Maafushi Hunger Strike: One Man’s Story

For eight days in June, Maldivians woke to news of an ever growing hunger strike in Maafushi prison, as inmates demanded improved conditions and rehabilitation for drug addicts.

The strike started with the death of inmate Muslih Abbas during a prison break.

It ended with the country’s largest prison exposed as a place where inmates exercise control, everything is available at a price, and guards and police ignore inmates to fight out their own rivalry.

One of the strike leaders, released from a month’s confinement in Dhoonidhoo for his role, tells Minivan News what really happened to Muslih, why inmates went on strike, and how a government “culture change” is needed to control drugs.

”No Control, Nothing To Do”

“Maafushi is like a government funded resort to produce hardened criminals. There is nothing to do, and for a hundred rufiyaa you can bribe a guard to bring you anything you want.” says ‘Moosa’ (name changed.)

The prison is divided into six blocks, with the largest containing just over a hundred inmates. But within each block prisoners have complete freedom.

“All the guard stations are positioned outside. They can’t see what’s going on inside. And because they have no secure space inside, they can only enter in numbers, in force. The way the blocks are laid out forces confrontation.”

In March and April this year, inmates were given control of the whole prison when guards retreated to their quarters in one corner of the island. “I was amazed, but others told me it had happened several times over the years,” says Moosa.

“And it was official. The warden came out and said: as long as you stay within the perimeter you can move between blocks. It was only when people started escaping that they forced us back into our blocks.”

”We decided to break them out”

After Star Force [paramilitary police] were brought to Maafushi in April to restore control, twenty inmates were isolated in Maafushi’s notorious Unit Two. Prisoners are kept in unventilated four by eight feet cells twenty four hours a day, often two at a time.

The treatment of prisoners in Unit Two has caused prisoner breaks in the past, and Moosa says it triggered the June breakout.

“People in Unit Two told us guards had thrown hot water and coffee on Majood Riyaz while he was praying. Majood is a quiet guy who everyone got on with.”

“We had already been speaking to the guards and saying the twenty men had been isolated long enough, and to let them back, so we decided to break them out.”

Individual men from each block climbed their boundary walls and then opened gates to let out fellow inmates. Over two hours between 8 and 10pm the locks to the cells in unit two were broken and the twenty men freed.

“By the time they came he was dead”

“Afterwards some of us were taking charge of getting people back into the blocks, and we saw the last few had broken into the pharmacy to get drugs. There’s no denying it. It’s a fact. Muslih was one of the people who took drugs.”

“But by 11pm we were back in our cells. We called the guards and told them to lock us back in, and things were calm.”

“A few hours later we heard Muslih couldn’t breathe and was lying on a mattress outside his cell. We were all back in our blocks and begging the guards to come but they didn’t. By the time they came he was dead.”

Media Campaign

“That night people in my block were pretty down. At about 3am some of my friends were taking their usual fix. Some of us got upset and decided we should do something about this.”

“We spent a few hours getting support and at 5.30am we told the guards we were on hunger strike, and wanted the Human Rights Commission to come to the island so we could tell them our grievances.”

Moosa explains how strikers made sure their message got out. Three men were charged with speaking to journalists and updating them regularly. Another man was responsible for telephone negotiations with officials.

The strategy worked. With the media so informed, the DPRS had to break their silence after three days and admit a strike was taking place.

And the government gifted the strikers further coverage, when select journalists were invited to a high profile “clean up” operation.

Reporters saw at first hand drugs in every prison block, and prisoners in total control. Inmates’ claims about conditions in Maafushi were proved credible.

Azima Shukoor, the deputy home minister, was dispatched to the island. She acknowledged a list of grievances, and conceded the government had reneged on promises made in 2003 to implement rehabilitation for drug offenders.

Hollow Victory?

But for all the media attention, little has changed since. Thasmeen Ali was shifted from the Home Ministry to the equally powerful Atolls Ministry,

He has been replaced as Home Minister by the staunch loyalist Abdullah Kamal Deen, even less likely to challenge Police Chief Adam Zahir on prisons reform.

The long promised rehabilitation centre on Maafushi is still not open. Prisoners are now being allowed to go abroad for treatment at their own expense, “but not many people can afford that,” says Moosa.

And there is still nothing do in prison. “There used to be a library, but since before I arrived its been used for office space.”

“There was a gym we could use. But in June [2006] when the Star Force [paramilitary police] arrived on the island, they took all the equipment to use in their quarters.”

“There is absolutely no way to study.”

What Next?

But though the strike ended in chaos with Moosa and sixty other “leaders” transferred to Dhoonidhoo, he says it was worth the sacrifice. “The thinking of a lot of prisoners has changed.”

“Before most prisoners couldn’t think beyond Maafushi. Now they see a return to society as a real option, and they are demanding help to get there.”

The change in prisoners’ outlook needs to be matched by the government, says Moosa.

“The government simply doesn’t have the will to tackle rehabilitation. Its been promised for five years, so where is it?”

Moosa says the problem can be traced back to the state’s reaction to the arrival of drugs in the 1990s.

“When hard drugs first started arriving, the first stage should have been treatment. But drugs, and drug users, were criminalised. There are still these ridiculous penalties. Twenty years, thirty years, life, for taking something.”

“People need to change the way they think. They need to believe a second chance is possible for drug addicts. Otherwise we are giving up on a lot of people.”

“One generation has been lost,” Moosa says. “But its not too late to save the next one.”