When the Maldives features in the media it is usually in the form of a paean to its silver sands, its magical island resorts in the crystal-clear waters of the Indian Ocean. Little is heard of the ways in which journalists who challenge the omnipotence of the government are harassed and suppressed.
Now the case of a Maldivian journalist who last year was sentenced to 10 years on terrorism charges is helping to change that perspective. She and other campaigners for free speech and political freedoms are hoping to turn the former British protectorate into the ”paradise” its publicity so often claims it is.
Jennifer Latheef (33) was born and brought up in the Maldives and Sri Lanka before studying mass communications at San Francisco University. She returned to the Maldives and has been working there as a freelance journalist, photographer and filmmaker. However, her father, Mohammed Latheef, has been a key opposition leader challenging President Maumoon Gayoom, who has been in power for the past 28 years. Not surprisingly, Jennifer Latheef has attracted attention from a government not used to tolerating dissent.
In September 2003, she attended an anti-government protest in the capital, Male, in connection with the deaths of prisoners in custody. She was arrested shortly afterwards and accused of throwing a stone at the police, a claim she strenuously denies.
”We were trying to talk to people and take photos,” she says of her presence at the event. After a long delay in bringing charges against her, she was jailed last October for 10 years for ”terrorism”. The government claimed she was the ”mastermind” behind what became a riot.
”While I was in prison, I was handcuffed and blindfolded and given a kicking, which has caused permanent damage to my spine,” says Latheef, who visited London last month under the auspices of a group of British lawyers who campaigned on her behalf. ”My trial was a farce.” She says the alleged witnesses consisted of six police officers and three members of the public.
She was held in prison for two months before being released under house arrest so that she could receive medical treatment for her injuries. Both before and after her sentence there was international pressure on her behalf. Amnesty International made her a prisoner of conscience and a team of British barristers visited the Maldives to press her case. Following the outcry, Gayoon ordered that she be pardoned.
The country’s only radio and television stations are both controlled by the government, she points out, so it is hard for ordinary Maldivians to find out what is happening. There is also much self-censorship as journalists fear being framed by the country’s ubiquitous police force. Some opposition journalists have been offered large sums of money to work for the country’s government media, she says.
”Most people, when they come to the Maldives, they go to the resorts, which are absolutely beautiful,” says Latheef, referring to the top-end tourist industry that, along with fishing, is the mainstay of the islands’ economy. ”They never see what is really going on.”
As she observes, the travel journalists who visit as guests of tourist companies usually only write about the holiday side of the islands. The Maldives was recently voted ”favourite island” by Condé Nast Traveller readers.
The Maldives, with its 2 000 islands, has a population of about 300 000 of whom 70 000 live in the capital, so everyone knows what everyone is doing and intimidation is easy. Latheef believes it was not only the fact that she was working as a journalist and photographer that led to her arrest, but also that the government saw it as a way of warning off her father, who remains in exile in Colombo.
Latheef is not the only journalist to fall foul of the law in the Maldives. Last year, Fahala Saeed of the Minivan Daily, the only independent paper, with a circulation of 3 700, was charged with heroin dealing after he had been summoned to a police station to be interviewed. The heroin concerned was supposedly found in his pockets. As Saeed and others have pointed out, he was hardly likely to have paid a visit to the police with his pockets stuffed with drugs. His paper said the arrest was ”for no other reason than being critical of the government in his reporting”.
Saeed is the latest in the long line of opposition journalists who have faced harassment, abuse and detention on spurious charges. Other journalists from Minivan — the word means ”freedom” in the local Dhivehi dialect — also face charges.
Opponents of the president are planning an anti-government rally in Male on Friday to press for constitutional reforms and a free press. Last week the government allegedly launched a clampdown against members of the opposition and journalists in advance of the protest. The country’s best-known cartoonist has been jailed and opposition activists said their supporters had been arrested and beaten.
Early last week riot police on the island of Thinadhu arrested eight members of the opposition. ”They brutally beat the people arrested,” said Latheef. ”Police also enforced a curfew and stopped anyone leaving the island.”
Latheef said the government was taking advantage of the fact that there are few international observers on the islands. ”The government is intimidating the public by saying the US military ship in Maldives for a training session is there to actually help the government in handling the demonstrators … there is no respect for rule of law by the government and they have the power to do what they please.”
Ahmed Abbass, an artist and political cartoonist, was jailed this week for six months over remarks he is alleged to have made two years ago to the Minivan Daily.
Government spokesperson Mohamed Hussain Shareef said he believed the arrests had ”broken the backbone” of plans to cause violence in the capital on Friday. ”Those arrested were known criminal elements with a history of violent activity,” he said, adding that the ”opposition militants” were planning arson attacks and violence. ”There is widespread fear among the public.”
Latheef intends to return to the Maldives but is uncertain what her reception will be. ”I am planning not to carry anything so they can’t plant anything on me,” she says.
The Maldivian high commission issued a statement in response to questions from The Guardian to the effect that the pardon ”does not in any way cast doubt upon the original conviction of Ms Latheef [who] was arrested, charged and convicted for aiding and abetting acts of violence in the riots.” Her release, said the statement, was a ”confidence-building measure” as part of ”a sweeping constitutional and democratic reform programme that, when completed, will create a new, modern democratic system for the country that fully complies with international human rights standards and norms.” The statement said ”the government of Maldives does not prosecute journalists and members of the press solely for their expression of opinion.”
The government has hired a PR firm in a bid to improve its international image. — Â