"I will not call it a pro-democracy demonstration. Being a Friday, people just gathered"

It was the largest anti-government demonstration in the history of Maldives. People from all walks of life gathered at the Republican Square on 12-13 August 2004 to protest against the dictatorship of Maumoon Abdul Gayoom. To disperse the crowd, NSS used force and beat a number of protesters. It was also the first time so many people were arrested and detained for an anti-government protest. Yet, the government of Gayoom tried to cover up this incident and told the world media that only a handful of people were there. They said that only extremists and terrorists were protesting against the government and that NSS was forced to take action when police officers were stabbed and government buildings were set on fire. We all know that the stabbing was an isolated incident. We all know now that it was Yameen's gang that orchestrated a small fire at Huravee Building. Who was the person who was in charge of sending false stories to the international media and diplomats and cover up the story of Black Friday? It was the Chief Government Spokesperson of the time. The person who is now ambitiously trying to fool the Maldivian population into thinking that he will be an honest and sincere Vice President. That person is Dr Ahmed Shaheed, Gayoom's loyal spin doctor.

Dr Shaheed told the Associated Press (AP) that he would not call it a pro-democracy demonstration.

Chief government spokesman Ahmed Shaheed downplayed the demonstration.

I will not call it a pro-democracy demonstration. Being a Friday, people just gathered, he said.

Dr Shaheed told BBC that it was not a pro-democracy demonstration and Maumoon Abdul Gayoom was a very popular president in the Maldives.

Dr Shaheed speaks on BBC. He says that he would not call this a peaceful pro-democracy demonstration. He says the NSS had to take action because two NSS officers were stabbed. He goes on to say that Maumoon Gayyoom is a very popular president in Maldives.

Despite Dr Shaheed's efforts the international media was not fooled. A number of newspapers and news agencies carried the story of how the government cracked down on peaceful protesters.

After beating the demonstrators and torturing them the government was ready to sentence them for long terms in jail. Who was the mastermind who wished to see them charged and sentenced while they were in detention? Gayoom's faithful Attorney General of the time Dr Hassan Saeed. The wicked plans of Dr Hassan Saeed and Dr Ahmed Shaheed, acting under guidance from Gayoom, could not be implemented because the European Union threatened to impose sanctions on Maldives. The Black Friday prisoners had to be released.

When we scan the pages of Dhivehi Observer we see how much Dr Shaheed was instrumental in sustaining the dictatorship of Gayoom. One archive page from DO is enough to reveal the extent of Dr Shaheed's lies.

• Contrary to what the Golhaabo's media has been reporting in the Maldives and what Dr. Shaheed has been spinning on TVM, the international community is fully aware of and concerned about the on-going situation in the Maldives, especially the British Parliament and the European Union.

• Furthermore, Dr. Shaheed is spreading the rumour that we report things differently in English to the international community to the reports we write in Dhivehi. That is the exact game that they played for the past 28 years to keep people quite under their oppressive rule. Our readers might not all be PhD holders but they also have a good knowledge of English language.

• Reliable sources said that discussions were going on between UN and Golhaabo and a window was being provided to Abbas for an appeal. However, soon after Abbas agreed to leave the building, it was reportedly surrounded by Golhaa Force. Dr. Shaheed reportedly backtracked from his promise and told Golhaa Force to apprehend him as he comes out. Abbas had been sentenced for 6 months in jail in absentia despite that fact that he lives in Male', for disobeying orders.
  

Who was the person who introduced sentencing in absentia to the legal system of Maldives as a means of keeping dissidents behind bars? It was Dr Hassan Saeed, the ex-Attorney General, who is now taking credit for all reforms that has been introduced to the Maldives.

Shaheed and Saeed were no reformists. They were the architects behind keeping so many pro-democracy activists behind bars during the past few years. It was Dr Shaheed who was responsible for keeping Dhiraagu DhivehiNet System Administrator Ismail Faiz (PH) in dentention because Mohamed Hussain Shareef (Mundhu) told Dr Shaheed that PH was updating Dhivehi Observer.

So when you cast your vote on 8 October, will you vote for the people who caused most harm to the democracy movement? Even if Solah Shihab and Ahmed Mujuthaba don't have a conscience, would you be able to vote for Saeed and Shaeed, fully knowing that they were supporters of Gayoom's torture and not really reformists?

"Now all the criminals in their coats and their ties
Are free to drink martinis and watch the sun rise"

Bob Dylan, Hurricane

The ghost of Hussain Salah will haunt Dr Shaheed forever

The body of Hussain Salah, 27, was fished out of southwestern harbour of Male' on 15 April 2007. Salah was under police custody shortly before the discovery of his body. Salah's dead body had visible cuts and bruises. After a public outcry, the government took the body to Colombo for an autopsy. However, the family of Salah had doubts about the findings of this autopsy which was conducted under dubious circumstances. They demanded a second opinion or another autopsy. However, the body was never handed back to the family and was brought back to Maldives and buried without approval from the family. Hussain Salah's death was carefully covered up. Who covered up Salah's death? Maldives Foreign Minister Dr Ahmed Shaheed was in charge of covering up the death of Salah. He disclosed the preliminary results of the autopsy report to the media before the family found out the results. This was despite clear instructions by Sri Lankan authorities that the report should be opened in the presence of the deceased's family.

The ghost of Hussain Salah will haunt Dr Shaheed forever. Read the media reports about Salah's death if you are an undecided voter and think that Dr Shaheed will be a good leader, a great decision maker and an excellent Vice President. Read about the dirty tricks of the Gayoom government to cover up this messy incident of torture, before you decide that Dr Hassan Saeed -- who was the Attorney General at the time of Salah's death -- is a clean politician and will be a fine President.

What Happened To Hussein Salah?

MDP Calls For Investigations As Battered Chairman Recovers

Political Tug Of War Over Corpse

Hussein Salah’s Life

Family Reject Post-Mortem On Police Terms

“No Autopsy In Maldives” Says Shaheed

International Chorus Of Concern Over Body Row

Salah’s Cousin Has Course Suspended Because Of Interview

Row Over Salah Post-Mortem Results

Post-Mortem Complete, Salah’s Body Prepared For Return

Salah: Government “Vindicated” As Family Cry Foul

Post-Mortem “Contradictory And Inexplicable,” Says Family

Salah’s Family Call For Sri Lankan Burial

Salah Body Still In Colombo

Salah’s Body Returned For Burial

Three Journalists Arrested As Salah Buried

MDP Continues To Question Salah Post-Mortem Results

Dhivehi Observer reports on Salah's death

VOTE TO DECIDE - DECIDE TO VOTE (NOT FOR SHAHEED & SAEED, THE DOCTORS OF DEATH)

Dhiyana Saeed's promotion and the favouritism and cronyism of Dr Hassan Saeed

When you look at a very out of date email address list on the Attorney General's Office website you will find Fathimath Dhiyana Saeed listed as a State Attorney, Mariya Ahmed Didi listed as an Assistant Executive Director, and Dr Hassan Saeed listed as the Attorney General. This can be further confirmed from a very out of date phone extension number list too.

So the question is how Dhiyana Saeed got a leap of a promotion under the patronage of the now-reformist Dr Hassan Saeed. Dhiyana Saeed became an Executive Director in Attorney General's Office overnight, bypassing several positions. A person can be given promotion if the superiors wishes to do so, and after approval from the President's Office which has the final say over hiring and firing government employees. Under the government employees regulations, a person is eligible for promotion every 4 years, even if the person is not promoted based on merit and achievements. For a normal person, it would take 32 years to achieve the promotion that Dhiyana Saeed received overnight. Lets look at the posts that lead up to the position of an Executive Director.

Assistant Director
Deputy Director
Director
Assistant Director General
Deputy Director General
Director General
Assistant Executive Director
Deputy Exectutive Director
Executive Director

Dhiyana Saeed's promotion shocked colleagues who worked with her at Attorney General's Office. Mariya Ahmed Didi, who had years of experience in the AG Office, found herself in a lower rank than Dhiyana overnight. Frustrated with the favouritism that Dr Hassan Saeed was practicing as Attorney General, Mariya quit the government and joined MDP. Today she is the Chairperson of MDP.

Dhiyana Saeed was promoted because she was a good public speaker and an able voice for spreading the propaganda of DRP. When the government of Maumoon Gayoom was weak and fragile, it was the group of new comers who tried to salvage it. Anybody willing to defend the regime was given promotions. Dhiyana later proved her ability as good mouthpiece of DRP as an appointed member of the President in the Majlis. Dhiyana aligned herself with the New Maldives till she married Abdulla Jabir, who was from a rival political faction within DRP.

Dr Hassan Saeed was completely disregarding the sentiments of the employees of AG Office, and just acting within the same old-fashioned patronage system that has existed in the Maldives, by promoting people that he favoured.

In April 2006, in the inaugural congress of DRP, Dr Hassan Saeed was elected as one of the four Deputy Leaders of DRP. He and the caucus of New Maldives were getting a foothold in the DRP, and promoting the party of the old tyrant Gayoom. Dr Shaheed was promoting his favourite staff in Foreign Ministry and Dr Saeed was promoting his favourite staff at Attorney General's Office.

It is beyond all logic that an Attorney General could be the Deputy Leader of a political party. The post of Attorney General is not a government post; it is a state post, and requires the highest degree of neutrality and impartiality. When Dr Hassan Saeed was the Attorney General and when his office received cases to prosecute members of rival political parties on politically motivated charges, doesn't that create a conflict of interest? Similarly, could the AG Office fairly prosecute members of DRP when the AG is a Deputy Leader of DRP?

This shows that Dr Hassan Saeed has very limited knowledge of how a modern democracy works. This is just one reason why you should not vote for Dr Hassan Saeed, who is showing the qualities of a tyrant, by his disregard for pluralism and multi-party system.

When Dr Saeed was AG, he promoted Mohamed Anil, the current Commissioner for Legal Reform, in another example of cronyism.

Both Dhiyana and Anil are qualified lawyers. However, a completely mindboggling promotion is bringing Ashraf Abdul Raheem as a senior staff of AG Office. Ashraf was a Dhivehi teacher at CHSE and he is not qualified for a senior position at AG Office. However, since Ashraf is a good public speaker and debater and was frequently speaking at DRP functions, Dr Saeed found him to be fit as a senior staff of AG Office.

When Dr Hassan Saeed appears on TV and speak on radio, accusing Gayoom of favouritism and nepotism, it is just one of the biggest ironies. Just like the Azhar trio which introduced nepotism to the Maldives politics, the trio of New Maldives practiced cronyism and favouritism while defending the old tyrant Gayoom. The abuse of power under the New Maldives ministers is a very long story, and it will be exposed in future blog posts.

Hussain Saeed, the brother of Dr Hassan Saeed, was a teacher at Feydhoo School, when he was promoted to the post of Atoll Chief of Addu, through the influence of Dr Saeed. Shortly after Dr Saeed left the government Hussain Saeed was dismissed from the post of Atoll Chief of Addu. His other brother Ibrahim Saeed was promoted to the post of a Supervisor of Aminiyya School. Another relative of Hassan Saeed was promoted to a managerial post of MTCC in Addu.

So all the fans of Dr Hassan Saeed out there. Just because he looks like Gayoom, wears glasses, has a voice like Gayoom, and recites verses from the Quran and Hadith, does not mean he is a clean person. He has a long history of corruption during his years as Attorney General. Just make sure you don't elect another Gayoom to power.

Links between DhiFM and New Maldives

After a rigged opinion poll conducted by the DhiFM radio channel, people are wondering why DhiFM would go to such low levels to promote Dr Hassan Saeed. DhiFM initially tried to cover up their role in rigging the poll, but supporters of Ibra bombarded the DhiFM office, and DhiFM was forced to show the sms logs. Sources say it was Ibra and Anni who led in the sms poll, and Dr Hassan Saeed was trailing far behind, as Minivan News reports.

“The results are totally invalid,” says Liberal Party spokesperson Hassan Latheef, who had met with Khaleel early Saturday morning and saw the raw data from the poll.

“I would say from every 10 texts, 5 or 6 were for Anni and Ibra. Hassan Saeed appeared from time to time,” Hassan said.

Hassan and the other Liberal party supporters were briefly shown statistics of the results from the website of telecommunications company Dhiraagu.

Station CEO Ibrahim Khaleel apologised, saying: “When we re-checked the results, the poll was false. This was due to technical issues.”

He said some text messages had not been downloaded from the Dhiraagu server, and therefore had not been counted.

“I was also surprised by the results, based on what I was hearing and things that were happening in the city,” he says.

But Khaleel says he does not know whether the order of winners would change, as DhiFM has not carried out a recount, and has no plans to do so.

He also declined to reveal the total number of messages that had not been counted.

Dhi FM has been issuing an apology since 3:30am Saturday, and Khaleel says, “In the future, we will ensure this does not happen again.”

DhiFM is trying to cover up the fiasco by blaming Dhiraagu. But DhiFM's CEO Hoarafushi Ibrahim Khaleel's connections with New Maldives is not new. Khaleel is related by marriage to Dr Ahmed Shaheed, one of the Amar-Akbar-Anthony trio that makes the New Maldives. Shortly after Mohamed Nasheed became Minister of Information, and therefore the head of Television Maldives (TVM), problems started between Khaleel, who was then a senior staff of TVM, and Nasheed. To salvage Khaleel, Dr Shaheed brought him to Ministry of Foreign Affairs to the post of Assistant Executive Director.

Anybody who knows the background of Ibrahim Khaleel knows that, though he has some experience as a reporter in Haveeru, and as a producer and presenter at TVM, he has no academic qualifications or experience to be in the foreign service. This is just one example of how the so-called reformist New Maldives ministers practiced cronyism and nepotism while they were in cabinet. Their policy was make hay while the sun shines. Today, Dr Hassan Saeed is accusing Gayoom of nepotism but the truth is even Dr Saeed practiced favouritism when he was the Attorney General.

To cut a long story short, Ibrahim Khaleel rarely showed up to work at Foreign Ministry, though he was an Assistant Executive Director, a job given by Foreign Minister Shaheed himself. Khaleel was by then busy setting up his DhiFM and DhiTV business in partnership with Soatu Champa.

When we scrutinise the DhiFM station, we see more links between DhiFM and New Maldives. Ameen, who works as a presenter and journalist at DhiFM, is also a spokesperson for the New Maldives. He represents New Maldives in several political functions. He is an active member of Dr Saeed's campaign.

Now that you know the links between DhiFM and New Maldives, you will not be surprised by the margin in the rigged poll which gave Dr Hassan Saeed such a huge lead.

Hoarafushi Ibrahim Khaleel also maintains very close links with the old tyrant Gayoom. At TVM, he gave special coverages to Gayoom, and Khaleel was a long time presenter of Heyyanbo, the Friday afternoon programme to which Gayoom sends riddles and words of wisdom. The long time producer of the Heyyanbo programme, Hassan Maumoon (Maanu), is also a partner of DhiFM and DhiTV now. Maanu was TVM's special cameraman for Gayoom for years. It is no secret that the best camera crew in TVM are assigned to functions Gayoom attends, so that good quality pictures of him are broadcast nationwide as part of the propaganda.

Ibrahim Khaleel once told a weekly in Maldives that his favourite person was Maumoon Abdul Gayoom and that his most desired wish was to get a housing plot from Male'.

It is pathetic that despite the media freedom Maldivians are enjoying today, the radio and TV stations are just used as mere tools of propaganda and not for objective journalism.

If not for New Maldives, Gayoom would have been removed from power now

November 2003 - Maumoon Abdul Gayoom appoints Dr Hassan Saeed as Attorney General after sacking Dr Mohamed Munavvar, who served as AG for ten years, from the cabinet
July 2005 - Foreign Minister Fathulla Jameel resigns and the post is handed over to Dr Ahmed Shaheed.
July 2005 - Mohamed Jameel Ahmed was brought to cabinet as Justice Minister
16 December 2005 - In a press conference in Colombo, the New Maldives was revealed under the clear instructions from Hill and Knowlton, the British public relations firm paid by the government of Maldives to keep the regime of Gayoom in power.

The young ministers were brought to Gayoom's cabinet as an image makeover, after the September 2003 riots, when the police brutality of the regime was finally exposed. Their responsibility was to show the image to the world that Gayoom was bringing reforms, while in reality Gayoom was wasting his time. With the help of New Maldives ministers Gayoom was able to continue his power, while hundreds of pro-democracy activists were being arrested, detained and charged. The New Maldives ministers continued to fabricate the truth and were comfortable with defending the old tyrant, while they themselves enjoyed the powers and influence that came with their cabinet portfolios.

Minivan News covered the press conference that was held in December 2005 to reveal New Maldives.

Dr Shaheed pointed out that the government welcomes scrutiny, noting delegations from the European Parliament, Amnesty International, the International Commission of Jurists and the International Committee of the Red Cross had all visited Maldives recently. “We welcome any inspection of our detention facilities,” he said.

The gloss came off, though, in a question-and-answer session where the Ministers were grilled over recent rights abuses apparently at odds with their vision of a ‘nation in transition.’

The Attorney-General was asked if in the ‘New Maldives’ throwing a stone would still be considered a terrorist offense - referring to the case of activist Jennifer Latheef, recently jailed for 10 jail for ‘terrorism’ following the September 2003 unrest.

“Throwing a stone will never be an act of terrorism in Maldives,” replied the A-G. “Jennifer Latheef was not charged for terrorism simply for throwing a stone… [she was charged] for setting fire to and destroying the Elections Commission, police vehicles, hospitals and injuring police.” Jenny was not being targeted because of the political work of her father, he said.

The A-G was asked to explain why setting fire to buildings was terrorism in the Maldives but mob violence in most other countries. “In future, will political dissent equate to terrorism?” he was asked. The A-G stood firm, however, accusing Jenny of “masterminding” the civil unrest.

The fact that Jenny was released not long after being jailed, proved that her trial was politically motivated. The others, who were jailed for alleged involvement in September 2003 riots, were kept in prison till they were released in August 2008, this time to pardon Zia Abbas, Nasreena's nephew. In fact, the trials regarding September 2003 was nothing but a political farce.

The New Maldives ministers went on to say more outragous things during the Colombo press conference.

Ministers were challenged over the trial of the opposition leader, Mohamed Nasheed, who is also charged with terrorism. “How do you expect to be taken seriously when a number of MDP members, including the leader, remain in jail?” a journalist with a wire network asked.

“When you have incidents like we had in August and the incitement, you need to take action,” said Dr Shaheed. The reason so many human rights organizations are critical of the government is “because we haven’t bothered to explain ourselves [to them] until recently,” he added.


Ahmed Naseer, of Minivan Radio, said he hoped to return to Maldives from exile but was fearful of running the radio from Male’. “What assurances can you give me that I won’t be arrested?”

The A-G stated that “we can guarantee that you will not be arrested for expressing your views.” He added, though, that “if you happened to have drugs in your pockets, obviously you would face arrest.”

A senior international journalist then demanded to know why the A-G would assume Naseer would have drugs in his pockets. “If I come to Maldives, will I be arrested for having drugs in my pockets?” he asked. “It seems that you decide to arrest and charge people based on whether you like their face, or what their political views are.”

Justice Minister Jaleel’s response that “many people come to Maldives and are not arrested,” was met with derision.

A Minivan reporter questioned the credibility of the government’s claims to support press freedom when 50% of the newspaper’s staff are currently facing criminal prosecution. The A-G said that only journalist Fahala Saeed was being prosecuted, “for drugs”.

When asked when the reform process would be completed, Dr Shaheed admitted that there was no timeframe for its conclusion. He said that Gayoom’s promise to rewrite the constitution by January 2006 will be missed because of delays in the Special Majlis.

During the next few weeks, we will write more details about the lies of the New Maldives, and expose their true nature. Beware! They are not reformists.