Paradise Lost

Following on from her report last year on alleged human rights abuses being committed in the paradisiacal Maldives, Rebecca Cork, returns to the issue and finds violence remains unchecked.

They call them the Paradise Islands, but behind the white beaches, the rolling surf and the palm trees of the Maldives lurks a darker reality. Tourists may be pampered and stress-free, but others in the island republic are routinely beaten or murdered by thugs working for the nation’s ruthless dictator.

President Maumoon Gayyoom maintains a culture of fear and repression to manipulate his people. His 27-year stranglehold over the people is loosening, however, forced by the world’s media obtaining footage of murders and torture.

Recently, Mohamed Shiyam, 25, from Samiyaage House on Gadhoo Island in Suadeep Atoll, Maldives, was killed by the National Security Service, NSS, after a raid on his house.

Shiyam was taken into police custody where he was heavily beaten, without any recourse to his constitutional right of a lawyer. It is not clear whether he was already dead when he was moved by the police to a guest house on the Maldivian capital island of Male’. His mutilated body was found later dumped in the IGMH Hospital in Male’, the very same hospital which was the catalyst for riots following a previous murder by the NSS.

Video footage of the event has reached lobby group Friends of Maldives:

“We have been sent footage of a hasty examination by a man now believed to be in detention. The footage shows the victim’s family and friends confronting the NSS outside the hospital” said a Friends of Maldives spokesman.

The footage also reveals the chaos that followed the murder. Citizens take to the streets and a thief is seen mobbed while the NSS stands and watches, unconcerned. An officer talks to the camera and makes excuses for the NSS involvement.

These riots follow a similar uprising in September 2003 after the murder of an inmate, Hassan Evan Naseem, was rushed to the IGMH hospital. NSS personnel attempted to bury him secretly but crowds gathered around the body and pictures were taken.

The Maldives government’s human rights record has been an issue of serious concern to many international NGO’s including Amnesty International, International Pen and Reporters without Borders (RSF). In the past many Maldivians have been severely tortured and custodial deaths are frequent. Even after the unprecedented public outcry and disgust with the government on the killing of Evan Naseem, Mr. Gayoom created a complex net of deception to cover himself and the top members of the NSS from all wrong- doings related to the killing of Evan Naseem.

None of this bad press has changed Gayyoom’s attitude towards routine custodial murder; indeed he continues to abuse and beat non-threatening, apolitical individuals and maintain an atmosphere of terror in order to manipulate and repress his people. He is forced to spread fear across a cross section of society to sustain his balancing act of power.

Another man, 27-year old Ali Mahir, died while in a psychiatric Asylum on Guradhoo Island on the 17th of May. His body was buried within the grounds without his parents being informed of his death. It is widely believed that his death was in fact one among many murders that go unnoticed in the asylums, it being the custom of the NSS to transfer victims of torture from detention centres in Dhoonadhoo and Maafushi to the asylums to die away from public view.

Perhaps the most shocking part of the deaths is that they occur within earshot of the idly snorkelling tourists who relax, unconcerned that their dollars could be supporting torture.