Hundreds of protestors have taken to the streets in the Maldivian capital Male amid a standoff between President Mohamed Nasheed and the judiciary, officials and residents said Thursday. Anti-government activists demonstrated overnight keeping up pressure on Nasheed who initiated the arrest Monday of the head of the country’s criminal court on charges of misconduct and favouring opposition figures.
A senior figure in the opposition Dhivehi Qaumee Party (DQP), Mohamed Jameel, was also re-arrested on Wednesday as police investigate him and the party for allegedly spreading hate-speech, DQP leader Hassan Saeed told AFP. The government has accused Jameel, a former justice minister, of making public remarks that Nasheed was working under the influence of “Jews” and “Christian priests” to weaken Islam in the Maldives.
“Hundreds of people staged demonstrations early this morning, but there were no fresh arrests,” a government official in Male, who asked not to be named, said when contacted by telephone. The government on Wednesday raised fears of Islamic extremism taking hold in the Indian Ocean atoll nation, which is best known for its upmarket tourism and as a destination for honeymooners.
The foreign ministry said it said it was “extremely concerned” by an increase in extremist rhetoric used by the government’s rivals that could lead to “stigmatization, stereotyping and incitement to religious violence and hatred”.
The current government of Mohamed Nasheed of Maldives has become very unpopular in many fronts:
* bad economic policies that are hurting the ordinary Maldivians,
* chronic corruption,
* unfair deals to cronies of the government,
*favouring only the ruling MDP party member neglecting the rest of the population,
* Anti-Islamic policies and rhetoric by the the president and his aides,
* Harnessing opposition figures and the judiciary,
* arbitrary arrests of opposition fugues and judges.
Because so many people are voicing their anger of the government for these reasons, the government is trying to show the world that this is about islamic extremism, which is simply not true. This a tactic used by dictators and I am surprised that international media and governments are not picking this very important point.
[…] une fois, le gumnerneoevt des Maldives défraie la chronique. Après avoir annoncé sa volonté de faire de son pays le premier a être neutre en CO2, le président Mohamed Nasheed a réussi une nouvelle fois un joli coup […]
Realizing he might have dug hmieslf in there,the general emphasized that he had spent some time as a junior officer working "very closely with the Israeli air force" and that hehad found that "more cosmopolitan, liberal version of the Israeli population" to be just chock full of that sort of "goodwill" necessary to give a bunch of land back to the Palestinians.
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