Category: News in Brief

Alms Act to increase zakat contributions

The Ministry of Islamic Affairs has said that a separate institution for the administration of zakat funds would result in increased payments as public confidence was enhanced, reports Sun Online.

State Minister for Islamic Affairs Sheikh Shaheem Ali Saeed said that the new Alms Act, for which drafting began earlier this year, would describe how much people were to pay based on their assets and income.

The giving of a fixed portion of ones’ income to charity is one of the five pillars of Islam.

Shaheem told Sun that the practices of other countries such as Kuwait, Qatar, and Malaysia had been studied when drafting the new legislation, which he is hopeful will be enacted when parliament resumes.

He said that the new institution will include a council and supervisory council.

Earlier this week, Shaheem told local media of his concern that recent changes to the country’s tax system had negatively affected contributions to the zakat fund.

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President Waheed meets with EU, Thai Ambassadors

President Dr Mohamed Waheed Hassan yesterday met with Bernard Savage, the European Union’s Ambassador to the Maldives, in Male’.

The current political and economic status of the Maldives, along with measures taken to try and relieve the national fiscal deficit, were among the main topics of discussions during the meeting at the President’s Office.

Savage stressed that the EU would continue to provide “assistance and support” to the country, according to the President’s Office website.

President Waheed was also yesterday presented with the credentials of the new Ambassador of Thailand for the Maldives, Poldej Worachat.

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Police recover 330 beer cans drifting near presidential retreat of Aarah

Police have recovered 330 cans of beer found drifting near the presidential retreat of Aarah.

According to police, the beer cans were first seen by the crew of a passing boat and were reported it to police this morning at about 9:30am.

A team consisting of the police Drug Enforcement Department (DED) and marine police went to the area following the report and searched for the cans.

Last month, police discovered 52 cans of ‘Bintang’ beer drifting in the sea near Male’s West Park restaurant.

In March, police claimed to have discovered some beer cans and locally brewed alcohol at Maldivian Democratic Party (MDP) protest camp near the surf break.

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Maldives ex-dictator back on Delhi radar: Telegraph India

“South Block is tired of ousted Maldivian President Mohamed Nasheed’s ‘maverick’ approach and violent street protests, and is busy reviving its three-decade-long ties with former dictator Maumoon Abdul Gayoom,” writes Archis Mohan for India’s Telegraph newspaper.

“Events over the past week reflect a decisive shift in India’s approach towards the eight-month-old political crisis in the Indian Ocean archipelago since Nasheed’s resignation under pressure in February.

First, India invited Gayoom to New Delhi. The former dictator, who ruled Maldives for 30 years before losing the country’s first multi-party elections in 2008 to Nasheed, discussed the Maldivian political situation with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Friday for nearly an hour.”

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“Our democracy is being suffocated”: Former President Nasheed

“The Maldives stand on a knife edge. At stake is its hard-won liberal democracy, forged from the ruins of a brutal, 30-year dictatorship – a period that was synonymous with serious human rights abuses, including extra-judicial killings and torture,” writes former President Mohamed Nasheed for the Guardian newspaper.

“President Maumoon Abdul Gayoom’s rule was eventually ended in 2008, by a democratic vote in which I was elected. But it is important that the outside world clearly understands that Gayoom, his allies and his henchmen are back.

It was they who established, late last year, the ‘December coalition’ of Islamic extremists who accused my government of being controlled by ‘Jews’ and ‘Christians’ and used incitement to religious hatred and violence as political tools. It was they who orchestrated February’s overthrow of the Maldives’ first democratically elected government.

And it is they who control the current administration as well as the police and armed forces. From this position of strength, they are slowly squeezing the life out of the democratic fabric of my country.

Despite this, the Commonwealth Ministerial Action Group (CMAG), which met last week, is considering removing the Maldives situation from its agenda. A decision is expected in late September later this month. The choice before the group, comprising the foreign ministers of Australia, Bangladesh, Canada, Jamaica, Sierra Leone, Tanzania, Trinidad and Tobago and Vanuatu, could hardly be more important.

Thousands of pro-democracy protesters in the Maldives have been brutalised by the police, arrested and imprisoned. Many of them have been tortured, or charged with terrorism – the favoured means, post 9/11, for repressive states to dispose of opponents. Journalists have been beaten and arrested and media outlets threatened with legal action and closure. Freedom of speech is being strictly curtailed – people can now be arrested for calling members of the current government ‘traitors’. And the country’s independent oversight bodies are being staffed with friends and relatives.

Moreover, a growing sense of impunity is taking hold. Key agents of February’s coup d’etat, and the police officers responsible for the violence that followed, know they cannot be touched. A grotesquely one-sided report into the coup, by the Commission of National Inquiry, was co-chaired by Gayoom’s former defence minister. Despite gross and systematic human rights violations since February – all catalogued by NGOs such as Amnesty International and the International Federation of Human Rights – not one police officer or state representative has been prosecuted. Indeed, many of those responsible have been promoted.”

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MMC to investigate Raajje TV dispute despite channel’s defiance

The Maldives Media Council (MMC) has said it intends to continue its investigations into the police’s refusal to cooperate with Raajje TV despite the channels refusal to work with the MMC, reports local media.

The MMC statement said that it was constitutionally obliged to look into the case and to ensure a stable and free media environment in the country.

Haveeru reported that Raajje TV had sent the MMC a letter accusing it of incompetence, having – in its view – failed to resolve the issue previously.

The station said that it would not comment on the case further until the Civil Court had finished deliberating on the issue.

Raajje TV has filed cases against both the police and the President’s Office alleging that the station had been boycotted as well as not receiving appropriate protections from the authorities.

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The lesson of the Maldives: can a coup win, asks Time Magazine

In a part of the world not lacking in unstable, politically fractious countries, it’s easy to overlook the Maldives, writes Ishaan Tharoor for Time Magazine.

But the Indian Ocean archipelago state of under 400,000 people, known for its paradisiac atolls and honeymoon hotels, has gone through months of turmoil after democratically elected President Mohamed Nasheed was unseated by what some observers deemed a coup in February. Prominent figures in the three-decade-old dictatorship that preceded Nasheed’s government have insinuated themselves back into the frame. All the while, human-rights groups have documented systematic abuse by security forces allied to the current regime.

“The police seem to think they’ve impunity,” says Nasheed, who spoke to TIME over the phone from the Maldivian capital, Male. “They’ve gone on the rampage and beaten up so many activists and reporters.” An Amnesty International report published earlier this month charted “a campaign of violent repression” against Nasheed’s supporters and the country’s nascent civil society. Protesters have been met with egregious force and subject to arbitrary arrests. “The picture [these actions] paint,” reads the report, “is completely at odds with the tranquility of the waters and scenic islands of this elegant archipelago.”

Nasheed says the new government, led by his former deputy, Mohammed Waheed, knows that it would lose an election to Nasheed and his allies if it was held in the near future and is doing what it can to create conditions tilted in their favor.

“It’s perfectly mapped now, they’ve got all their people exactly in the places they want,” says Nasheed, who speculates that relatives of the septuagenarian Gayoom will challenge soon for the presidency.

Meanwhile, a worrying trend has developed in the once laissez-faire archipelago: a strain of Saudi-funded Wahabist Islam has taken root. Islamists were at the forefront of those calling for Nasheed’s removal from power; some even attempted to brand him a blasphemer, a loaded charge in a country that’s technically 100% Sunni Muslim. This past week, the country’s Islamic Ministry issued an order prohibiting mixed-gender dancing, while Maldivian protesters angered by the fringe American film Innocence of Muslims attempted to storm the U.N. headquarters in Male, wielding placards that read, among other slogans, “Maldives: Future Graveyard for Americans and Jews.”

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Government to help 1000 students with education fees

President Mohamed Waheed has stated that Maldivians could make no greater contribution to the country than to support the education system, during the launch of four government scholarship schemes.

Sun Online reported that Waheed had expressed his concerns that the level of Maldivians going int tertiary education was not too low given the Maldives’ recent promotion from Least Developed Country (LDC) status.

It was reported that the Ministry of Education announced scholarships for 440 students, provided by the Zakat fund.

State Education Minister Aminath Ali told Haveeru yesterday that it expected the four schemes would assist around 1000 students.

Waheed said that this plan to lighten the financial burden on parents was part of a World Bank scheme that he hoped would increase opportunities for jobs and tertiary study.

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Chair of UK parliamentary group visits President

President Dr Mohamed Waheed Hassan today met with the Chairman of the UK-Maldives All Parliamentary Group (APG) MP David Amess.

The President’s Office reported that the discussion involved the recent political history of the Maldives and the upholding of democratic values.

Amess’s visit to the President’s Office came as former President Mohamed Nasheed met with UK Foreign Secretary William Hague in the Maldives in London.

Nasheed is expected to lobby the Commonwealth Ministerial Action Group (CMAG) regarding the recently released Commission of National Inquiry report during the trip.

He will also speak at the Royal Commonwealth Society on Wednesday evening.

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