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Maldives NSS - from militia
to torturers 23 May 2004 slightly revised 30 March 2006
The history of the Male' militia and the NSS Sections: 1. The early period 2. Sixteenth century - Mohamed Thakurufaan 3. Seventeenth century - Ibrahim Kalaafaan and Iskander Ibrahim 4. Eighteenth century - Militia rule 5. Nineteenth century - Miltia rule and the British 6. Twentieth century - From sifain to NSS, under the dictators 7. NSS and Maumoon Gayyoom 8. Senior officers torture prisoners The early period The National Security Service, headquartered at the Male' fort, performs torturing, policing, civic and defence duties. This multi-faceted role has a long tradition. In 1194 A.D. a government copper plate was witnessed by a list of dignitaries, including commander-in-chief, and admiral and a chief justice. One hundred and fifty years later, in 1344, the famous Moroccan traveller Ibn Battuta arrived on Maldives. He became chief judge and stayed for over a year. Battuta’s list of the king’s ministers includes a commander of the army, admiral, and minister of police. In the popular oral narrative by Buraara, there are references to ‘two regiments’ in an account of the death of King Hilali Hassan in 1398. Its members were summoned by the beating of a drum when the king passed away. As part of a required ritual, they informed the court that the deceased king could not be properly buried until a successor was enthroned. Seventy years later, during the final year of the reign of King Haji Hassan III, the Male' militia dug a new pool and freshwater well in the palace grounds for the ailing monarch. Mohamed Thakurufaan The sixteenth century was a time of great violence in the Indian Ocean, and Maldives came under attack from Portuguese and Muslim pirates based on the western coast of India. Records of this period show Male' forces energetically fortifying the capital and conducting cannon duels with threatening ships, but the militia avoids man-to-man combat. The queens and wives of regiment leaders actively participated in the defence of Male'. During battles, these senior women would tie a small white scarf around their heads and grind gunpowder for the fort guns. They also nursed the men wounded in battle. Buraara says the militia complained to King Ali VI because he refused to surrender during a destructive bombardment of the capital by invading Goan forces in 1558. Against fellow Maldivians, the Male' militia action was far less restrained. After Mohamed Thakurufaan took control of the capital in 1573, his forces were sent against recalcitrant areas of the country, and they were sometimes rewarded with control in perpetuity of these re-conquered islands. Thinadhoo on Gaaf Dhaalu (Huvadhu) atoll and Ribudhoo on Dhaalu (South Nilandhoo) atoll were granted to the Male’ militia at this time. A lance workshop and instruction school was established at Fenna Palace in Male’ and two of Mohamed Thakurufaan’s loyal followers, the brothers Ali and Hassan Hajji, were placed in charge of training. Ibrahim Kalaafaan and Iskander Ibrahim Francois Pyrard, shipwrecked on Maldives in 1602, recorded that the 'islanders (in Male’) practise themselves greatly in arms – how to use the sword with the buckler, how to draw the bow with ease, how to fire arquebuses and handle the pike; they also have schools of arms, whose masters are highly honoured and respected, they who take this office being in general great lords!' Pyrard says the militia was divided into six companies of armed men and each company was commanded by one of the Muskulhin, elders, who were the closest advisors of the king. The soldiers had high status, just below the court office holders – 'after the office bearers, the soldiers get the most honour and privilege, and a gentleman is of but small account if he be not enrolled in the militia.' Apart from these six hundred militia members, says Pyrard, there were also another ten companies of men, divided into two regiments of five companies each. The two regiments 'do not keep the guard, but serve the king (Mohamed Thakurufaan's son Ibrahim Kalaafaan) when he requires them, not only as soldiers to march and fight, but also to do whatsoever he bids them, as to launch a ship, or to haul it ashore, or to do other heavy labour wherein many hands are needed, even to build the king's palace… They are called out by the sound of the bell'. Only nobles manned one of these two regiments and they received more pay and had more prestige than the other. Pyrard wrote, 'The revenue of many islands is set apart for the payment of these (ten) companies. They have many privileges; among others, none dare strike them; and it is permitted to them to habit themselves differently from the rest, to wear a thick gold ring on the finger to assist them in drawing the bow, which others may not wear; in a word, to be more brave and fine in their dress. So there are few men of means but choose to join; albeit, they must have the permission of the king; and it costs them sixty larins to enter, whereof twenty go to the king for permission, and forty to be divided among the company which one desires to join. Slaves cannot enter them, nor may those whose business it is to gather and draw the produce of the coconut palm nor other sorts of mean labouring men, nor such as know not how to read or write, nor those who serve others.' Immediately after his shipwreck on Maldives, Pyrard was appalled by the militia's cruel and ruthless treatment their fellow Maldivians and his ailing shipmates. When some of the French successfully escaped in a stolen ship, the vengeful militia tortured eight of the remaining Europeans – 'They bound those who were in health, and beat them savagely, and then took from them all the money and food they had; then they came to the sick, compelling the healthy to carry them ashore, and so close to the sea, that when the tide came their legs were soaked, while at the same time they were exposed to the inclemencies of the sky, the sun, and the rain, which was incessant at that season. Moreover, they held them so rigorously that the healthy were not even permitted to carry them fresh water to drink, the only thing which the healthy themselves obtained. So the poor sick fellows died of hunger, they were thrown into the sea, as the islanders did to all our men who died, not giving us even permission to bury our dead friends. This however was done without the knowledge of the king, for he caused some to be buried at the seashore, chiefly those who died at the island where he resided (Male'). But to return to Fulhadhoo – those who were left told me the poor sick crawled about in great agony, and lay on their faces, so as to eat the grass beneath them and so were frequently found with grass in their mouths.' Hearing of the escape, the king sent two of his chief nobles to retrieve the French ship's cannon, lead and iron, and confiscate all the silver coin that the islanders had received from the Europeans. In this instance, torture was used on both men and women. One of these nobles arrested all the inhabitants of Fulhadhoo, 'and had them beaten, to see if they would confess. Then he had their thumbs put into cleft sticks, squeezed and bound with iron clasps.' The Thaareekhu, (based on later renditions of the original records kept by Hasan Thaajuddheen and Mohamed Muhibbuddheen and Ibrahim Siraajuddheen, which were lost when Malabari Muslim forces sacked the Male' palace in 1752), claims that the young King Ibrahim Iskander inaugurated professional military training in Male' in 1648. Soldiers were taught wrestling, and the use of swords, guns, and bows and arrows. This new round of training proved to be effective. In 1649, accurate shooting drove away an invading force led by two brothers from Goa who were claimants to the Maldive throne. For the first time, Maldive power extended outside the country as its forces temporarily invaded and conquered the Raja’s islands in the Laccadives, directly to the north of Maldives. Militia rule For the next hundred years, Male' successfully repelled attacks from the Azhi Raja and his Maldive allies. However, a series of natural disasters and famine weakened the country and by 1750 the militia was the de facto government. In 1752, the Raja's forces occupied Male' for four months before being driven from the capital, but the war continued with Male' under militia rule until 1757 when the Maldive monarchy was re-established. The Thaareekhu claims that during the last twenty years of the eighteenth century in the reign of King Hassan Nooruddheen, the militia brutally beat and exiled ministers and judges who fell out with the monarch. In 1792, the chief justice was tortured with 470 cuts to his body before being banished to the distant south of the country. Miltia rule and the British A government decree in 1827, restricting women from wearing certain cloth and jewellery, acknowledged the existence of four classes: the aristocracy, the ministers, the armed forces and the commoners. The close power relationship between the monarchy and the militia continued, and in 1828, members of a family were accused of using black magic to kill the king’s son. They were arrested, beaten and exiled, despite a formal request from the chief justice to the king that they be released. The Maldive army numbered 550 soldiers divided into groups of about 100 men, according to a British naval officer staying on Male' for several months in 1835. A government minister led each group, and the soldiers were paid in red cloth and copper currency. They did not generally bear arms, and were available for a variety of duties. The Thaareekhu says the soldiers’ weapons – swords, guns and lances – were kept in an armoury at the palace grounds. Portions of produce, collected as tax by the government, were specifically assigned to the militia. In 1883 the royal tax demand for Isdhoo islanders on Laamu atoll allocated 100 kilos of fine grain to the Male' forces. Maldives was compelled to become a British Protectorate in 1887 after the British threatened Male' with naval bombardment. The militia, now organized into land forces, hangun, and naval units, kalaaseen, offered no resistance and the king had to accept the British demands. The next king, Ibrahim Nooruddheen (1888-1892), taught martial arts to selected younger members of the Maldive elite. The training ground was at the king’s private residence immediately to the south of the Male' palace complex, and instruction took place in the evening under the direct supervision of the monarch. The king approved when he noticed a soldier, Ismail Didi, demonstrating the foot drill he had learnt years before at an English school in Galle in Sri Lanka. He was ordered to train the young men in the western military style. Light arms were issued to this special squad, called the sifain, and with Ismail Didi as their commander they became a separate section of the militia. (The term sifain was taken from the Turkish sipahi, feudal lords who fought as cavalrymen for the Ottoman empire.) Later, commoners were permitted to join this select group. From sifain to NSS, under the dictators In 1907, armed Indians led by two exiled Maldivians occupied three northern Maldive islands. As the Male' forces sailed towards them, the invaders retreated to the Laccadives. There was another more serious attack in 1909, when the same exiled Maldivians led another group of Indian mercenaries towards Male' from the north. In a letter about the incident to the British colonial government in Sri Lanka, King Mohamed Shamsuddheen III admitted to the weak state of the capital’s defences. Eventually, the intruders were trapped by the militia on Bandos island just north of Male' and forced to surrender. The Maldive military took no part in the two world wars of the twentieth century, but government accounts for 1917-1922 show that spending on 'chiefs and militia' was half of total government expenditure for that period. In 1933, King Mohamed Shamsuddheen and his prime minister Abdul Majeed used the Male' mob (called the havaru, which is also another name for the militia) to destroy the new British-backed constitutional government of Maldives. Militia members were the most significant part of this mob that was able to function without restraint when it acted under secret orders from the elite. Only a year before, the sifain had successfully stopped a dispute between Male' islanders and the resident Borah traders from becoming a riot; but in their havaru form the militia were the agents of civil violence on behalf of their rulers. World War Two was a time of turmoil in Maldives due in part to the disruption of trade routes by Japanese and German submarines. The British retreated from Sri Lanka after Japanese attacks in 1942 and occupied Addu atoll. Male' and Addu were supplied with food, but there was widespread starvation in the rest of the country. In Iyye, Hakeem Hussein Manik claims the famine was primarily the result of maladministration and corruption by the rulers Hassan Fareed and Mohamed Ameen. In 1944, Hassan Fareed was killed in a Japanese submarine attack and Mohamed Ameen became the undisputed ruler of Maldives. He was proud to wear military clothes and had a close relationship with the British. Before Ameen, the militia’s uniform had consisted of Turkish hats, white coats, white trousers and white shoes. When off-duty, they wore a long white shirt and red hat on the side of their heads, with a silver chain attached to the hat to keep it in place. Ameen changed the army uniform to a white shirt with black strip lining, and the Maldive sarong became the soldiers’ informal wear. For formal occasions, the army wore coats, trousers, shoes and an angled hat. Ameen inaugurated an annual Army Day in 1947 and the chief of the army went to Dhoonidhoo island with his men in full uniform. The first route march took place on the 15 August 1945 when the sifain commemorated the end of World War Two. A three-year civil war began in Maldives in 1960 with a declaration of independence by the southern atolls, Huvadhu, Fua Mulak and Addu. Starting in 1957, a huge U.K. military staging post had been built in Gan island, Addu, and the U.K. was sympathetic to the independence movement. Shots were fired into Fua Mulak from a Male' vessel, and Male' forces occupied the important island of Thinadhoo in northwest Huvadhu. Thinadhoo had long been an island under special Male' control and was better known by the name of ‘Havaru Thinadhoo’. One night in late 1961, the Male' militia on Thinadhoo were beaten and driven from the island by men who rowed north from Addu. In a revenge attack in early February 1962, 700 militia men from Male', led by Prime Minister Ibrahim Nasir, returned to Thinadhoo, which was seized again and sacked. The entire population was banished from the island and many people died from exposure and starvation. Between 200 and 300 prisoners were taken back to Male', where they were tortured and many were killed. Historian Hakeem Hussein Manik was an eyewitness to vicious beatings of prisoners by the Sifain on the streets of Male', and for days he heard the screams of tortured people inside the Male' fort.
NSS and Maumoon Gayyoom In 1983, NSS expenditure was 19 million rufiyaa, slightly above the 15 million rufiyaa spent on education. By 2000, government funding for the NSS and education remained approximately equal at 500 million rufiyaa each. In that year, the Maldive government purchased a New Zealand-designed landing craft for the transportation of vehicles and troops between islands, and in 2001 the Indian government donated a radar system. NSS vessels take part in joint naval exercises organised by India and USA to maintain 'sea lanes of communication' and 'energy security' in the Arabian Sea and Indian Ocean. Large increases in the Maldive 'defence' budget and other areas of government expenditure have occurred during the rule of the incumbent President Maumoon Gayyoom who has been in power since 1978. Spending rose sharply after an attempted coup by seaborne Sri Lankan Tamil mercenaries in 1988. NSS armed infantry forces were doubled to 2,000, intelligence services formed, and six British vessels added to the Maldive coast guard, which expanded to 400 personnel.
NSS officers have been trained in a wide variety of countries including India, USA and Libya, and foreign combat experts and advisors visit Maldives regularly. In 2002, Master Sgt. Shaen T. Franklin and Staff Sgt. Daniel G. Bullock from the US Marine Corps Martial Arts Program spent five days training eighteen NSS soldiers in 70 close combat techniques. So far, these 'techniques' have only been used against defenseless prisoners in Maldives jails. The NSS cadet corps is actively promoted in the country’s high schools, and potential paramilitary forces are optimistically estimated at over 40,000. NSS staff receive special housing and health benefits from the government. President Nasir ordered the arbitrary imprisonment and torture of his opponents and others who annoyed him, especially in his last years of power. The two main prisons at this time were in Vilingili island off Male'’s western shore, and in the capital's Henveiru ward. Isthafa Ibrahim Manik became a powerful figure at this time, as the main adminstrator of torture for the Maldives government. He continued in this role under President Maumoon Gayyoom and, along with the president, he remains a deadly and feared man. Isthafa, acting under orders from the NSS commander-in-chief Gayyoom, videotaped torture and passed on these tapes to the president. Isthafa resigned from his Defence department position in March 2004, but continues to wield power and influence. He has never been prosecuted for his crimes. Senior officers torture prisoners Torture and executions were ordered by others, as well as Maumoon Gayyoom, and the level of torture an officer was permitted to order was a status symbol. These orders were recorded in the infamous 'Punishment Books' until around 1990. Gayyoom's brother-in-law Ilyas Ibrahim, now the Minister of Transport, ordered prisoners to be electrocuted. Mohamed '22' Zahir, now NSS chief of staff, took part in torture at Dhoonidhoo and was known to urinate on his victims. Adam Zahir, now a Brigadier-general and the head of the Maldives police, was another officer allowed to order torture. He enjoyed luring harmless homosexuals (such as Fabi Ali), and pretending he wanted them to fellate him. Adam Zahir would then urinate in their mouths. Adam Zahir disposed of the Punishment Books when Maumoon Gayyoom realised they could be used as evidence against himself and his fellow NSS officers. Although NSS related costs are called 'defence' expenditure in current data tables, they are more accurately described by their previous name – 'Public Order and Internal Security'. Major NSS operations since 1988 have included quelling civil unrest in Fua Mulaku in late 1995 and 1996, and on Naifaru island in 2001. Naifaru is adjacent the large NSS training island at Madivaru in Lhaviyani atoll. Naifaru people were severely tortured after this uprising. At least one Naifaru man was strung up by cables which were vibrated, and his internal organs were destroyed. There have been continuing complaints, in Maldives and overseas, of serious civil rights abuses and torture by NSS officers. These abuses were denied by the government and banned from public discussion, but the evidence is overwhelming that torture is routine and brutal, and that the security forces regularly act with impunity at the command of President Gayyoom. It is also obvious that the executive directs legal judgments. Unofficially, the situation is justified as a cultural tradition, necessary to maintain respect for authority and public order in Maldive society. The President is the constitutional head of the state, law and Islamic religion in Maldives, and the President's office and the NSS together control the bureaucracy, courts and civil life, just as for centuries, the royal court and the militia controlled the Maldive kingdom. Changes in December 2002 to the criminal procedure law proclaim the right of accused people to legal aid lawyers, but restrict the power of those lawyers to act on behalf of their clients. The NSS investigating officer must witness meetings between a lawyer and client, and lawyers can be dismissed or charged in relation to those discussions. The Male' newspaper, Haveeru, has reported that under this law, lawyers are refusing to take any legal aid cases. In the courts, severe sentences are sometimes given without trial or legal representation – for example, in 2002, the producers of an email newsletter Sandhaanu, which was critical of Gayyoom's government, were denied legal assistance and sentenced to life imprisonment. While in prison, these people were continually harassed and tortured by the NSS acting under Gayyoom's orders.
The two lengthy reports prepared by Sattar were censored thoroughly by Maumoon Gayyoom and the emasculated documents (about 10% of the original reports) were presented to the Majlis (parliament) and the public. No comment about these censored documents was allowed in the Majlis or the Maldive media. |
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