Day: April 30, 2011

Expatriate “troubles” exacerbated by lack of border policy, says immigration head

The Maldives’ Controller of Immigration has claimed the country must address previous failures to adopt an immigration policy if it wants to protect and control an expatriate workforce that he says is estimated to at least equal the number of domestic labourers.

Abdulla Shahid, appointed back in February as the nation’s immigration chief, said that a lack of any kind of immigration controls or policy in the Maldives had left valuable foreign workers facing “inhumane” treatment and a host of other problems once inside the country.

Speaking to Minivan News, Shahid said that despite the country’s long history of bringing skilled and unskilled foreign workers to its shores reaching as far back as the 1950’s, both the current and previous government had failed to put any measures in place to outline numbers of foreign workers or their employment conditions.

Both Shahid and the High Commissioner of Bangladesh to the Maldives, Rear Admiral Abu Saeed Mohamed Abdul Awal, have claimed that authorities from both countries were now trying to devise a new legal framework that they claim is needed to protect the rights of foreign workers.

Earlier this week, Qatar-based newspaper the Gulf Times reported that the Maldives was seeking to bring in a number of public procurement experts from Bangladesh to assist with the country’s climate change adaption plans, as well as an additional 20,000 people for employment in the construction, textiles and tourism industries.

However, Shahid said that he was not aware of any such figure being set by himself or Maldivian authorities, adding that the country needed to first begin putting in place measures to ensure the numbers of immigrant workers were controlled, while also protecting their rights.

According to the controller of immigration, the number of foreign workers coming to the Maldives on an annual basis was estimated to have doubled in recent years, with the number of legal immigrants reaching 92,000 as of this month – up from 87,000 on March 1, 2011. Migrant labourers constitute almost a third of the Maldives’ total population.

While expat growth between 2009 and 2010 was deemed to be “not significant”, Shahid said he believed that a host of new infrastructure projects in areas such as airport construction and new home creation proposed by the government was likely to lead to growing interest in the country by foreign labourers.

“My argument is – should we send workers back? We have a population of 300,000 people here in the Maldives and its local workforce, I think, is equal to the number of foreigners employed here,” he said. “I’m not saying they are a nuisance; in my view, expats are a necessity here in the Maldives and without them many businesses and shops would struggle and be put out of business.”

Shahid claimed that after having spent two months in his current position as the national immigration controller, he believed it was now vital to look at other countries that have employed migration policies and see how the Maldives might follow.

“I’ve seen in Australia and the US that there are policies on immigrants and expats,” he said. “For instance, they will set out a system quota, say for 300 professionals in a specific field, but we do not do that. Both the previous government and ourselves have not done a comprehensive policy review.”

However, the immigration controller claimed that it was vital for authorities to first decide on an actual policy for foreign workers before they can begin reviewing the effectiveness of controls.

“What is this policy? What I am saying is that we need to produce a plan of action for immigration,” he said. “Do we decide to bring in an immigration policy or not? Without immigration a lot of businesses and shops would have to close down.”

Amidst these possible economic concerns, Shahid added that it would be vital to formulate and then have the Majlis agree on an immigration policy, such as setting an annual cap on the number of expats allowed to enter the country.

He claimed that greater control would, in theory, ensure stricter regulation in terms of forcing employers to provide better quality living standards to their expat workers, conditions that he said were known to be “inhumane” in certain cases.

The immigration controller said that an estimated 42,000 were working illegally in the country as of last year; a figure he claimed that if correct, would have probably risen again since.

According to Shahid, previous plans to try and slow down the influx of foreign workers had not worked.

However, along with trying to outline a national immigration plan, Shahid denied that ongoing uncertainty over the future of a deal with Malaysia-based mobile security firm Nexbis – involving installing an advanced border control system to collect and store biometric data on expatriate workers – had added to immigration concerns. In January this year, the Anti-Corruption Commission (ACC) ordered a halt on a government contract between the Department of Immigration and Malaysian mobile security firm Nexbis, claiming that there were instances where corruption may have occurred.

Facing political pressure ahead of February’s local council elections, President Mohamed Nasheed decided to uphold the ACC’s request that the roll-out of the technology be postponed. Nexbis responded that it would be taking legal action against parties in the Maldives, claiming that speculation over allegations of potential corruption was “politically motivated” in nature.

Shahid was not convinced the delays were playing into the hands of unscrupulous employers though.

“This issue [with the Nexbis deal] is not really a problem, we have only one issue with an immigrant who got through border control illegally,” Shahid said. “All other workers have come with the proper documents and the required work sponsor. However, it is after they arrive here that things go wrong and the problems start.”

Based himself in the capital of Male’, High Commissioner of Bangladesh, Rear Admiral Abu Saeed Mohamed Abdul Awal, said Bangladeshi authorities had not approved any figures on the number of local workers to be sent to the Maldives.

By contrast, Awal claimed that Bangladeshi government was working “closely” with their Maldivian counterparts over the issue of manpower and ensuring better regulatory control for workers coming to the country. Awal also stressed that it would be vital to ensure potential loopholes in employment laws were not being exploited by employers and recruitment agencies.

“A Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) is under consideration with the Maldives government to provide better controls on immigration,” he said. “Employment must take place under proper conditions and a legal framework, this has not been happening as much in the past.”

According to Awal, although the prospect of the MOU was being seen as an encouraging development between the two nations, setting out new regulations on foreign worker numbers was an “evolving process” that needed to be implemented properly as well as come under long-term reviews and scrutiny.

“We are working closely with various departments on this,” he said. “Any regulations that may follow would need to be overseen properly or the same problems will continue. Potential loopholes have to be addressed and should not be exploited.”

Last year, Minivan News reported that the exploitation of foreign workers was believed to rival fishing as the second most profitable sector of the Maldivian economy after tourism. The claims were based on conservative estimates of the number of Bangladeshi workers showing up at their commission in Male’ after being abandoned at the airport by unscrupulous employment agents.

Former Bangladeshi High Commissioner to the Maldives, Professor Selina Mohsin, who finished her assignment in July 2010, told Minivan News that every day 40 Bangladeshi nationals were turning up at reception, “having come to the Maldives and found they have nothing to do. So naturally they come here to the High Commission.”

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Comment: Shariah not a solution

Yesterday, the Adhaalath party organised a large rally at the tsunami monument in Male’, to demand the implementation of Islamic Shariah in the Maldives.

The party was joined by “hundreds” of pseudo-religious NGOs whi lent their collective voice to the clamour for Shariah, supposedly an antidote to ‘murder, violent assaults, robbery, rape and drug abuse’ in the country.

“The whole nation is threatened and institutions have failed,” the party said in a statement. The ‘only solution’, according to large banners put up across Male’, is Islamic Shariah.

What the Adhaalath Party and its friends fail to mention here is that by ‘Islamic Shariah’, they’re referring to a single interpretation of Shariah suitable to their rigid world-view – a minority opinion among the world’s many Muslim schools of thought that all hold different views of Shariah.

Lady Injustice

One common criticism of clergy-controlled Shariah is the perceived injustice towards women. While these concerns are often met with heated denial, they’re also backed up by cold statistics.

In 2009, then Minivan News Editor, Mariyam Omidi, wrote a damning report highlighting the strong gender discrepancy in the meting out of punishment for ‘fornication’ in the Maldives. According to government statistics cited in the report, out of 184 people sentenced to lashing for ‘fornication’ under Shariah law, 146 were women.

Following his verdict in June 2005, a judge in the criminal court, helpfully offered his opinion that women were ‘deceptive creatures’ according to the scriptures.

Almost exactly two years later, another judge ruled that the gang-rape of a 12 year old girl by four axe-wielding men who’d broken in through her bedroom window, was ‘consensual sex’, because the child didn’t scream audibly enough.

Last week, Mukhtar Mai, a woman who was gang-raped and dragged out naked in front of 200 higher-caste men in her village in Pakistan, had her hopes dashed when the courts upheld a ruling by semi-literate, tribal judges against her.

Given these realities, and a long series of cases where Muslim women have been punished for the crime of getting raped, one awaits an answer from the proponents of Sharia as to why a woman should ever step into their courts expecting justice.

Judge, Jury and Executioner

In Islamic Shariah, there is no jury, no defense lawyers, no prosecutors, no pre-trial discovery process, no courts of appeal, no cross-examination of witnesses, no legal precedents, and perhaps most damaging of all, little room for modern evidence.

Former State Minister of Islamic Affairs, Mohamed Shaheem Ali Saeed, while graciously acknowledging the validity of long established forensic methods of DNA profiling, stated that such evidence could only be used as ‘supplementary’ evidence, presumably while relying primarily on eye-witness testimonies, as practised in Arabia 1400 years ago.

Furthermore, due to the lack of separation of powers in Islamic Shariah, the Mullah is literally the judge, jury and executioner on whose shaky whims the mortal life of the accused rests.

Coupled with the severe lack of capable judges, this is often a recipe for disaster.

Dr. Tarek Al-Suwaidan, a prominent Muslim scholar, blamed the poor quality of modern Islamic jurists on a curriculum that is limited to only subjects related to traditional Islamic jurisprudence.

Highlighting the necessity of familiarity with international law, and current commercial, copyright and cyber-crime laws, he prescribed a minimum requirement of at least a bachelor’s degree in business, law or other specialized field before candidates enrolled for Shariah studies.

Maldivian courts, on the other hand, are plagued by severely under-qualified judges with barely primary level schooling who, according to a February 2011 report by the ICJ (International Commission of Jurists), have also failed to act in an impartial manner.

Political farce

The ‘absolute Shariah’ practised in Saudi Arabia and Afghanistan gives credence to Syrian Scholar Muhammad Shahrur’s theory that jurisprudence in the name of God is a farce by those wanting to maintain political power.

Photographs available in the public domain show the former Taliban government in Afghanistan showing off dead bodies of dissenters hung from poles in public, with their severed penises stuffed in their mouths.

In 2007 alone, at least six cases of torture and custodial death were brought against the muttaween, the Saudi Arabian religious police entrusted with enforcing a rigid Shariah state. In one case, a man was beaten to death for being in ‘illegal seclusion’ with an unrelated woman.

In May 2002, the religious police in Mecca prevented school girls from escaping a burning building as they were not wearing the ‘correct Islamic dress’, and to prevent physical contact between the girls and civil firefighters, which they feared might have caused ‘sexual enticement’.

Over forty people suffered severe burns that day, and 14 girls burned to death.

In the Islamic Republic of Iran, the basij militia brutally cracks down on pro-democracy activists in Universities and streets of Tehran, thereby prolonging the Ayatollah’s political reign in the guise of ‘upholding Islamic Shariah’.

The lack of judicial oversight or accountability, coupled with the promise of absolute power, has made Shariah an irresistible proposition for the Islamist political movement.

The political implications of a ‘Shariah’ legal system was painfully obvious in the original draft of the Maldivian Religious Unity Regulations of 2010, which forbade, among several other things, the criticism of ‘religious scholars’, and airing of any views on religion that contradicted the views of a select few who, very conveniently, happened to be the ones drafting the regulation.

Uncodified Law

When a Maldivian man publicly declared his lack of faith to a visiting preacher last year – he was met with a curious reaction.

On the one hand, the preacher on stage, in a long-winded response, ruled that Islam didn’t demand the death of all apostates. On the other hand, by day break, another set of preachers from a local NGO had issued an outright demand for his state sanctioned murder, failing an immediate repentance and conversion.

The dramatic contrast in judgement between the self-declared experts that – under a Shariah law system –  would’ve literally meant the difference between the man’s life and death, brings to the forefront the problem of Shariah not being a codified system of law.

There have been several attempts within the Islamic community to correct this grievous flaw, by compiling Shariah laws into a standard code. But observers note that since Islam has no central authority to universally  enforce such a codified law, it would depend on compliance, rather than enforcement.

Until such day, the law literally is whatever the Mullah with the gavel says it is.

The deterrence argument

Citing Islamic Shariah, the Maldivian Parliament recently introduced a proposed amendment to the Clemency Act, which would uphold a death sentence passed by the Supreme Court.

The proponents of the death penalty claim that it would act as a deterrent against violent crimes.

As it happens, a New York Times survey in 2000 revealed that American states which practise the death penalty have for decades shown consistently higher homicide rates than states that didn’t. FBI data for 2008 shows that murder rates were up to 101% higher in states that implemented capital punishment than those that didn’t.

According to Amnesty International, evidence shows that the faint threat of a possible future execution does not, in fact, enter the mind of a potential murderer in the throes of violent rage, mental illness, calm cold-bloodedness, or sheer panic.

Human Law

A vast majority of the world’s Muslims live under secular, constitutional law.

Even though laws in Pakistan and Malaysia are influenced by Shariah,  they have regular courts and cede ultimately authority unto the constitution, rather than the clergy.

Many secular countries like Britain, India and the Philippines allow religious discretion in civil and domestic affairs governing marriages, divorce and inheritance, but for criminal cases, they all employ modern law – with constitutional remedies, inviolable rights, principles of equality before law, provisions for appeals and the benefit of forensic evidences that has helped ensured justice for rape and murder victims even several years after a crime is committed.

A new thinking

In a sermon at the American Centre of the National Library last year, Imam Khalid Latif said that even non Muslims and people guilty of various sins felt free to openly speak their minds to the Prophet, without fear or hesitation, and fully expecting a patient hearing.

Times have clearly changed, as Islamist resentment against differing opinions has increasingly expressed itself as violent attacks on intellectuals and liberal reformists, further expanding the shadow of fear and intimidation under which Islamists operate.

Ibn Rushd, the celebrated philosopher from the Islamic Golden Age, also said that revelation and reason are not contradictory, but complementary.

Swiss born intellectual Professor Tariq Ramadan, one of Foreign Policy magazine’s Top 100 Global Thinkers of 2009, argues that the Qur’an should be interpreted in the changed historical context of modern times.

Citing a German law demanding equal treatment of sexes as an example of  proper Shariah, Ramadan asserted that “There are laws coming from non-Muslim minds that are more Islamic than laws coming from Muslim minds in Islamic countries.”

Indeed, those who swear by the immutability of God’s law, ignore the fact that Shariah has been compiled, polished, amended and refined by Islamic jurists for centuries after the Prophet’s death.

Dr. Abdul Fatah Idris, Head of Comparative Jurisprudence at Al-Azhar University agrees that with changing times, the traditional classical jurisprudence is no longer sufficient, and a ‘new thinking’ is required to deal with a changing society.

The failure of Islamic Shariah in modern times reflects this failure of the clergy class to adapt to changing times.

As with others before them, politicians in the Maldives are projecting an alluring vision of an idealistic sin free society to a disgruntled public as ‘Shariah’ – ignoring the fact that it has been a staggering, disastrous failure in every other modern nation that has experimented with clergy justice.

While loudly touted by vested interests as ‘the only solution’, Shariah is unfortunately ill-equipped to solve the average modern Muslim’s daily problems, and unlike modern law, has demonstrably failed to ensure justice and security for men and women in every part of the Muslim world.

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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