A little respect would go a long way :: Maldives News :: Dhivehi Observer

Nashid Column

The state we are in

by Dr. Ibrahim Nashid - ibrahimnash@gmail.com, G. Keneree Ge, Male', 30 October 2005

In December 1988 the General Assembly of the United Nations unanimously passed resolution “43/173 - Body of Principles for the Protection of All Persons under Any Form of Detention or Imprisonment”. Principle thirty of this resolution states:

1. The types of conduct of the detained or imprisoned person that constitute disciplinary offences during detention or imprisonment, the description and duration of disciplinary punishment that may be inflicted and the authorities competent to impose such punishment shall be specified by law or lawful regulations and duly published.

2. A detained or imprisoned person shall have the right to be heard before disciplinary action is taken. He shall have the right to bring such action to higher authorities for review.

Although the resolutions of the General Assembly of the United Nations are not binding on member states, it is the moral obligation of members to pay respect to these resolutions. The resolutions also indicate the current expected standard of conduct among nation states. From the day he was sworn in to office, President Gayoom has consistently failed in his moral obligations both towards the citizens of the Maldives and the international community. For twenty seven years he has blatantly lied to the international community and violated almost every international agreement that his government is a party to.

Since 1988, we have seen many laws and regulations to protect the government, but less than a handful to protect those detained by Gayoom's security forces and those condemned to long prison sentences by his judges after grossly unfair trials. In a land where bylaws are two a penny, there is not a single regulation that tells a detained or an imprisoned person what constitutes a disciplinary offence and what the punishment would be for its violation. This lack of regulations allows the security personnel, in the prisons and other detention centres of the country, to arbitrarily set the rules themselves. Having set the rules, the punishment for their violation is only limited by the security officers' imagination. It is common practice to punish prisoners and detainees for being rude to the security officers. In one instance a female prisoner's hair was shaved off for calling a security officer, ‘baldy'. Very often prisoners are punished for incidents involving a security officer that had happened outside the jurisdiction of the prison. The punishments for these arbitrary offences would be considered as extreme torture by anybody's definition. According to a high ranking National Security Service officer, prisoners are often taken to the “beach” in Maafushi prison for committing disciplinary offences. In a document leaked less than two years ago, the officer described that normally around ten prisoners are chained together when they are taken to the beach. On the beach they are kicked and beaten till the officers are bored. In between breaks for cigarettes, the security officers would practice wrestling kicks that they have seen on television on the chained prisoners. These sessions of torture last often for about four to five days, during which time the officers ensure that the prisoners do not get a wink of sleep.

All this is meted out without even giving the prisoner any opportunity to defend him- or herself in a disciplinary process. Having survived the torture, which in itself is often a wonder, the prisoners have no means to take the matter to higher authorities. Often verbal abuse is directed at the prisoner who picks up the courage to ask for his or her case to be taken to higher authorities. When they are not being punished, prisoners are most of the time locked in overcrowded cells without access to lawyers or any means to appeal to anybody else either verbally or in writing.

This is the condition that the majority of prisoners in the prisons of the Maldives have to endure. The lawlessness that exists in our institutions is akin to that of the animal kingdom. The minister for home affairs has repeatedly stated that he is working hard to maintain law and order in the country. However, he does not think that the welfare of those who are detained and imprisoned in institutions under his authority warrant any kind of attention whatsoever. Otherwise he would attempt to bring law and order to the prisons and detention centres of the Maldives.

Only last week the presidential website was trumpeting 500 days of successful "sweeping reforms". Unfortunately for those in the care of our “security forces”, not a single letter has been changed to improve their condition. Despite the thuggery of his security forces, President Gayoom claims that we live in a modern twenty first century state. If he cares to take a closer look at the situation of the country he would find that in most areas our standard is that of the Middle Ages.

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