Police in the Maldives yesterday said they had made nearly 200 arrests during clashes at a protest over the jailing of former Maldivian president Mohamed Nasheed, after the UN’s top rights body denounced his trial as unfair.
Riot police fired tear gas and baton-charged the late night protest on the honeymoon islands, said witnesses to what was the biggest show of support for Nasheed since he was handed a 13-year jail term in March.
Nasheed’s Maldivian Democratic Party (MDP) said one of its top lieutenants was among those arrested on the capital island of Male, while the head of the largest Islamist party in the mainly Sunni Muslim nation was detained.
The streets of Male appeared to be calm yesterday morning as police put the number of arrests at 193.
While Nasheed’s supporters said the “brutal” crackdown could not be justified, authorities insisted they acted lawfully in breaking up the protest.
“The organizers of the protest addressed the protesters and called on all gathered to topple the government and confront the police,” a government statement said.
MDP spokeswoman Shauna Aminath said 195 people had been arrested since Friday evening, when the protest began.
The party said Maldivian President Abdulla Yameen’s security forces had responded to what it called a peaceful protest “with tear gas, baton charges [and] stun grenades.”
“All key opposition figures are now under arrest,” Aminath said. “It was a brutal crackdown by the regime.”
She said the party’s chairman Ali Waheed had been arrested along with Sheik Imran, leader of the main Islamic Adhaalath Party, who was an organizer of Friday’s protest.
Yameen came to power in late 2013 after controversially beating Nasheed in a run-off election despite trailing in the first round.
Nasheed, a climate change activist who was imprisoned during the three-decade rule of former authoritarian ruler Maumoon Abdul Gayoom, became the archipelago’s first democratically elected leader in 2008.
He was toppled in February 2012 after a mutiny by police and troops that followed weeks of protests over his ordering of the arrest of a top judge who had been appointed by Gayoom.
The arrest formed the center-piece of Nasheed’s prosecution. His conviction triggered widespread international condemnation and alarm in regional powerhouse India.
The MDP put the number of people taking part in Friday night’s protest at 25,000, a huge figure given the islands’ population is only around 330,000. There was no word on the turnout from police.
The protest came only hours after the UN criticized the jailing of Nasheed on March 13 on anti-terror charges as “arbitrary” and said the sentencing had followed a “vastly unfair trial.”
The UN Human Rights Office said their delegation, which visited Male late last month, found Nasheed had been subjected to a “rushed trial” under a system that was highly politicized.
It asked Yameen, the half-brother of Gayoom, to ensure the safety of Nasheed and allow freedom of expression.
Nasheed’s lawyer filed a petition on Thursday with the UN arguing his detention is illegal and a violation of international law.
The appeal to the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention in Geneva came as Nasheed’s wife, Laila Ali, visited Washington to lobby the White House, US State Department and Congress.
“This is a very difficult time for me and my children, but today I also have hope,” Ali said, alongside her legal team that includes London-based rights lawyer Amal Clooney.
In a report released on April 23, Amnesty International said protesters in the Maldives were being frequently beaten up while the media faced a growing number of death threats.
Despite the backlash, the government has insisted Nasheed received a fair trial and has told its critics to respect the verdict.
“A free and fair trial has happened. A verdict has come,” Maldivian Minister of Foreign Affairs Dunya Maumoon, who is Gayoom’s daughter and Yameen’s niece, said last month.
Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) is to visit Russia next month for a summit of the BRICS bloc of developing economies, Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi (王毅) said on Thursday, a move that comes as Moscow and Beijing seek to counter the West’s global influence. Xi’s visit to Russia would be his second since the Kremlin sent troops into Ukraine in February 2022. China claims to take a neutral position in the conflict, but it has backed the Kremlin’s contentions that Russia’s action was provoked by the West, and it continues to supply key components needed by Moscow for
Japan scrambled fighter jets after Russian aircraft flew around the archipelago for the first time in five years, Tokyo said yesterday. From Thursday morning to afternoon, the Russian Tu-142 aircraft flew from the sea between Japan and South Korea toward the southern Okinawa region, the Japanese Ministry of Defense said in a statement. They then traveled north over the Pacific Ocean and finished their journey off the northern island of Hokkaido, it added. The planes did not enter Japanese airspace, but flew over an area subject to a territorial dispute between Japan and Russia, a ministry official said. “In response, we mobilized Air Self-Defense
CRITICISM: ‘One has to choose the lesser of two evils,’ Pope Francis said, as he criticized Trump’s anti-immigrant policies and Harris’ pro-choice position Pope Francis on Friday accused both former US president Donald Trump and US Vice President Kamala Harris of being “against life” as he returned to Rome from a 12-day tour of the Asia-Pacific region. The 87-year-old pontiff’s comments on the US presidential hopefuls came as he defied health concerns to connect with believers from the jungle of Papua New Guinea to the skyscrapers of Singapore. It was Francis’ longest trip in duration and distance since becoming head of the world’s nearly 1.4 billion Roman Catholics more than 11 years ago. Despite the marathon visit, he held a long and spirited
China would train thousands of foreign law enforcement officers to see the world order “develop in a more fair, reasonable and efficient direction,” its minister for public security has said. “We will [also] send police consultants to countries in need to conduct training to help them quickly and effectively improve their law enforcement capabilities,” Chinese Minister of Public Security Wang Xiaohong (王小洪) told an annual global security forum. Wang made the announcement in the eastern city of Lianyungang on Monday in front of law enforcement representatives from 122 countries, regions and international organizations such as Interpol. The forum is part of ongoing