankers, lawyers etc. Still today, even in the most developed countries, there are conservatives who find it hard to digest this and feel a woman’s place is at home.

The prevalent environment in Maldives is tough for a woman who wants to run a business. I am a social entrepreneur and I started out on my own in 1999. As a woman I have experienced many hurdles, and I am going to highlight here common issues enterprising women face in the Maldives.

Women entrepreneurs find it a big challenge to get people to take them seriously. Women seeking loans beyond micro-financing have difficulties obtaining funds, even with collateral. I know the case of a woman who offered collateral of her two houses to the Bank of Maldives (managed by women) some years ago and she was refused a loan. When her husband went to the Bank with the same business plan and same collateral (with mortgage rights signed over by the woman), it was accepted.

When women hold meetings, many men do not listen to the business idea a woman is selling. Horrendous suggestions such as meeting late at night and in private environments are an indication of this lack of seriousness among men. It is often seen in the light of a favor she is asking. If I am accompanied by a male to a meeting, I still find him being addressed more than me though it is my business.

Sense of guilt

My female colleagues and entrepreneurs also speak of the “guilt issues” that come into play and which limit their success. Guilt for investing time away from the family, guilt for becoming more financially secure than family and friends, guilt for earning more than a spouse and guilt for being successful.

To make it worse, husbands and partners who cannot digest the success of a woman accuse her of receiving favours. Some people (men and women, friends and family) actually think that a woman who wants to start a business is just looking for something to do as a “hobby”.

Women are trained since childhood to work behind the scenes, to not make a fuss, and to take care of others first. Girls grow up in “female” roles with housework prioritised above studies, and the notion that she will marry a good man to have a life.

The contribution of women to financial stability is treated of secondary importance especially when that money is generated at home. Women’s contribution is not documented in the national statistics either. Women in entrepreneurship struggle to improve conditions that support enterprise development at national level.

The Women Entrepreneurs Council (WEC) was initially under the umbrella of the National Chamber of Commerce and Industry, and was dissolved three years ago without the WEC itself being notified. The move was part of a calculated change in the Executive Board to push out chamber board members, including distinguished and dedicated men committed to economic development of the country. and who supported the Wec.

The media (including Minivan News) ignored the case (with evidence) that the WEC presented, and the report did not appear in the daily newspapers or on the television. The Registrar of the Home Ministry at the time ignored the evidence. The Attorney General (on a personal level) made an aimless attempt to look into the issue that compromised women. Today the documents lie on the table of the present Chamber President who considers an internal audit of the time (with the last five years) possible but has not had the time to look at them.

The documents are in the Ministry of Home Affairs waiting for the present Registrar’s attention. Three registrars have changed since the documents were submitted and the present Registrar has promised to lend us an ear.

The WEC was just beginning to stand on its feet with a successful trial record of development and half a million Rufiya in its account, a solid development plan for four years and a potential contract with UNDP, when the Council was crippled by the Board of the time.

Earlier this year, His Excellency the Vice President listened to the story but it remains one without an end. The President’s staff have been scheduling a meeting with the leadership of the ex-WEC for the last two and half years.

Women experience sexist banter, demeaning comments and exclusionary behavior and continue to push for conditions where they can do business in a politically and socially fair environment.

Assumptions about women, such as in my introductory paragraph, view women as inferior business professionals. Expectations on pricing and wages – with the implication that women lack professionalism – are abusive.

Women tend to devalue their skills, abilities and experience more than men do. Women must value their offerings in order for customers and prospects to value them. The ability to be compensated well for the value a woman provides lies squarely on her ability to look the customer/prospect in the eye and state, with confidence, that it’s worth the price she is charging. So my fees remain… discounts come only after quotation.

Ownership and control of an enterprise by a woman is a big thing. Most women entrepreneurs are very compassionate and caring people, thus bringing complimentary value to business. While women want to express their skill and talent to the world, they should also possess the qualities of devotion, innovation and the capabilities of management and control, lessons that can be learnt from enterprising men. Women are great networkers, tenacious, and are great at relationships, so there is no hurdle too big to overcome.

Once on an interview, a producer of a VillaTV program wanted the presenter to question me about whether a woman would have time to take care of her family obligations if she was engaged outside home. In my opinion, the word obligation puts conditions on women that are interpreted by someone else. A woman should define her priorities and balance her life between work and family. This is one of the hardest challenges for a woman entrepreneur even in developed countries.

To break the ice, women have to put themselves forward and overcome a lifetime of behavioral training – a daunting task for many of us. Men remove one hat before putting on another. Work is work, play is play and family is family. Women insist on wearing all their hats at once and are determined to balance them all. When we enter into business mode, we are still mothers, wives and friends. We are easily distracted by our many other priorities and find it challenging to focus all our attention on one area at a time. Focus ladies!

To be successful as an entrepreneur a woman must be independent, humble, highly successful at personal growth and, for the most part, non-emotional. As a male colleague noted the other day, one big challenge a woman has are the other women who don’t understand her – her values and drive.

It was evident at the Validation Workshop in October 2009 held in Holiday Inn where I sat at a round table with women from the Ministry of Health trying to bring in the perspective of women from private sector into the national plans. The barrier I faced was so impenetrable that I had to get the Counsel of UN facilitator to talk to them to include some of my suggestions.

Women must be bolder and demand respect by showing their success. To receive respect, women should be respectful. To be respectful, women should work with values and rules that shows her principles such as using formal friendly language (a great way to draw the line between personal and professional relationships), staying firm and focused in discussions displaying a professional attitude, keeping meetings to working hours and if necessary stretch to early evenings but not late night hours, setting the latest reachable hour to business contacts by phone, meet in open public places or office during working hours, establish a code for no physical relationships with staff and potential business partners, learn to draw the line when people get abusive or suggestive at meetings, stop mothering when dealing with male business colleagues (sorry ladies but I observe this happening) and dressing professionally.

Women should always be upfront and transparent about their professional experience and what they have accomplished. Upon doing so, people can no longer have ignorant assumptions of women. So women out there, it takes every core of your being to stand above these who choose to talk about people, so you can walk instead with those who prefer to discuss ideas.

Aminath Arif is the Founder of SALAAM School.

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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Mind the gap: is lack of education the main reason for extremism in the Maldives?

“Extremism spreads because extremism is being taught, not because of inadequacies in the education system,” Minister of Education Dr Musthafa Luthfy told Minivan News.

“Extremism is a form of teaching in itself, and it is being taught by some people,” Dr Luthfy said. “It is not in the schools that it is taught, but outside of them.”

He said Islamic Affairs Minister Dr Abdul Majyd Abdul Bari was right in saying yesterday that extremism might be spreading because proper religious education is missing from the curriculum.

“Proper religious education,” Dr Luthfy said, “is very difficult to define. It means different things to different people.”

The subject of Islam is taught, he noted, according to an approved formal national curriculum in Maldivian schools from primary right through secondary school.

The education system is not the reason for extremism but extremism does affect the education system, Dr Luthfy said.

“Some people don’t want students to play; some don’t want them to do art; some don’t want them to do music – some say those are activities are haraam (forbidden) in Islam.”

He also added that there have been instances where some people advocated making it a regulation for male students to wear their trousers folded up a few inches above the ankle or to make beards compulsory.

Minister of Islamic Affairs Dr Bari told Minivan in an interview yesterday that a large share of the blame for the religious extremism in the Maldives lies with the education system.

Many Maldivians who turned to extremism were those seeking religious enlightenment that the education system could not provide. They sought such knowledge abroad, and ended up in unregulated institutions such as the madhrasaas in Pakistan, Dr Bari said.

Dr Luthfy agreed that there were inadequacies in the education system that contributed to contemporary social problems.

Between leaving school and reaching adulthood most Maldivian youth spend two years without a job, a sense of direction or purpose. A large number of contemporary social problems take root during these two ‘gap years’.

Latest Education Ministry figures show that an overwhelming majority – close to seventy percent of students who sit O’level exams – fail them. Of all the students who take the exams, only a small minority go on to take A’levels.

The rest, still legally children, fall outside of the school system and remain unemployed. Minister of Education Dr Luthfy said these two years were crucial.

Keeping the children within a formal education system until they are legally adults, at the age of 18, he said, is necessary for changing the current status quo. A polytechnic will soon open in Male’ that will address the problem, Dr Luthfy said.

Plans are also underway to setup vocational training centres on several islands using resources that already exist or by establishing new ones. The training centres would be subsidised by the government, and run by private organisations, Dr Luthfy said.

While the government’s plans remain in the pipeline, Salaam School, a social project launched under her own initiative by Aminath Arif, is attempting to plug the holes. It offers the children in an educational limbo an opportunity for personal development and trains them for the job market.

“There is very little help, direction or guidance given to such children,” Arif said. “They arrive at Salaam with very little language skills, and with almost no prior career guidance. For many, it is the last hope finding a way into gainful employment.”

“It is very easy to point fingers,” she said. “We can blame the internet, or we can blame something else.”

The problem, she said, is the very ethos of the education system: “It rarely encourages children to develop their creativity, to grow into their own individuality.”

Education Ministry figures show that compared to the ‘Enlightenment disciplines’ of the West such as the social and natural sciences, almost all school leavers sat the exam in Islam. In comparison, only a quarter of the students sat exams in any of the natural science subjects.

Humanities received even less attention from students with most subjects in its disciplines getting less than one percent of the total student population of the country. And, there were more students taking the Arabic language exam than the O’Level English language.

A 2004 survey of members of extremist Islamist groups found that over 60 percent had some higher or further-level education. The survey, by Marc Sageman, also found that about three quarters of extremists came from upper- or middle-class backgrounds.

Many extremists, research has also shown, were in professional occupations such as teaching, medicine or in skilled or semi-skilled employment such as the police or the civil service when they became radicalised or joined a group with extremist ideologies.

Such recent research, as was discussed in the European Journal of Criminology, undermines the previously accepted view that “Islamic extremism can be attributed to ignorance or lack of education.”

Social identity, group loyalties, social marginalisation, discrimination against particular groups, status and personal rewards as well as perceived injustices, research has found, contribute to the radicalisation and the creation of extremists in a society.

The substantial number of Maldivian youth on their enforced ‘gap years’ are broadly perceived as a negative force within society, Aminath Arif said.

“The marginalisation of youth on most islands is endemic throughout the country,” Arif told Minivan.

She travels to islands and identifies the most needy of such youth and provide them with the opportunity to enrol at Salaam.

Such initiatives, however, are few and far between, if not non-existent. Disaffected, marginalised and with no institutional support, a vast majority of Maldivian school leavers stray in a variety of directions.

Attending the ‘schools’ of extremism, or listening to the extremism being ‘taught’, as Dr Luthfy said, might be one of them.

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Maldives takes on UK in high seas legal drama

The Maldives government looks set to lock horns with the UK Foreign Office over the Maldives’ long-running claim to 160,000 square kilometres of British Indian Ocean Territory (BIOT).

The Maldives wants an extension of its Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) which impedes on a 200 nautical mile EEZ that the UK claims extends from the island of Diego Garcia.

The island is presently occupied by a US naval base, under an agreement in 1966 whereby the UK received favours including a US$14 million discount on submarine-launched Polaris missiles in exchange for use of the island until 2016. The base is now among the largest US naval bases outside the country, and has reportedly been used as a stop-off point for the CIA’s highly-controversial ‘extraordinary rendition’ flights to Morocco and Guantanamo Bay.

More recently, the UK has declared the Chagos Archipelago in the BIOT a marine reserve – an area larger than France – theoretically making it the world’s largest marine protected area (MPA). Funds to manage the MPA for the next five years have been provided by Swiss-Italian billionaire Ernesto Bertarelli.

The matter is further complicated by the existence of an indigenous population, the Chagos, who were forcibly evicted after the British bought the Chagos Archipelago from Mauritius for £3 million (US$476,000) in 1965. The then-Mauritian Prime Minister Seewoosagur Ramgoolam subsequently received a knighthood that same year.

The British attempted to resettle 1000-odd Chagos in the Seychelles and Mauritius, which demanded an additional £650,000 (US$1 million) to settle the refugees.

The Chagos were known to Maldivians in the southern atoll of Addu, as they occasionally rescued a stranded fishermen who had strayed too far south and sent him home. The islands themselves were never settled by the Maldivians, although they retained the Dhivehi name of Feyhandheebu.

Dispossession and the courtroom

The Chagos won a high court victory in the UK in 2000 enabling them to return to archipeligo, but the decision was extraordinarily overruled by the Queen’s royal prerogative. In 2008 the House of Lords overturned the high court verdict, forcing the Chagos to appeal in the European court of human rights.

The Maldives contends that as the islands are uninhabited, according to the Law of the Sea Convention the UK had no right to claim a 200 nautical mile EEZ.

“We will send a delegation to the UN in February and the UN will question us as to our claim, which we believe we have according to the Law of the Sea Convention,” said State Minister for Foreign Affairs Ahmed Naseem.

“Sri Lanka has also filed claims, and we need clarification of them,” he added.

The Maldives’ interest in the area extends to fishing and potential exploitation of mineral resources, Naseem explained.

“We are saying that since there is no population benefiting from the area, the British government cannot claim it as their territory. We feel the [original] claim made by the British is not legally valid [under the Law of the Sea Convention],” Naseem said.

Were the Maldives – or any other country – to succeed in its claim, it would be indirectly benefiting from the homelessness of the Chagos by claiming the territory from which they were forcibly evicted.

“That’s not our issue – the fact of the matter is that there is no native population on the island,” Naseem explained.

On Tuesday the Chagos community in the UK, who live in Crawley next to their arrival point of Gatwick airport, expressed surprise at the UK Foreign Office’s apparent opposition to the Maldives’ claims on their homeland.

In an interview with the UK’s Guardian newspaper, Roch Evenor, chairman of the UK Chagos Support Association, said the Foreign Office “seems to be more interested in defending the seabed than the interests of Chagossians. Why did [politicians] give us all that sweet-talking before the elections and then afterwards we are back to square zero? We feel emotionally drained.”

Second Secretary at the British High Commission in Colombo, Dominic Williams, insisted on Wednesday that the UK was not protesting the submission by the Maldives to extend its territorial waters, but was rather making “an observation” to the UN’s Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf (CLCS).

“The UK observed that the Maldives’ submission had not taken into full account the 200 nautical mile Fisheries and Environment Zones of the British Indian Ocean Territory,” he said. “We are satisfied that the CLCS will be able to consider the Maldivian submission without prejudice to the position of the United Kingdom.”

Williams said that the UK believed that a Marine Protected Area (MPA) “is the right way ahead for furthering the environmental protection of the Territory.”

The decision to establish the MPA was, he added, “without prejudice to the current pending proceedings at the European Court of Human Rights. As such, there is no need to wait for a decision from the European Court of Human Rights before implementing the MPA.”

“The establishment of this MPA has doubled the global coverage of the world’s oceans benefiting from protection and gives the UK the opportunity to preserve an area of outstanding natural beauty containing islands and reef systems rich in biodiversity.”

He noted that once the area was no longer needed for defence purposes, “the UK is committed to cede the British Indian Ocean Territory to Mauritius.”

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Dhoni Services MD sentenced to six months banishment for bounced cheque

Managing Director of Dhoni Services Ali Moosa, the company awarded a government contract last year to establish a transport network in the South Central Province, was found guilty by the Civil Court yesterday of issuing a bounced cheque and sentenced to six months’ banishment.
The court found that Ali Moosa had issued a cheque of US$100,000 (Rf1,285,000) to local company Sonee in January 2009 from a Dhoni Services account registered in Habib Bank.

While the penalty for the offence is banishment or incarceration for a period between six months to two years under article 39(b) of the Negotiable Instruments Act of 2002, the judge said Moosa would be banished for six months as it was his first conviction.

In addition to the claim by Sonee, Ali Moosa faces a number of civil lawsuits over unpaid debts and bounced checks.

According to local daily Haveeru, the Dhoni Services MD has been sued by different claimants for unsettled debts amounting to Rf50 million.

In September last year, Dhoni Services was sued by a business associate of Ali Moosa for Rf1.2 million and MGH Investment to recover Rf149,034 for oil purchased on credit.

Ali Moosa was arrested in April this year on charges relating to outstanding debts upon his arrival in the country after a long absence.

State Minister for Transport “Maizan” Ahmed Manik told Minivan News today that the conviction will not have any bearing on the government’s agreement with Dhoni Services to provide ferry services to Thaa and Laamu atolls.

“The contract does not mention anything about terminating it if he’s banished or arrested,” he said.

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