Tagged: crime

The Madness of Maldives

Source: The Chive

By Azra Naseem

There is a small island of about two square kilometres, called Male’, in the Indian Ocean. It  is capital of the Maldives, a 1200 island archipelago inhabited by about 300,000 people known as Maldivians. If there was a psychiatric facility on this earth that could section a generalised population, Maldivians would be among the first to be locked away for life. Frequent electric shocks and, wherever possible, lobotomies, may be recommended.

The official story of Maldives starts with a sea monster that convinced a population of Buddhists, meditating in spectacular natural beauty, to give up their quest for inner peace in this life for the beautiful afterlife that Islam promises. That was back in 1153. Come the 21st Century and the Maldives has become a place where religion, ideology, greed, ignorance, astounding natural beauty and hope against all hope combine to form a life lived on a precarious balance between madness and civilisation.

It is very much a society organised top-down, and the top—where the creme de la creme of the strange have risen—is a good place to begin examining it from.

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The present Maldives is ruled by a man who did not know how to smile until he became The Ruler. Now that he is president, he smiles as widely—and with the same disconcerting effect—as The Joker.

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His 2013 presidency campaign and party colours are a deep pink for ‘Asuruma’ or the Four O’clock Flower, and his presidential victory convoy comprised a pink top-down convertible in which a man stood behind him jiggling ‘breasts’ made from painted coconut shells. His party is known as the Progressive Party of Maldives (or Pee-Pee-Em). This kind of ‘progressive’ would be hard to find anywhere else in the world.

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The confounding thing is that the people behind The Ruler are the same people who would also support the Islamic State. Even more astounding, if possible, is the fact that the ordinary Maldivians who proudly stand behind The Ruler in his pink convertible, Joker grin and coconut-titted cheer-leaders supporters are the same people who would hang (or preferably, these days, behead) someone like, say Conchita Wurst, ‘to protect OUR MALDIVIAN ISLAMIC PRINCIPLES!’. A man with coconut tits in a pink convertible hailing the new president is somehow ‘progressive’; Conchita is not.

In the hierarchy of life on this island, after the President come the security forces: the Maldives National Defence Force (MNDF) and the Maldives Police Service (MPS). There are some close resemblances and stark differences between the two men who lead the institutions. Mohamed Nazim, who heads the MNDF was a key player in the coup that was not a coup; Hussein Waheed who leads the MPS, meanwhile, slept through it all. Both men love adulation. Nazim is like The Wolf in Pulp Fiction—he fixes everything. He was called in to ‘fix’ democracy before it was broken on 7 February 2012; he fixed US-Maldives bilateral relations real good; he hooked Maldives up with China even as India looked on with her mouth open; he fixed the airport and the GMR saga, Nexbiz, IGMH, the transport sector; and he ‘fixed’ Minister Shakeela.

While Nazim is The Fixer, Hussein Waheed is The Waster. Policing in the Maldives has never been this dismal. It is as if Mr Waheed is sleeping through his job, like he slept through the coup. The less psychotic among the Maldivian population have been mourning, for 63 days now, the unexplained disappearance of one of its sanest citizens: Moyameehaa, Ahmed Rilwan (also known as Rizwan). The police, under Waheed have not answered a single question about his abduction in the two months that have gone past. Whatever arrests they have made, they have done reluctantly, and released with eagerness.

The MPS is a different kind of police force, with an approach to policing quite unique in this century. For instance, among the things it has been busy doing while ignoring all serious crime include: holding workshops all over the country talking to adolescents—or in their words ‘children of marriageable age’—about ‘being prepared’ [for what, it is not known]; ‘creating awareness about police work among pre-school children’; arresting and immediately releasing drug-delaers; ‘apprehending an individual possessed by six bottles of fish paste’; charging a man who committed an act of terror with ‘stealing a CCTV camera’ and letting him go straight afterwards; and lifting a man sleeping under a coconut tree back to safety under his own roof.

The Best of MPS (and the Maldives criminal justice system in general) came last week when the top dogs [Top Polis Ahmed Athif, Prosecutor General Muhuthaz Muhsin, Deputy Attorney General, a High Court judge and some businessman] went to Los Angeles to share their knowledge on [wait for this] ‘Using Intelligence to Assure Public Safety’—at the Oracle OpenWorld 2014. Of course, the entire saga was played out on social media, courtesy of polis Athif, who goes by @Hammettz 

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Intelligence was nowhere to be found as pictures soon emerged of The Boys hanging out some where totally surrounded by alcohol. Nothing wrong with this except that these Boys have made it their life’s work to jail for years the Maldivians who do the same thing back home on the island.

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As for public safety, it was not long before The Boys—who went on an ‘LA road trip’ after an Aerosmith concert [seriously, who does that??]—were robbed of all their possessions, including their laptops and mobile phones, which they had left in the backseat of the car. Maldivian law enforcement abroad.

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Through it all, CP Waheed travels the length and breadth of the archipelago strutting like a cock, expecting devotion and finely cooked chicken from pseudo Island Chiefs and Pee-Pee-Em supporters in their pink shirts [barely recognisable sans the coconut tits].

This is the cream of Male’s society today. Along with them come the MPs with their grossly inflated salaries equivalent to those in Sweden and their total refusal [except for a handful of MPs] to stand up for the people whom they are said to represent. Over 5000 Maldivian people signed a petition and submitted it to the Majlis asking it to seriously examine the police’s inability to investigate the abduction of Rilwan. The petition has been ignored. PPM MPs, in fact, obstructed any parliamentary oversight in the matter. The leader of PPM’s Parliamentary Group, Ahmed Nihan, has far more pressing matters to deal with, like the phenomenon of going grey overnight. Since the change which seems to have occurred a few full moons ago, he has ben unable to stop taking selfies, posing with an endless stream of other narcissistic members of the clan whose enormous egos [among other things] fill the computer screens of anyone on social media.

 

What is left to say then when we leave the cream that has curdled to top and come to the ordinary citizen? These people at the top, they represent the majority of Maldivians. 51 percent, if we must be specific. That 51 percent must be happy; they laugh along anyway. They clap in adulation and genuflect with glee. Of the remaining 49 percent a substantial number proudly declare themselves ‘colourless’/apolitical/disinterested/’citizens of good etiquette’. In other words, they won’t do a thing to change a thing.

That leaves a minuscule minority who, for being different among such madness, come to call themselves [or be called] insane; and live with the constant fear that any moment now they would be bundled on to a Maldivian Narrensciff that sails the ocean in the middle of the night, and be made to disappear—perhaps never to return.

#FindMoyameehaa

#FindMoyameeha Campaign
Photo: Dhahau

 

I’m wondering just how much
To you I really said
Concerning all the boys that come
Down a road like me
Are they enemies or victims
Of your society?

—-‘Ballad of Donald White’, Bob Dylan, From the last post on Rizwan’s Blog

Yesterday night, two weeks ago, was the last time anyone saw Ahmed Rizwan Abdulla, 28-year-old journalist, blogger, human rights advocate and all-round great person. 

A lot—yet nothing—has happened since Rizwan was reported missing to the Maldives Police Service (MPS) on 13 August.

On 15 August Rizwan’s family and friends organised a search of Hulhumale’, the island neighbouring Male’ on which Rizwan lives on his own. Starting with the desolate, deserted areas—-of which there are many—-the search party combed the whole island. It was in vain.

On 16 August Rizwan’s friends and colleagues, who obtained CCTV footage from the Male’-Hulhumale’ ferry terminal from the night he was last seen, identified him on camera buying a ticket and going into the waiting area to board the 1:00 a.m. ferry on 8 August. This footage has since been made public. For the next twenty minutes or so—-the amount of time it takes for the ferry to reach Hulhumale’—-Rizwan was on Twitter. Between 1:02 a.m. he sent out 11 (mostly re-) Tweets, beginning with this one, which said he had just boarded the ferry:

 

His last Tweet was at 1:17 a.m three minutes before the ferry would have reached Hulhumale’.  According to Rizwan’s employer, Minivan News, he sent a Viber message at 1:42 a.m. The newspaper further reports that according to Rizwan’s telephone service provider that his mobile phone was last used at 2:36 a.m. at a location in Male’. Since then, nothing.

There was a shocking development to the story a few days after the search for Rizwan began. On the night he was last seen, two witnesses saw a man being abducted from outside Rizwan’s apartment around 2:00 a.m. Minivan News, which withheld the information until it was made public by other news outlets, published details of the abduction on 18 August. The witnesses heard screaming and saw the captive, held at knife point by a tall thin man, being bundled into a red car which drove away at speed. The witnesses contacted the police immediately. They also recovered a knife from the scene. The police took a statement and confiscated the knife.

And that was that.

It is mind-boggling that there were no searches in Hulhumale’ after eye-witness reports of an abduction, no sealing off of exits to and from the island, no investigation in and around the area of the abduction to at least ascertain who had been bundled into the car. If the police had done any of this, Rizwan’s family would have been aware of his disappearance so much sooner. Two weeks on, the police still don’t seem to have managed to locate the red car—-this on a 700 hectare island with the total number of cars totalling around fifty, if that.

Outrage at police ‘incompetence’ has grown steadily as days turn into weeks without news of Rizwan’s whereabouts. MPS’ reaction to the criticism has been petulant, like an offended prima donna. It issued a long statement demanding that the public stop criticising police given how brilliant they obviously are; and, unbelievably, proceeded to hold a press conference about Rizwan to which all media outlets bar his own Minivan News was invited.

Speculation that MPS does not want Rizwan found is becoming fact as time passes with no leads. How incompetent does a force have to be to remain clueless about how a person was abducted from a small island? How many red cars can be hidden on such a small piece of land, surrounded by the sea? How difficult would it be to locate the individuals caught on CCTV following Rizwan at the ferry terminal in Male’? It is common knowledge that life in Male’ is now governed by an ‘unholy alliance’ of ‘born-again’ fanatically ‘religious’ gangsters and thugs controlled by politicians and fundamentalists.

Whatever the police is driven by—fear, complicity, support—it is certain the government shares its ‘could not care less’ attitude. President Yameen’s callous response on 20 August to news of Rizwan’s disappearance confirmed this: ‘I cannot comment on anything and everything that happens, can I? The police are probably looking into it.’

It is as if the disappearance of a young man, a journalist and well-known human rights advocate—the first incident of its kind in the Maldives—is as routine as a mislaid shopping list. The President, who campaigned as Saviour of the youth population, had not a word to say about the abduction and disappearance a young man of vast potential. Yameen chose, instead, to wax lyrical on his success at begging in China, having procured a 100 million US dollars in aid money for building a bridge between Male’ and Hulhumale’, the island where Rizwan is feared to have been abducted from.

Who wants a bridge to an island that is so unsafe? An island where women are raped in broad daylight and young men disappear without a trace? Where gangsters and violent extremists rule, where the police turn a blind eye to crime and where the streets have no lights?

It is quite extraordinary that a President of a country sees no need to express concern for a citizen whose sudden disappearance has led to statements from international bodies ranging from the UN Human Rights Commissioner to media associations such as Reporters Without Borders, CPJ, IFJ and South Asia Media Solidarity Network as well as news outlets and human rights advocates in the region and across the world. In some of today’s news coverage, Rizwan’s name is on top of the world’s missing journalists’ list. According to Minivan News, many foreign diplomats based in Colombo have made the time to listen to its concerns about Rizwan’s abduction.

Perhaps prompted by diplomatic concern, over a week after Rizwan’s disappearance became public knowledge, the Maldives Foreign Ministry finally issued a hastily put together statement yesterday, full of factual and other types of mistakes, expressing a perfunctory concern hard to accept as sincere.

While the politicians, the gangsters and the religious fanatics with their support of Jihad, beheadings and other forms of killing trip over each other to ignore, laugh about, cover-up and prevent knowledge of what has happened to Rizwan, friends, family, and admirers of his deep humanity, are unflagging in their hopes and efforts to find him safe and sound.

It is on social media, where he is known as Moyameeha, that Rizwan has made his widest impact. The Maldivian Twitter community is especially bereft without his presence. It is not surprising. The off-line Maldivian society has been largely taken over by gangs, zealots and bigots. There is no safe place for people like Rizwan—with bold ideas, open minds and creativity—to come together in real life. So they gather on Twitter—the most free of modern media platforms—exchange thoughts, discuss politics, make poetry and music, argue, joke, laugh, and cry, become friends and form the kind of free, liberal and tolerant public sphere they cannot have off-line. Rizwan is a shining star of that community, one of its well-liked and giving members. The community wants him back.

Close friends have set-up a website, findmoyameeha.com, where everything that is officially  said and done in relation to Rizwan’s disappearance is gathered in one place. It also counts every passing second since he went missing. Friends have also set up Facebook pages dedicated to finding Rizwan while existing Facebook pages that support him have created a repository of online tributes:

Post by Secular Democratic Maldives Movement.

 

Bloggers, who look up to him as one of the first to make an impact in the sphere, have been paying homage, re-finding and sharing some of his most moving posts. Rizwan’s friends discuss his poetry, his love of music (and obsession with Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan), his enthusiasm for Dhivehi language, folklore and history, and most of all his never-ending good nature and empathy. Even the deeply divided and highly politicised journalistic community appears to be waking from a deep slumber, and putting their differences aside to demand that efforts to find Rizwan be stepped up.

Over the past few years the Maldives Police Service has become highly adept at being ‘incompetent’, at being ‘unable’ to solve the crimes they don’t want solved while putting all their efforts into hunting down bootleggers, cannabis smokers and petty criminals. If they catch any major offenders, the corrupt judiciary lets them go; so why bother? This being police ‘best practice’, a majority of the Maldivian population now choose to ‘forget’ unsolved crimes, stop asking questions, and carry on as nothing happened.

Not this time. Rizwan’s family, friends, supporters and like-minded journalists are not going to stop asking questions and looking for answers. Because if they do, it is the last nail in the coffin of Rizwan’s vision—shared by those looking for him—of a tolerant Maldivian society in which people are free to think, embrace diversity and difference, be creative, live safely and have the right to peace and happiness.