The rioting was unprecedented in the country, which is known for its tourist resorts and tranquil environment. According to Amnesty International, prisoners at Maafushi prison, which is believed to house many anti-government critics, suffer from a lack of adequate food and access to medical facilities.

In 1990, my brother, Mohamed Shafeeg, and his friend Mohamed Nasheed, the current chairman and founding member of the Maldivian Democratic Party (MDP), began publishing a pro-democracy magazine called Sangu after they returned home from their education in the United Kingdom. After just six issues, the magazine was shut down and almost everyone associated with it arrested. My brother was charged with the attempted assassination of six heads of governments in connection with interviews he secured with South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) leaders during the conference held that year in Malé. He spent three years in solitary confinement without a trial and was later sentenced to 15 years in prison. He served a total of five years before he was pardoned.
 
Nasheed was arrested for an article he wrote about government corruption, and he has been arrested several times since. He was kept in solitary confinement for 18 months beginning April 8, 1992, and was later sentenced to over three years' imprisonment for withholding information about an alleged conspiracy to explode a device at the same SAARC conference that my brother attended.

The arrests of my brother and Nasheed gave way to relative control in media. No one dared to express dissent in any form for many years until the famous Internet newsletter Sandhaanu began publication as an e-magazine in the late 90s. It became very popular very soon, but people were scared to discuss it or pass copies to others. Its editors were sentenced to life in prison in 2003 for inciting violence and one year of banishment for defamation. Their life sentences were reduced to 15 years later that year. Of course, this is just two examples of how oppressive Gayyoom's regime has been over the years and how successfully he managed to keep firm control over the media for almost a quarter of a century.

It was not until the events of Sept. 2003 that people really began to express their anger toward the dictatorship in the Maldives. On Sept. 20, 2003, the public was able to witness for themselves the crimes committed by police. Many of us were in touch with the international media and the BBC finally did a full report on the Maldives, focusing special attention on the killings in prisons. A report by BBC South Asia Correspondent Adam Mynott was broadcast on Oct. 17, just a month later. The Maldives government accused the BBC of being part of a plot to destabilize the country.

I had left the country a couple of days before the BBC broadcast because I had given an interview in the report, and I did not want to end up in solitary confinement. Soon, I began publishing articles on my own website www.e-maldives.com which later became Dhivehi Observer (www.dhivehiobserver.com), which has become very popular. We have successfully exposed many crimes of the Maldives dictatorship and created a platform for writers to express their views anonymously. The site is officially banned in Maldives, but we created several mirror sites that allows people back home to access material easily. These mirror sites, which are an exact copy of the Dhivehi Observer website, can circumvent the ban because they are hosted on different servers.

I believe the Internet has played a major role in advancing the course of free media in the Maldives and today there are dozens of website reporting very good material. There are, of course, just as many pro-dictatorship sites too. In addition to that, we now have several weekly magazines and daily papers, such as the Minivan Daily, which are no longer influenced by the regime. At one point, all three major daily papers in Maldives were controlled by Gayyoom's cabinet ministers and his brother-in-law. Even today, television and almost all radio stations are fully controlled by Gayyoom, but, with international and local pressure. The country's first private radio station was launched this year.

Journalists, reporters and photographers working for dissident websites and magazines are continuously being harassed and even detained, but fortunately Gayyoom is no longer capable of shutting us down because the public is not afraid to stand up against this tyrant. As for me, the cost of managing Dhivehi Observer has come at a price too. The dictator has refused to renew my Maldivian passport, virtually banning me from visiting my own country. There are no grounds for the authorities to refuse the renewal of my national travel document, but this is a small punishment compared to what Gayyoom has done to his critics who live in the Maldives.

As for the future, it is my absolute conviction that the Maldives dictatorship is rapidly loosing its foothold and that the free media is playing the vital role in its destruction.

Published in : The News, Reports & Analysis

Keywords : Maldives News, Reports & Analysis, Maldives dictator versus the free media

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