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President Gayoom must bear responsibility for emerging extremism in Maldives – Dr. Munavvar

20 October, 2007
Posted by Administrator in Human Rights, Politics.
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In a formal statement issued on 16 October 2007, MDP President Dr. Mohamed Munavvar has underlined that President Gayoom must bear responsibility for emerging extremism in the Maldives.

Speaking to reporters on 16 October 2007, Dr. Munavvar said that President Gayoom’s public statement to bring people responsible for detonating an improvised explosive device in Male’ on 29 September 2007, to justice “as soon as possible” was unacceptable, adding that such cases ought to go to court immediately.

“This is not a time to find excuses to delay and halt the democratic process. Public order can only be gained by implementing reforms and ensuring justice for all. Those should be our present aims”, Dr. Munavvar said.

Dr. Munavvar criticized President Gayoom’s call for a survey into how some Maldivians turn to extremism, saying that the status of the nation had come to the culmination of extremist acts due to government abuses and failures the past 29 years. “A man completing 29 years as ruler of the nation is saying he still does not know, and that he needs to find out”, Dr. Munavvar said.

Analysts note that President Gayoom began campaigning as a politician by conducting ostensible acts of symbolic intolerance. He launched the pseudo-Arab scholar image first while attending a UN session in 1976 as co-representative when he reported to the then President Mr. Ibrahim Nasir that his colleague (presently MDP Representative to the UK, EU and USA Mr. Ahmed Naseem) had been in the hall when the Israeli delegate made his speech. (Mr.Ahmed Naseem had taken a break before the said speech and had had returned to the hall after some moments).

He then moved to make another highly symbolic gesture, tantamount to a call for a tourism boycott, by publicly stating that those who permit the sale of liquor are equally guilty as those who consume it. He was convicted and banished for seven months for this condemnation of the government and the tourism industry.

After assuming power in 1978, he acted to fire a government hired foreign philatelic artist because the artist was a Jew. He then moved to sever existing diplomatic relations with the state of Israel. Maldivian ships, which earlier passed the Suez Canal unhindered, were caught up in bomb hits in the Abian Gulf, leading to losses of Maldivian lives.

Large rallies were organized throughout the country in support of the PLO and to condemn the West including the U.K and USA to promote the Quds Fund.

Analysts believe that President Gayoom’s desire for the position of grand-mullah to consolidate judicial power in the executive presidency, had led him to extricate religious studies from the mainstream syllabus to two separate institutes created by him. At these institutes, President Gayoom foisted himself on final year students as a teacher, indoctrinating them for the President to wield influence in controlling the dispensation of justice. President Gayoom took steps early in his rule to incorporate the power of justice, a mandate formerly held by the Chief Justice, in the executive presidency.

President Gayoom had then begun promoting “Divine Rights” to rule, by awarding himself the prerogative of being the final authority and propagator of the tenets of Islam in the Maldives. In 1978, one of the first government orders was for the closure of two ice-cream parlors in Male’, stating that they promoted “western” values. This was because they had Maldivian musicians performing live, and had dance floors.

The type of social engineering that the President began implementing led to a state of growing disquiet and gave rise to various sectarian minorities and hate groups in Maldives, one of the most harmonious and peaceful societies in the world for the past hundreds of years. Preachers were encouraged to promote xenophobia because it helped keep the country’s lucrative tourist industry isolated to government licensed resorts awarded through a strictly controlled patronage system.

One of the incidents to be officially described an act of sectarian violence, designed to allow him incriminate other religious scholars in the 1980s was when an incendiary device burnt a room in his wife’s home. No one was hurt in the blaze code named “White Shark”, although it gave him the opportunity to round up and harass a number of people seen as supporters of rival Islamic scholars and opponents.

In the early 1990s the librarian at the Islamic Centre in Male’ was implicated for detonating a crude improvised explosive device in the vicinity of the centre.

A concerted campaign was continued to encourage Maldivians into thinking that the country’s head of government should be an Islamic scholar, a job for which only he was qualified. Opposing his rule was made to seem impossible without outbidding him for Islamic credentials.

At the start of the present reform struggle in 2003 President Gayyoom declared that those who are opposing his government, calling for democratic reform and trying to bring it to disrepute are funded and brainwashed by Christian missionaries from around the world. He went on to state that the activities of reformists were not only illegal, but sacrilegious (un-Islamic). He then instructed the high ranking staff of National Security Service (NSS) that they must hunt down those is the Maldives who are participating and supporting these illegal, immoral and sacrilegious activities.

The MDP has repeatedly stated that the best mechanisms for preventing the emergence and spread of extremist intolerance were the establishment of democratic institutions, the implementation of specific policies and the strengthening of democracy in the country.

This post was written by: Franklin Manuel

Franklin Manuel is a professional blogger, web designer and front end web developer. Follow him on Twitter