Tag: maldives news

Police examine three suspected ‘mothers’ of abandoned newborn discovered on Thinadhoo

Police have examined three women in Gaafu Dhaalu Atoll Gahdhoo suspecting that one of them might be the mother of the newborn baby found abandoned inside a garage in Thinadhoo in the same atoll.

Police Sub-Inspector Ahmed Shiyam said the three women have been examined by a doctor, and that details of their medical reports would be later given to the media.

Gadhoo Island Council issued a press statement after islanders of Gahdhoo obstructed police a police team from Thinadhoo from taking the three women to Thinadhoo to have them examined by a doctor.

In the statement, Gahdhoo Council claimed that islanders of Thinadhoo had blamed the three women of Gahdhoo in an attempt to sabotage the island’s reputation.

The three suspected women went to Thinadhoo on the day the newborn baby was discovered “for different purposes.” the council stated.

The three were examined by Gahdhoo hospital, and medical reports showed that they had not delivered a baby recently, the council said.

Two of the women work in Gahdhoo hospital, while the other is a school teacher, the council added.

The islanders on Gahdhoo gathered near the police station on the island refusing to allow the three women be taken to another island for medical examinations.

Meanwhile, during the police operations to trace the baby’s mother, a 28 year-old woman was arrested in Nilandhoo of Gaafu Dhaalu Atoll on suspicions that she had aborted a baby recently.

Sub-Inspector Shiyam said the woman was currently being investigated on suspicion of having aborted a child.

Abortion is illegal in the Maldives outside of exceptional circumstances.

The religious Adhaalath Party has recently campaigned that women should be subject to Islamic Sharia law should they be found guilty of aborting a child.

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Police arrest suspected drug kingpin after months of investigations

Police have arrested an individual suspected of being one of the Maldives’ most high-profile drug dealers after spending several months collecting information about his procedures for importing narcotics into the country.

The Head of the police’s Drug Enforcement Department (DED), Superintendent Mohamed Jinah, told members of the press that the alleged drug lord was arrested Friday (June 24), along with several companions also suspected of involvement in supplying drugs.

Jinah identified the suspected dealer as Ibrahim ‘Shafa’ Shafaz, 30, of Lonumidhi in Maafannu ward.

Details of three of his companions – also suspected of involvement in the drug ring – were also revealed. Jinah identified them as Ismail Shameem, 30, of Thaa Atoll Thimarafushi, Hussein Atheek, 27, of Fehi in Maafannu ward and Hussein Athif, 25, of Kudhehige in Maafannu ward.

Jinah claimed that Shafaz has been suspected of importing drugs to the Maldives since 2005, with police having since labelled him as one of the country’s most high profile drug traffickers.

About 896 grams of illegal drugs were said to have been discovered inside his apartment following a police raid of the premises on Friday.  The apartment, which was rented in a building belonging to MP ‘Redwave’ Ahmed Saleem, contained a number of tools that could be used to pack drugs, while powdered narcotics were also found.

According to police, Ismail Shameem’s alleged role in the network was to distribute the drugs in small packets – originally bought in kilograms -while Hussein Atheek is suspected of transferring money to the network in Sri Lanka.

Hussein Athif is suspected by police of playing the most important role in the whole network by communicating with an agent in Sri Lanka in order to safely traffic drugs to the Maldives.

Jinah said the traffickers have been using an authorised money exchange company called A J Amporium to send funds to Sri Lanka, while another company named MC Galleria is alleged to have been receiving the money.

The drugs are believed to have been imported via Sri Lankan Airlines, though Jinah said these three companies were not suspected of being knowingly involved in the drug trafficking.

He said between February to April of this year, Rf1.3 million of drugs were trafficked in to the Maldives by this network.

Jinah claimed Shafaz had last year bought a shop named ‘Charm’ for Rf150,000 (US$9700) that was sold this month for Rf200,000.

Shafaz is also believed to rent three apartments in Male’, with one property having been rented for 21 years for Rf300,000.

He also owns a tailor shop which he bought for Rf200,000 (US$13,000) for 15 years, a shop in Kaafu Atoll Maafushi, a Suzuki Swift car for Rf180,000 (US$11,673), later sold for Rf170,000.

Jinah said a special DED operation to try and seize the suspect began in 2009 with significant cooperation from the Prosecutor General and Criminal Court.

Speaking from his office this morning, President Mohamed Nasheed said that police were now looking to investigate the exact methods of money transfer thought to have been used by the alleged drug dealers.

Nasheed claimed this morning that even if the investigation ended up being linked to his mother and father, he would not step back in fulfilling his pledge to clamp down on the drug trade.

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Schwack targets Maldives ad shakeup with screen service launch

Schwack Maldives plans to roll out promotional television screens detailing ferry times, current doctor duties at local hospitals, dollar exchange rates and news across the Maldives after launching the technology exclusively in Male’ this week.

According to the company, the Schwack Connections initiative was launched with 13 screens at seven restaurants and cafes around Male’, with further launches planned both within the capital and at a number of destinations like Addu Atoll.

Schwack Maldives’ Director Althaf Mohamed claimed that amidst present financial uncertainty in the Maldives,  the service was an entirely new way for business to advertise services and products in the country.

The screened information is designed to combine advertising and news with health information, trivia and even celebrity tweets and other social network updates, according to the company.

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Comment: States obligated to compensate and rehabilitate torture victims

Torture is a brutal attempt to destroy a person’s sense of dignity and sense of human worth. It acts also as a weapon of war, spreading terror beyond its direct victims to communities and societies.

On the International Day in Support of Victims of Torture, we honour the men and women who have suffered, enduring their ordeal with courage and inner strength. We mourn, too, those who did not survive.

States must take effective legislative, administrative, judicial or other measures to prevent acts of torture in any territory under their jurisdiction. There are no exceptional circumstances whatsoever – whether a state of war, or a threat of war, internal political instability, or any other public emergency or national security situation. States’ obligations also include the duty to provide effective and prompt redress, compensation and rehabilitation for all torture victims.

Returning to ordinary life after torture is hard. The United Nations Trust Fund for Victims of Torture assists individuals and organisations around the world to ease physical and psychological pain, re-start shattered lives and support the right to truth and justice through legal assistance.  I thank those Governments and other contributors who make this assistance possible, and I call on all members of the international community to support the Fund. I also commend the many individuals and organisations that provide medical, psychological, legal and social assistance to victims of torture and their families.

The recent entry into force of the International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearances is a welcome addition to the body of international human rights law, since enforced disappearance is yet another manifestation of torture. I appeal to all Members States to allow full and unhindered access by the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture to places where people are deprived of liberty in their country. I also call on all States that have not done so to ratify the Convention against Torture, and to allow individual complaints by victims under its instruments.

At a time when the legitimate aspirations of people in many regions of the world for greater freedom, dignity and a better life are too often met with violence and repression, I urge States to respect the fundamental rights of all people.

Torture and other forms of cruel, degrading and inhuman treatment and punishment, wherever they occur and whatever the circumstances, can never be justified.

Ban Ki-Moon is the Secretary General of the United Nations.

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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“Discrepancies” prompt MNDF to oversee IT upgrade to curb labour trafficking

The Maldives will not become “a nest for human trafficking”, President Mohamed Nasheed pledged during his weekly radio address, although he acknowledged “many failures in the efforts by government agencies to maintain expatriate records.”

Speaking during his weekly radio address, Nasheed said there were discrepancies between the numbers of expatriate workers reported by the Human Resources, Youth and Sports and the Department of Immigration and Emigration.

The Human Resources Ministry claimed there were 74,000 foreign workers in the country, Nasheed said, while records at the Department of Immigration said there were 94,000 – suggesting that at least six percent of the country’s population is unaccounted for.

Nasheed said the government estimated that 40,000 expatriates in the country were working illegally. The situation had reached “an alarming level”, he said, “due to failure to investigate illegal workers, and lack of a systematic approach to [monitor] arrivals, employment and living conditions of expatriates.”

The President said he had tasked the Maldives National Defence Force (MNDF) with overseeing the upgrade of IT and infrastructure at both the Human Resources Ministry and the Immigration Department.

He also announced the launch of a special police investigation into “any unlawful activity that might have led to the increasing number of illegal workers.”

“We will do everything possible to make the Maldives a country that respects human dignity, and ensure all Maldivians respect human rights and pursue a civilised lifestyle,” Nasheed said.

The government has placed greater urgency on addressing the problem of labour trafficking amid wider concerns over the health of the economy – particularly the foreign currency shortage. One report from the Maldives Monetary Authority (MMA) estimates that every expatriate worker remits US$100 per month to their families back home, for a total drain of US$8 million every month – a greater amount than the country earns from its new Tourism Goods and Services Tax.

By far the greatest number of expatriate labourers in the country are Bangladeshi nationals, and to a much lesser extent, Sri Lanka.

Former High Commissioner of Bangladesh Professor Selia Mohsin told Minivan News last year that 40 Bangladeshi nationals were arriving at the High Commission’s reception desk daily, “having come to the Maldives and found they have nothing to do”. She claimed that unscrupulous employment brokers in both countries were exploiting potentially hundreds of millions of dollars a year from illiterate and uneducated rural Bangladeshi families desperate for better opportunities.

Under Maldivian law, foreign workers arriving in the Maldives must have a work permit issued by the Immigration Department. This is obtained through an employer or agent, who must first request a foreign worker quota from the Ministry of Trade and Human Resources.

“The Maldivian [side] gets into connection with the Bangladeshi brokers, gets a business permit from the Ministry of Human Resources, says they want to recruit and gets a quota for more workers than they require – if they require any at all – and then ask a Bangladeshi counterpart to bring in the workers,” Professor Mohsin told Minivan News last year.

Brokers charged individual workers up to US$4000 to arrange their employment in the Maldives, she said, explaining that in many cases the family home and land was sold or mortgaged to raise this fee, split two-thirds in favour of the Maldivian broker.

One case that arrived on her desk – an application approved by the Ministry of Human Resources – was a request for 1800 workers for an unspecified construction project.

“Those people would have come [to Male’] had I not checked. Had I not done it, 1800 people would have sold their homes and become delinquent in the Maldives. This did not bother a Maldivian broker,” she said at the time. “Hell is not good enough for the people who are doing this.”

More recently, Immigration Controller Abdulla Shahid revealed that Bangladeshi nationals will be issued work visas by the Maldives High Commission in the national capital of Dhaka, in an attempt to address booming numbers of workers arriving in the country. These workers would require additional documents verified and issued in Bangladesh before their work visas and ID cards could be issued in the Maldives.

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Cemetery used for sex and drugs, says Council, demolishing walls

The walls of the cemetery in Maafaanu have been demolished by Male’ City Council, reports Haveeru, after the Council received complaints that the area was being used for sex and drug dealing.

“Public complaints were received about widespread abuse and trade of illegal drugs and inappropriate sexual activities carried out inside Maafannu Cemetery,” Deputy Mayor Ahmed Shamah told Haveeru. We will expose those places.”

Shamah said the Council would observe the impact of opening the area on the local drug trade and then determine whether to demolish the walls of other cemeteries in the city.

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Rufiya world’s second worst-performing currency: Bloomberg

International financial news agency Bloomberg has reported that the Maldivian rufiya is the world’s second worst-performing currency, after the Suriname dollar and above the Kenyan shilling.

The Maldives has been faced with a shortage of foreign currency for over a year due to a high budget deficit, spiralling state budget, economic disconnect from the high-earning tourism industry and political obstacles to reducing expenditure or implementing tax reform.

Earlier this year the government introduced a managed float of the currency within 20 percent of the pegged rate of Rf12.85 to the dollar, in a bid to overcome black market currency trading. The exchange rate shot to the maximum permitted Rf15.42, where it remains, and convertibility of the currency into dollars remains sporadic.

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Uncertainty remains over scale of Maldives piracy threat

With two separate attacks this month by Somalian pirates within a 30 nautical miles of Trivandrum, India, one maritime expert has warned that the Maldives’ growing use as crossroads for shipping routes make its own waters and businesses an increasingly attractive target in the future.

Tim Hart, a security analyst specialising in piracy from around the Horn of Africa for Maritime and Underwater Security Consultants (MUSC), told Minivan News that the two attacks reported this month off India’s southern coast raised wider security issues for the Maldives that have previously affected other nearby archipelago nations like the Seychelles.

While the Maldives National Defense Force (MNDF) this week said that the country’s territorial waters had not come under direct attack from piracy originating from Somalia, a spokesman said it shared the UN’s concerns over possible threats in the Indian Ocean.

Tourism angle

Increasing numbers of refugees from Somalia are flooding into northern destinations such as Kenya and Yemen, and with limited opportunities for those remaining, Hart said piracy was at believed to be the country’s second largest source of revenue.

In this lucrative market place for piracy, the UN has expressed concerns that the Indian Ocean is becoming in key battleground in trying to stem maritime attacks as suspects move increasingly further from Somali shores.

Hart said that as cargo fleets moved closer to the Maldives to try and ensure safer shipping routes, pirates were likely to follow in the search of viable targets.

Aside from the potential impact to the country’s own shipping enterprises, the maritime expert added that tourism had also been affected by piracy in other Indian Ocean nations.

“The Maldives is a large group of islands that can make monitoring difficult like in the Seychelles,” he said. “The [Seychelles] back in 2009 had a pirate issue that seriously affected its tourism. This has also been seen around the coast of Kenya in areas like Mombasa, where cruise ships were coming under attack in some cases.”

According to Hart, although cruise ship attacks are relatively isolated occurrences, the UK parliament has recently raised issues over an incident in Kenya that directly targeted tourists on board a vessel – an event that significantly affected cruise interest in the region.

“With the Maldives’ territories made up largely of ocean, (the country is 99 per cent water) the concern is that pirates might become influenced to make similar attacks there,” he added.

Targeting isolated resorts would be outside the traditional modus operandi of Somali pirates, Hart said, explaining that they only attacked targets other than merchant vessels out of opportunity.

“It really depends on how desperate a particular group of pirates becomes, generally larger merchant vessels offer the largest incentives for ransom,” he said. “To set foot onto an island, highjack and kidnap tourists and then try to get back to Somalia using their vessels would be very difficult.”

Despite the challenges posed by such an attack, Hart said that it had not been unheard of for pirates to mount land-based assaults in areas like the Niger Delta.

“Pirates are known to be very adaptive in terms of their methods and targets,” he said. “Wherever someone has tried to prevent them from operating, they have changed their target areas and tactics.”

However, Maldivian tourism officials and insiders have identified piracy as a potential security concern for the resort industry.

Adapting to piracy challenges

Hart claimed that the Maldives could take some lessons from the Seychelles in terms of further tightening maritime security against potential acts of piracy, he added that adopting a fix-all approach to the problem was impractical.

“With regards to piracy, it is difficult to set out a one-stop shop in terms of reducing risks, though I would suggest looking at how the Seychelles has operated in 2009 and 2010. Because of recent monsoon weather [in the Indian Ocean region], defining attack areas and establishing operational islands is very difficult,” he claimed. “However, anything to support additional maritime surveillance to protect islands and [local] waters would be encouraged.”

In terms of a national strategy for piracy prevention, MNDF Major Abdul Raheem said earlier this week that the Maldives is already collaborating with international naval forces – under wider UN military programmes – to patrol and monitor its territorial waters from pirate threats.

Raheem said that despite the serious concerns raised over potential piracy attacks in the Maldives, the MNDF would continue with existing initiatives to try and protect its waters in collaboration with naval forces from other nations like India, Turkey and the US. These nations have taken part in patrols across the country in the last few years.

“Piracy is seen as a major problem in the Maldives and we are very concerned about possible attacks occurring in our waters,” he said at the time. “However, we have not recognised piracy threats flaring up [around the Maldives]. With help from other nations, particularly India, we are continuing patrols.”

Raheem stressed that some Somali vessels had drifted into the country’s waters – often with engine troubles – though it was not clear if they were potential pirate threats or refugees trying to escape the country. Hart claimed that the dilemma over confirming legitimate pirate suspects was a major difficulty in policing international waters against attacks.

“The difference between a pirate and a refugee is often a crew that have thrown their weapons overboard. You have to catch pirates in the act, otherwise it can be impossible to try and stop them.”

From his experiences of studying emerging pirate threats off the Horn of Africa, Hart said it was increasingly common – even in the Indian Ocean – for Somali vessels to wish up on local coasts with no traces of weapons on them, then claiming that they are fishermen lost at sea.

“In certain cases, as opposed to dumping weapons at the threat of being spotted by naval vessels, some pirates will use reconnaissance and GPS systems and have weapons stored securely nearby in order to prepare for possible attacks on vulnerable targets.”

Hart said the situation was further complicated by the tens of thousands of Somalian refugees trying to escape the country that is wrought with political and social instability.

Just this week, the Agence France-Presse (AFP) news agency reported significant increases in the number of refugees from the country, with 20,000 nationals estimated to have attempted the arduous journey to escape to a Kenyan refugee camp in the last fortnight alone.

According to the report, the Dadaab refugee camp built initially for 90,000 people is now home to 360,000 displaced residents. The AFP report suggested that 1.46 million people are thought to have been displaced in Somalia.

Hart said that the domestic difficulties within Somalia, along with its geographic location, had made piracy a lucrative revenue source amidst the country’s many socio-political uncertainties.

“Piracy is a symptom of the problems being seen on the land. A lot of people have been trying to escape the civil war in the country’s south and have been trying to move north to areas like Yemen and Kenya,” he said. “Pirates have also used the very strategic [maritime] location that the Horn of Africa offers and exploited it.”

Amidst the difficulties of trying to find domestic solutions within Somalia as a means of confronting piracy, the UN Security Council has continued to discuss the formation of international courts and prisons to try and bring convicted pirates to justice.

However, Hart said that the effectiveness of these prisons as a potential deterrent to Somali nationals turning to piracy was uncertain.

“At present in Somalia, piracy is the country’s second largest industry. There are already huge risks, but you go out to sea and potentially have huge gains to make,” he claimed. “One possible deterrent would be being arrested and being held in prison. However, even these prisons are likely to be a better environment than life for many in places like Mogadishu – the Somali capital.”

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MP Saleem denies corruption charges

Eydhafushi MP Ahmed “Redwave” Saleem has pleaded not guilty to charges that he was allegedly responsible for the illegal transfer of state funds to a private company in a violation of the country’s Anti-Corruption Act.

According to local media reports, prosecutors at the Criminal Court today alleged that Saleem, acting of his own accord, transferred 50 per cent of some government development funds to a company called Neyza Enterprises.  The allegations date back to 2003, when Saleem served as director of the Ministry of Atolls Development.

Haveeru reported that Saleem rejected allegations that he had been responsible for the funds transfer, claiming the charges against him were politically motivated  and an attempt by President Mohamed Nasheed to destroy his poltical career.

Judge Abdulla Didi reportedly told Saleem, who potentially faces a year in prison as well as the loss of his parliamentary seat if convicted, to avoid talking about politics and the president during the trial and discuss the charges against him.

Saleem’s lawyer MP Ibrahim Riza said that the charge documents had failed to clarify whether the defendant had been required to make an announcement concerning the development project linked to the case.  Riza claimed the situation was complicated by the government holding control of the documents in question.

Both the prosecution and defense submitted their respective list of witnesses to the court as the trial continues, Haveeru added.

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