Month: May 2011

Foreign minister spies mutual benefits from Sri Lanka tourism appeal

Rising international interest in the Sri Lankan  tourism market is expected to have mutual benefits for the Maldives travel industry, Ahmed Naseem, the country’s Foreign Affairs Minister has claimed.

Haveeru reported Naseem as stating during a visit to Sri Lanka that the two tourism markets had the potential to complement each other well in their individual aims of trying to attract a wider number of visitors.

He added therefore that working to offer a greater number of joint travel packages between Sri Lanka and the Maldives was seen as a lucrative development that was currently under consideration by authorities.

Preliminary tourism statistics for the first three months of 2011 have suggested that arrival numbers were up by 12.3 percent over the same period the previous year, with 246,606 visitors coming to the country.

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Cabinet to ponders repopulating military island of Maafilaafushi

Cabinet will hold a discussion on Tuesday regarding a proposal to repopulate Maafilaafushi in Lhaviyani atoll.

Maafilaafushi is used by the military and has around 100 residents, reported Haveeru, adding that residents protested after President Nasheed visited yesterday to inaugurate two military schools on the island.

Islanders demanded to be relocated to Male’ or Hulhumale, because of the military exercises, Haveeru reported.

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Air India resumes flights as pilot strike halted

Air India has restored flights between Male’ and Trivandrum following a 10 day strike by the airline’s 700 pilots.

The pilots were demanding pay parity with colleagues flying international routes, and halted the strike promises by the government to look into the complaints.

The strike reportedly cost Air India US$3.35 million a day in lost revenues, as it was forced to cancel 70-80 percent of its domestic flights.

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Mahlouf plots presidential “referendum” as stats show living cost rise

Official statistics supplied by the Department of National Planning have indicated a 4.42 percent increase in the rate of inflation last month compared to March 2011, as one opposition MP plans a referendum on President Mohamed Nasheed’s leadership over the dissatisfaction with living costs.

The new figures indicate increased prices for food and drink products last month, particularly for fish, on the basis of the Consumer Price Index (CPI) when compared to 2011 and April 2010.

The release of the statistics comes as MP Ahmed Mahlouf from the Z-DRP party, a spin-off of the main opposition Dhivehi Rayyithunge Party (DRP), claimed to be ready to forward a resolution to parliament this week calling for a referendum to test public support for the current president and his handling of the economy.

Figures such as the CPI are therefore an important issue following seven consecutive nights of protests in the streets of Male’, with demonstrators announcing they were now willing to negotiate with the government.

Protest organisers have claimed the demonstrations were a non-partisan “youth movement” in response to rising living costs on the back of government attempts to effectively devalue the rufyiya.

Aside from criticising the political opposition for politicising the demonstrations in the media for their own political gain, the country’s financial authorities last week claimed that to be providing some economic support to try and stabilise prices it said that while increasing, varied significantly between different stores.

According to the latest planning department stats, the cost of food and beverages when including fish was up by 20.35 percent during April 2011 compared to the same period the previous year. These costs were also up by 10.65 percent on the same terms compared to March 2011.

When excluding the price of fish, the average cost of food and drinks last month was up by 13.07 percent compared to over the same period of time last year. On the same terms, the statistics found that food and beverage costs last month rose by 4.44 percent compared to March 2011.

When comparing the overall change in CPI between April 2011 and April 2010, increases in costs were recorded across the board with the exception of recreation and culture, which was down by 3.11 percent.

As of late month, healthcare was up by 6.25 percent, transportation was up by 8.96 percent, education was up by 16.89 percent and fish was up by 58.32 percent when compared over the same period the previous year.

Between March to April this year, the statistics showed that the costs of healthcare were up by 1.21 percent, transport was up by 6.56 percent and fish prices were up 42.07 percent. The full statistics can be found here.

Halt to protests

In light of protests last week over rising costs, DRP MP Ahmed Mahlouf told Minivan News today that the party would be postponing any further demonstrations relating until next Friday after requests from police.

In the meantime, he claimed that young people who had initially organised the protests were negotiation with members of the government, a meeting that had been organised through the police to try and find some possible compromises on costs.

“The meetings were scheduled to take place with the government at 12:00pm today though I have not been informed yet of their progress. I imagine that they [the protest organisers] would be demanding some changes to government policy,” he said. “The police have asked us to stop the protests and as some of their members supported the march, we have wanted to keep good relations with them.”

Mahlouf added that he believed there had been a reluctance among organisers to stop the protests as the government were failing to address concerns about costs and “not believing” the financial realities Maldivians were facing.

However, amidst intense media scrutiny, the opposition MP said he believed the protesters had succeeded in their aims to attempt to change government policy on the economy.

However, ahead of the next scheduled protest on Friday, Mahlouf claimed he plans to forward a parliamentary motion for a referendum on whether President Nasheed had sufficient support from the public to enact his planned reforms.

Foreign Minister Ahmed Naseem last week criticised opposition parties like the DRP for “misleading” international media about the nature of the protests and failing to sit down and present their own alternatives for financial reforms in the country.

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Doctor’s examination shows dead infant’s body had cuts, wounds and bruises

Doctors examining the body of an dead infant found in a bag in the swimming track area have reported that the baby’s body had cuts, bruises and other wounds.

A police officer swimming in the track area on Thursday discovered the corpse of the premature baby underwater.

“The doctor said there were three cuts in the arms, not very deep cuts,’’ said spokesperson for Indira Gandi Memorial Hospital (IGMH), Zeenath Ali.

‘’There were two bruises on a leg and two wounds to the head,” she added.

She said it was difficult to say the cause of the injuries.

‘’It may be the ropes in the area caused  these injuries,’’ she said, adding that the infant appeared to have been born 26-28 weeks prematurely.

Police Sub-Inspector Ahmed Shiyam also confirmed that several injuries were found on the infant’s body.

‘’We cannot say the cause of the injuries exactly,’’ Shiyam said. ‘’The dead body has now been laid to rest.’’

He said police were currently investigating the case.

Local media reported that the baby was bleeding when it was taken out of the water and that the umbilical cord and placenta were still attached. Haveeru published a picture of infant which appeared to have been put in a plastic bag.

In November last year another abandoned newborn female baby was discovered alive in some bushes near the Wataniya telecommunications tower in Hulhumale’.

As a Muslim country, abortion is illegal in the Maldives except to save a mother’s life, or if a child suffers from a congenital defect such as thalassemia. Several studies on HIV in the Maldives have identified risk factors including high levels of promiscuity and little use of contraception, and anecdotal evidence points overwhelmingly to a high rate of abortion.

In an article on the subject in 2009, Minivan News reported that many women unable to travel to Sri Lanka resort to illegal abortions performed by unskilled individuals in unhygienic settings. Abortion-inducing pills and injections administered by amateur abortionists are one recourse while others turn to harmful vaginal preparations, containing chemicals such as bleach or kerosene. Although infrequent, some insert objects into their uterus or induce abdominal trauma, such is the stigma of having a child out of wedlock.

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Turkish navy talks piracy challenges during inaugural Maldives visit

The Turkish navy concluded its first ever official visit to the Maldives last week during a patrol of the Indian Ocean it is conducting as part of a NATO-led anti-piracy initiative to try and deter potential attacks in and around the region’s territorial waters.

A spokesperson said that the three day visit by the naval ship TCG Giresun to the Maldives, which concluded on May 3, was not linked to any specific threat or incident of piracy within the country’s territorial waters.

He said it was instead linked to a wider NATO programme targeting concerns about pirate attacks spreading beyond the horn of Africa into territories around the Gulf of Aden and the Indian Ocean.

“We are trying to promote understanding to fight piracy, so one way to do this is to visit ports like Male’,” said the spokesperson. “The attacks of the pirates have widened into the Indian Ocean with one of the last incidents occurring approximately 250 nautical miles away from the shores of Male’, so NATO has widened the number of ports we are to visit to include Indian Ocean destinations like Mumbai and Male’.

Experts suggest that a growing number of Somali pirates are moving deeper into the Indian Ocean as they come under increased pressure from international task-forces designed to try and limit piracy around the horn of Africa. As a result of this movement, maritime security has become a notable security concern for the Maldives, even around the country’s secluded resort properties.

In March this year, a family were suspected of being kidnapped by Somali pirates after having set sail from the Maldives towards the Arabian sea, although the kidnapping was confirmed by security officials to have occurred outside of Maldivian waters.

Major Abdul Raheem of the Maldives National Defense Force (MNDF) said at the time that security officials in the country had not received any information concerning the kidnappings or any other kind of “terrorist activities” occurring recently within the territorial waters of the Maldives.

Raheem added that Maldivian authorities would not therefore be reviewing maritime security measures or safety advice for sailing sailing in and out of the country on top of measures and international cooperation already in place during the alleged kidnappings.

The Turkish navy says that during 2011 alone, it plans to send between three to four frigates to patrol the Indian Ocean and Arabian Sea as part of its commitments to try and protect Turkish and international merchant vessels from potential pirate attacks.

“We plan to conduct operations to protect merchant vessels,” said a spokesperson for the TCG Giresun. “During this deployment we will visit Aksaz Aqaba, Jidde, Al Hudeyde, Doha, Dubai, Mascat, Karachi and Mumbai.”

In previous patrols conducted by the TCG Giresun in the Gulf of Aden, the Turkish navy spokesperson claimed that the ship’s crew had apprehended 14 suspected pirates and a stash of weapons on a Yemeni dhow vessel along with seven local fishermen that were also being held on the ship.

In instances where suspected pirates were caught, the navy spokesperson said that the Turkish authorities were not able to try or incarcerate any of the individuals themselves.

“They are not our captives as we are operating under United Nations resolutions and currently there is not an established court to judge [alleged] pirates that have been captured. So we attempt to disrupt and deter them [from piracy], we take their weapons and drop the equipment into the sea,” he said.

“We take all their equipments and then return [the suspects] to the Somali coast. Some countries have special [legislative] agreements, such as Kenya and the Seychelles. These agreements relate only between [these nations] and not internationally, so they capture the alleged pirates and then take them to Kenya or to the Seychelles to be judged.”

The spokesperson claimed that a present a number of suspected pirates from Somalia were currently being returned to their native coast.

To try and counteract the challenges of detaining suspected pirates, the UN security council last month voted in favour of forming an international court – supported by a host of potential new laws – that would focus specifically on working to combat the spread of piracy.

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Sri Lankan man’s passport held for over a year in Reeko’s bootleg booze case

A Sri Lankan national has appealed to the Criminal Court to release his passport, which has been held for over a year in relation to a case concerning the discovery of hundreds of bottles of cheap alcohol  in a car belonging to Maldivian Democratic Party (MDP) Parliamentary Group leader ‘Reeko’ Moosa Manik.

The Court identified the expat as Muhaidhee Mohamed. Following his complaint the Court summoned the police investigator in charge of the case, Staff Sergeant Ali Faiz, who told the court the matter would be resent to the Prosecutor General this week.

Faiz told the Criminal Court that the leader of a group of expats involved in importing alcohol illegally to the Maldives had fled during the police investigation.

‘’We would like to note that it has been one year, two months and 10 days from the day he was arrested,’’ said the Criminal Court. ‘’He was released by the Criminal Court after he was kept in detention for two months.”

In February last year police arrested four expatriate men loading 168 bottles of whiskey and menthol gin into a car registered to Moosa, on the same day controversial liquor licensing regulations were unveiled by the Ministry of Economic Development.

Main opposition Dhivehi Rayyithunge Party Vice President Ibrahim Shareef then said he doubted the case “would go very far”, noting that “in the worst case scenario Reeko’s driver will be implicated and that will be the end of the story.”

The investigation into the case was concluded in October last year, and the case was sent to the Prosecutor General who rejected it and sent it back to police.

Police then said that the case was rejected because there was some necessary information was missing in the investigation.

Local media reported that during the court hearing during the investigation police told the judge that the main subject of the investigation was a person known only as  ‘Tin Tin’.

Moosa, who was in Singapore at the time of the incident, has maintained that his driver was bribed and the bottles were planted in his car to attack him politically.

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Day of protests ends with pepper spraying of Umar Naseer

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

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

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

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

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

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

Placards at the artificial beach

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

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

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

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

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

Five lines of police blocked off Majeedee Magu.

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

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

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

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

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

Note: Maldives coverage begins at 0:50

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Read the full UN report (English)

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