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| Gayyoom Plays the Clown as MDP Takes the Initiative first published in Minivan News 4 May 2005
The entry of Mohamed Nasheed, the Maldivian Democratic party leader, to
Male' on Saturday morning has sealed the ultimate fate of the Gayyoom
regime.
Nasheed's return will bolster morale among the party's representatives in the Majlis, where people like Male' member Ibrahim Ismail have been detailing the hidden torture practices Gayyoom uses to control Maldivians. Virtually all the newly elected Majlis members, regardless of their loyalties to Gayyoom or otherwise, promised their electorates they would investigate and stop torture from occurring. Ibrahim Ismail (popularly known as Ibra) is forcing the Majlis to confront these issues, culminating in the establishment this week of a five member committee to investigate past interrogation and imprisonment practices of the NSS police and military. Ibra is to be a member of the committee. Gayyoom ordered his NSS to keep people away from the Majlis during the sittings, and many of the seats in the public gallery were deliberately occupied by NSS personnel. The few Maldivian citizens allowed to witness Ibra's speech were moved to tears by his revelations, and members don't have to be told that Gayyoom is responsible. If there was anything left of the dictator's reputation, it is gone now.
A senior Dhiraagu technician Ismail Faiz was arrested in Male' within hours of Zahid's arrest, and Zahid also works for Dhiraagu on Addu. He now finds himself, like the Friends of Maldives founder David Hardingham, accused with no evidence of terrorist associations. Other Addu people are being arrested for protesting against Zahid's detention. The Addu people are outraged at this ridiculous behaviour by Gayyoom, and the National Security Service was initially forced to barricade itself on Gan island by blocking the causeway with Feydhoo. Gan is the only island in Maldives directly controlled from Male' by Gayyoom. It has an airport, initially built by the UK when they established a base on Addu during World War 2, which was expanded with a first-rate runway after Gan became an official British base in 1957. When the British left in the mid-1970s and leased out Diego Garcia (only 400kms south of Addu) to the USA, Gan was stripped of its valuable infrastructure by the Male' ruler Ibrahim Nasir. Part of the British facilities were converted into a reasonably comfortable but small resort, providing ready access to alcohol for NSS and government officials needing a quiet retreat from the arduous task of telling Addu islanders that poverty was good for them. For nearly thirty years, Gayyoom has actively prevented economic development on Addu, refusing to supply the refrigeration facilities needed to expand the potentially valuable fishing industry, and sabotaging all attempts to build a first-class large resort on the vacant Vilingili island, a ten minute journey from Gan. The dictator has promised these things each election, and they have never been delivered. Anyone who complained was intimidated and/or jailed and tortured, and financially ruined. Addu has the largest concentration of population outside Male' and its people know that only Gayyoom's demise will allow proper economic development on their atoll. |
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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