Category: News in Brief

Government closes national offices established by Nasheed

The Home Ministry has closed the seven national offices established by Former President Mohamed Nasheed to oversee government projects at regional and local level.

The administrative structures of the seven national offices, formerly called  as the Province offices were formed by Nasheed’s cabinet in March 2011 to oversee developments within seven regions across the country to try and coordinate national developments within the decentralised councils.

Then-opposition had argued that the formation of National offices contradicted the purpose of decentralisation.

The National office’s will be closed from Thursday and all the services will be continued through atoll and island councils, Home Ministry’s Deputy Abdullah Mohamed told Haveeru.

The staff  will meanwhile report to the councils and the assets will be transferred following an audit, Mohamed said.

According to him, as the offices were established under a presidential decree, it will be officially dissolved with a decree.

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President pledges “special attention” to developing smaller communities

President Mohamed Waheed Hassan visited Laamu Atoll yesterday claiming his government will work with small island populations across the country to address local development issues.

Speaking yesterday on Gaadhoo, the president said he regretted that a senior government official was not thought to have travelled to the island community in “several years” and pledged to provide special attention to similar destinations with smaller populations in the future.

“We must visit the islands and see for ourselves the well-being of our people. It is our duty to fulfil the needs of the people as much as possible,” Waheed was quoted as saying in a President’s Office statement.

Waheed added that challenges remained in ensuring that basic services are provided to islands with even very small populations, but pledged to ensure that any development decision was made “democratically, through consultation with the people.”

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Three men and a teen sought by police in VTV attack probe

Police are currently searching for three men and a teenager suspected of having involvement in the attacks on Villa Television’s (VTV) offices during confrontations between security forces and alleged anti-government protesters in Male’ on March 19, local media has reported.

According to the Sun Online news service, four male suspects aged 29, 26, 19 and 17 are wanted by police for questioning over the attacks, which caused significant damage to the media organisation’s building on Sosun Magu.

VTV was briefly brought off air following the incident – an act claimed by the station’s owner to be tantamount to “terrorism”.  Local media bodies also criticised protesters for allegedly threatening journalists and media personnel covering the clashes.

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Fijian man sentenced for two years imprisonment for sexual assault

The Criminal Court of the Maldives has sentenced a Fiji man to two years imprisonment for sexually assaulting a Canadian woman.

The man identified as Thomas Cunningham Newton was arrested in June 2011 for sexually assaulting a female pilot at the sea plane operator TransMaldivian Airways (TMA) while he was employed as the Chief Engineer at the same company.

TMA’s Managing Director Alsford Edward James declined to comment on the case citing that it is “not a company matter”.

However, he confirmed that Newton’s employment was terminated following the arrest, but the female pilot still works for the company.

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Island President resonates deeply following coup: Grist magazine

The Island President film resonates all the more deeply following last month’s coup in the Maldives, writes Eban Goodstein for Grist magazine.

The story’s ending — perhaps tragic, perhaps a powerful continuation — is today unfolding in real time. The Maldives is a string of 2,000 islands off the coast of India, home to about 300,000 people. The highest point in the country is only a few feet above sea level. Until 2008, the islands had been under dictatorial rule for decades.

This is the best film dealing with global warming in years. It is a story of classical proportion: of true heroism, courage and nobility, of eloquent soliloquy, of intimate moments, and of political intrigue, compromise, and betrayal.

The film is also visually stunning. The vast blue ocean is both a serene paradise, and a powerful, threatening force, driving Nasheed’s political urgency. The Maldives capital, Malé, looks like an oasis of buildings rising out of the ocean. When asked by a reporter what was his plan B, should there be no action to slow global warming, Nasheed responds, “We will die.”

Shenk follows Nasheed in strategy sessions with his cabinet as the team seeks to leverage their moral argument as the first victims of climate change, canaries in the coal mine. Nasheed gives speeches, and makes his case with heads of states and ministers at the U.K. Parliament, at the U.N. General Assembly, in India, and finally — during the dark, crushing days of Copenhagen.

Last month, just after I screened the movie, President Nasheed was forced at gunpoint to resign from his office. Political opponents seized on the economic crisis and fundamentalists objections to Nasheed’s modernising Islam. At clear and ongoing risk to his life, Nasheed decided to remain in the country, writing, speaking, leading marches, and fighting for democracy.

And this is the enduring lesson from the movie. President Nasheed and thousands of others in the Maldives understand that their land and lives are threatened both by the rising seas, and by the corrupt politics of business as usual. They continue to fight for both democracy and climate justice, in the face of imprisonment, beating, torture, and murder.

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Island President inadvertently records a bygone era in the Maldives: Village Voice

Blessed – or maybe cursed – with fortuitous timing, Jon Shenk’s lionising documentary of Mohamed Nasheed, the first democratically elected leader of the Republic of Maldives, closely follows the charming president from 2008 to 2009, his first year in office, writes Melissa Anderson, in a review for The Village Voice.

The film, a hopeful portrait of a crusader that premiered at Telluride last September, is now inadvertently a record of a bygone era: Nasheed was forced to leave office February 7, the result of a coup by loyalists to his predecessor, the dictator Maumoon Abdul Gayoom.

Although obviously unable to include the tumultuous events of the past seven weeks beyond a closing intertitle, The Island President briskly presents the broader history of this country of 400,000. As in his previous doc, Lost Boys of Sudan (2003), Shenk forgoes voiceover, the salient facts of this country, best-known as a luxury-resort destination, relayed via the sit-downs with Nasheed and members of his team that dominate the first third of the film.

As Nasheed wryly points out, the beaches where celebrities and aristos have romped were also—quite literally—the same spots where the torture sanctioned by Gayoom, who ruled from 1978 to 2008, occurred.

The thoughts Nasheed shared with Shenk post-Copenhagen now ring as foreboding: “Coming back to Maldives, you realize how impossible the whole situation is.” After the chaos that erupted in this island paradise two months ago, Nasheed’s vice president, Mohamed Waheed Hassan – a seemingly benign talking head seen briefly in the doc – is now the country’s leader.

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Social media driving social change in Maldives: Mashable

Mohamed Nasheed, the recently ousted president of the Maldives, has witnessed first-hand how technology and social media can organise civil society to create change and generate awareness, reports Mashable in an interview with the deposed President.

“Videos activisim is social media. Everything is about awareness, and when people know what is happening it is difficult not to do something about it,” Nasheed told Mashable.

“Social media very helpful in giving out messages, you couldn’t get out through the print and broadcast media, which are censored and regulated.”

The large youth demographic (“60 percent of our population are below 30 years-old) made the country very receptive to social media, Nasheed said.

Twitter has been very popular recently, along with of course Facebook. People are able to give out mesages on what is happening.”

Nasheed became the first democratically elected president of the country in 2008. During his two-decade-long fight for democracy, there were strict government restrictions against Internet communications. As a result, he and his followers leveraged SMS text messages to organize their underground activities.

Since his election, Nasheed has fought tirelessly against climate change. The Maldives, a country of 1,200 islands, will be completely submerged if the ocean level rises a few feet — becoming the first nation of environmental exiles. His story is told in a new film The Island President, which will be released in New York on Wednesday (trailer below).

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Coup was live on TV, Nasheed tells One Earth

For a man who was tossed out of office by a police and military revolt less than two months ago, former President Mohamed Nasheed of the Maldives seems positively ebullient, determined to dramatise the dangers of climate change just as passionately as a citizen activist as he did as a head of state, writes George Black for One Earth magazine, in a Q&A with Nasheed.

GB: People say that a big part of your appeal is that you don’t play by the normal diplomatic rules.

MN: Well, what have the rules of diplomacy done for the specific situation we face? Last month there was a coup in the Maldives. But the United States and India were unable to understand what was happening. What’s to understand? The coup was live on TV! The problem with normal diplomacy is that it just wants to maintain the status quo.

GB: I’m guessing you see a parallel there to the rules of diplomacy as they were practiced in Copenhagen.

MN: People don’t want to move away from what’s comfortable. They like things the way they are. They come to the talks, they go home to their beautiful wife and their kids. They have no passion. You can’t express your concerns openly in the normal language of diplomacy. You lose sight of the bigger picture, so you develop short-sighted solutions. Your diplomacy is played out according to the text messages you’re getting from certain industries.

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Democracy not a one-off event: Dr Hassan Saeed

A few months ago when my friend decided to buy an air-conditioning unit for his house, he was overwhelmed by the number of people who were ready to offer him advice on the best unit to buy but eventually he made his choice, writes the President’s Special Advisor, Dr Hassan Saeed, for Haveeru.

The great day came when the engineer installed it. My friend was a bit puzzled that he left without even turning it on but he was so looking forward to enjoying the cool air that he put it to the back of his mind. And then the problems started….

It stopped working properly and became less and less effective as days passed. When my friend rang the company he bought the AC from, he could never get hold of anyone or if he did manage to speak to someone they didn’t seem interested in his problems-let alone in helping him fix them.

Eventually his AC almost ground to a halt, making alarming noises and was clearly becoming dangerous and at that point the company did start to take some notice and rushed round to his house. And you know what really annoyed him? The company acted as though this was the first that they had heard of the problem…

You’ll recognise this story because in reality, of course, it is describing the Maldives, the international community and our democratic journey of the last three years.

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