Magic Threatens Gayyoom :: Dhivehi Observer

Review
Maldives dictator threatened by southern magicians

by Michael O'Shea, 29 April 2005

Black magic is being used against the Maldives dictator as frustration mounts over his refusal to allow human rights and political freedoms in Male' and the atolls. A form of traditional fanditha magic known as sihuru is being directed at Gayyoom and his extended family. Sihuru's most experienced practitioners are based on Addu and Huvadhu atolls in the far south of the country.

Until recently, black magic was a dying art often despised by educated Maldivians. The illegal use of fanditha by Ilyas Ibrahim (Gayyoom's brother-in-law) during a plot to oust Gayyoom from the presidency in 1993 was excused as an aberration by an ambitious but under-educated member of the Endherimaage clan.

However, revelations about Gayyoom and his wife Nasreena's personal fanditha practices at the Male' palace and Nasreena's family home Endherimaage alerted the dictator's many enemies to his superstitious beliefs. Also, a 40 year old fanditha practitioner Abdulla Haleelu from Fasmeeru Garden house in Male's Henveiru ward was prosecuted by the government for using magic to influence the result of a football match in 2001. He was banished for five months after Gayyoom's NSS raided his house and confiscated anything connected with fanditha ritual. Thus fanditha's power to influence people and future events received high-profile official recognition. For forty years, the Maldive penal code required fanditha men and women to have a government permit.

Gayyoom raised the fanditha stakes yet again during his vicious imprisonment of democracy advocates after the NSS attack on Male' and mass arrests in August 2004. Many of the prisoners were drugged and terrorised during their internment. The NSS has a long history of using drugs on prisoners which extends back to Nasir's rule, and last year's druggings in the jails were rumoured to be from boogal preparations likely to have contained datura. It is also probable that the NSS tested military interrogation drugs on the prisoners.

This week, Dhivehi Observer reported Gayyoom has sent two NSS sergeants to Hithadhoo island on Addu atoll where a dead lizard had been found shrouded in white cloth and buried in the government office grounds. The first move by the NSS investigators was to visit the island's leading fanditha man who informed the officers that the lizard, which has a chameleon-like ability to blend its skin colour into different backgrounds, was an effigy and the message was death. There seemed to be no doubt in anyone's mind who the lizard represented - Maumoon Gayyoom.

Without regular botox shots, the ageing Maldive dictator does resemble a startled lizard so people's assumptions are understandable. Usually, a dead cat is used for this sort of spell, and the substitution of a lizard may disturb more conservative magicians. But many illnesses are afflicting the Gayyoom circle. The dictator's longterm confidante Fathullah Jameel's heart problems followed blasphemy against Allah in August 2004 as he abused tied-up democracy demonstators at the NSS headquarters while police chief Adam Zahir urinated on them. Gayyoom's brothers-in-law Abbas and Ilyas Ibrahim are unwell, and the first lady Nasreena needed medical treatment. No wonder the NSS has been sent in pursuit of the Addu magicians.

The other southern threat to Gayyoom comes from a small doll made of flour dough, which will be used at the most auspicious time to inflict serious health problems on the dictator. In this instance, the magician has warned Gayyoom through a statement in the Dhivehi Observer:
'The people of Addu have decided to take the roads of their forefathers – in this case, the road of dough kneading. They are not considering the other road. They have calculated the most auspicious time to knead the dough and assigned a person who will eat it. It is now just a matter of waiting for the appropriate time to execute the sihuru. The place for this spell is an uninhabited island called Kandihera (near Hithadhoo). Those involved have been making visits to the island in preparation for the sihuru. They say the beloved leader will now feel some discomfort to his feet and over the following nights this discomfort will get worse. But do not get worried, no harm came to you after 27 years of milking the public treasury dry; no harm will come to you from someone eating a mere two kilos of flour.'

Back in Male', Gayyoom is leaving nothing to chance. A black cock has the run of the presidential palace grounds. Roosters of this colour are renowned for their sihuru battling capabilities – a sort of 'maithiri haa'. Also a new sapling is being nurtured at the stump of the palace's large mango tree which crashed to the ground in July 2003 smashing an official plaque into five portentous pieces. At the beginning of Gayyoom's rule in 1978, his wife's Endherimaage clan buried a thaveedhu charm beneath their house's flagpole and the fanditha man in attendance said if the charm stayed secure, so would Gayyoom's power. The destruction of the palace mango tree was a natural event preceded by earth tremors, and that could invalidate or at least threaten the power of the Endherimaage charm.

Of course the tsunami that swept Maldives in December 2004 was the end for Gayyoom as far as truly superstitious Maldivians were concerned. The old tyrant is so obviously beyond his use-by date, even the sea wants him gone.

Gayyoom has always relied heavily on star and moon positions for the timing of important speeches and decisions, and it will come as no surprise that the astrological part of his administration is as incompetent as the rest. His public National Day speech in Male' earlier this month was notable for the tiny size of the audience, causing the dictator to comment that it was held at 6.30 am because the sun, Venus and his beloved moon were together in the same constellation. Gayyoom was correct about the positioning in the constellation, but the moon was still below the horizon when he began to speak. The sea breeze had cleared his empty words from the air when it appeared just before eight o'clock.

The Addu magicians are breaking new ground in their attempts to remove Gayyoom. Maldive history in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries reveals black magic in its sihuru form has played a serious role in politics, but the magic was mainly used as an adjunct to action, providing protection and immunity to arsonists and murderers.

The flour dough prepared by Kudhu Abu and eaten in 1887 to render Male' arsonists invisible was kneaded with liver fat from the fresh corpse of a just-buried 15 year old youth, and the conspirators had no qualms about murdering the Velaanage cook, a woman from Huvadhu, who saw the body after its secret removal from the graveyard. She was killed and buried in the Velaanage garden 'with less dignity than a rat', writes Hakeem Hussein Manik in 'History of the Big Fire'.

In 1953, Dhon Ahmed Ali Thakurufaan confessed to making an effigy of president Mohamed Ameen and trying to eat it, in an attempt to kill Ameen. He was convicted with Nilandhoo Hakeem Didi for digging up dead children and boiling down their livers for oil. In this case, the children's bodies were eaten!

These modern threats against Gayyoom from Addu are tame in comparison, and quite understandable in a situation where Gayyoom uses food restrictions, forced unemployment, intimidation, beatings and torture to maintain his control of the atolls and leaves the population defenseless, with no legal rights or access to protection.