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NSS firebrigade commits arson on Huravee Building – Official photos don't support
Maldives emergency rule decision 15 August 2004 Photos from President's office website
Three photographs on the President's office website captioned 'Photos of the mob that had gathered outside the Headquarters of the NSS – 13 August 2004', show a laughing crowd no more violent than a cinema queue. Another photograph of a 'seriously injured' NSS officer shows a healthy-looking young man wrapped in Maldives cleanest bandages, and there is a banal photo of a small broken window. More 'mob' photos from the President's office:
On Saturday, Maumoon Gayyoom told his cabinet that he had proclaimed a state of emergency yesterday afternoon to prevent the further deterioration of law and order in Male’ and to protect the peace and welfare of all citizens, after the mob turned increasingly violent and stabbed and seriously injured two unarmed policemen, torched a Government building and attempted to charge down the entrance to the Police headquarters. Dhivehi Observer has a report by a leading Maldives businessman who was eyewitness to arson by the NSS fire brigade on the government office block known as Huravee, just east of the NSS fort. Two fire-fighting trucks pulled up just near the Huravee Building on Friday afternoon about half an hour before the fire started, said the businessman, and the firemen went into the building and did something. After about twenty minutes, the firemen came out and prepared for an emergency. All their equipment was ready just as a fire burst out of the building. While the fire fighters were putting it out, the NSS announced that due to public displays of violence that they have no choice but to declare a state of emergency and arrest people to bring the situation under control. President Gayyoom created his own emergency on Friday, and it has nothing to do with mob violence or anarchy by reformists. The Maldive state is not under threat and needing protection, and the constitutionally defined conditions for a state of emergency – 'war or foreign aggression or civil unrest' – do not exist. The events of Thursday and Friday are not reasonable grounds to exercise the sweeping emergency powers of the president. Maumoon Gayyoom is revealed as a man who cannot be trusted with these extraordinary powers. He claims 'to have patiently tried to resolve the matter' but does not give any details about 'the matter', and there is no evidence of any effort on his part to negotiate or mediate with the reformist movement. In fact, he has plotted with his brothers to stifle reform in the Special Majlis and to disrupt reform meetings with hired thugs. |
Maldives Culture is an independent internet magazine of Maldive cultural issues.
Editors and translators: Michael O'Shea and Fareesha Abdulla, Australia
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