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| Police Officers using excessive force against peaceful protesters in Male City . Photo by: Minivan News |
By: Shahindha Ismail
The Maldives elected President Mohamed Ibrahim Solih in 2018 following years of struggle and political instability. The main pledge that won the people of the Maldives is the promise of justice. President Solih represents the Maldivian Democratic Party, MDP, a political party formed from a movement for human rights, mainly countering torture and corruption. The party promoted values of good governance, peoples’ participation and accountability following years of rule by sheer force and tyranny.
The Maldives ratified the first democratic Constitution in August 2008,
followed by presidential elections that brought into power President Mohamed
Nasheed who led a coalition government consisting of the Maldivian Democratic Party,
the Jumhooree (Republic) Party and the Adhaalath Party. This change was brought
after thirty years of autocratic rule by President Maumoon Abdul Gayyoom.
On the 7th of February 2012 Nasheed was ousted from office in
a violent coup d’état led by the police, the army, and the opposition including
Maumoon Abdul Gayyoom, his half-brother Yameen Abdul Gayyoom, some members of
the government coalition and Nasheed’s Vice President Mohamed Waheed Hassan
Manik. A year of protests, arrests and torture failed to bring in early
elections and Yameen Abdul Gayyoom was elected President in 2013. The elections
were flawed to say the least – the first polling in which Nasheed won by a vast
majority was annulled by the Supreme Court and polling repeated, let us say,
until Yameen won, after six attempts that got disrupted by state interventions.
Fast forward to 2018 elections when the main message from Ibrahim
Mohamed Solih was justice. The hope for closure, reconciliation, reparation and
the truth reverberated with voters. Nasheed was left in the shackles of an
unfair terrorism verdict that could only be reverted through changes in
governance, and could not contest for election. A Member of the Parliament for
over 20 years, Solih was never considered ‘presidential material’ with his almost
silent past. Solih was, nevertheless the ‘only option left’ with the ruthless rule
of Yameen and an almost incomprehensible mix of a coalition that was necessary.
Ironically the current government coalition includes once again the Adhaalath
Party and the Jumhooree Party, along with a newfound winner – the former President
Maumoon Abdul Gayyoom.
Needless to say that the values of democracy and human rights presented
by the current coalition government is different, if not distorted, from what
the Maldivian Democratic Party stood for during its formative years.
We now stand before the Transitional Justice Bill – the answer to
justice that thousands of Maldivians have waited for. Some of us have waited
all of our lives and some, sadly did not make it to see this day. We must
remember those who did not survive to speak out today, to ask our leaders to
not make a mockery out of the sacrifices, the loss and the blood that was shed.
The biggest problem in the bill that has made me call it a mockery of
justice is that it completely disregards anything that took place before the
coup d’état of 2012. The jurisdiction of the law is currently set to address a
period between the 1st of January 2012 and the 17th of
November 2018.
Begging the question, How do we get justice for all that has happened
before that – and after?
The Maldives has a history of violent crackdown on dissent. We hear
about the resistance movement in the North, and the liberation movement in the
South in the 1960s after which island communities were forcefully evacuated,
homes and belongings torched, women and girls raped, men beaten and tortured to
death, families dispersed from the north to the south and from the south to the
north. The survivors from the horrors have lived with their scars, some of them
knowing who harmed them and some questioning.
Then came Maumoon Abdul Gayyoom. Systematic torture, arbitrary
detention, disappearances and death in custody was a norm during his rule from
1978 to 2008. Corruption and nepotism left the people at the whim of the
dictatorship.
The risk of wiping all of these stories clean of history is too high.
Maldivian history taught in schools does not address what happened and all we
know is by word of mouth. Many of the emerging generations of human rights
defenders have no understanding of the suffering of our people in the long
journey for freedom. Survivors and witnesses
won’t live to tell their tales forever, and the least that the State can do for
them in the name of justice is to address the truth and make it be known.
How can we even know what really happened? Is there more that we have
not heard of?
The period that the bill has marked its jurisdiction is clear – it is
the period from immediately before the 2012 coup until the end of President
Yameen’s rule in 2018. Taking into account that this particular period in time
of Maldivian history has in fact dismantled every aspect of democratic
governance in the country and caused great harm to hundreds of families and
must be held to account, it raises the question of persecutory measures when
one single administration is singled out in the name of transitional justice.
It also shows clearly the place of the people in the matter concerning
justice.
The bill disregards recommendations to include atrocities prior to 2012,
made by the UN Human Rights Committee and the UN Committee Against Torture,
both obligations under treaties that Maldives has signed on to. It has
completely removed historical atrocities from its jurisdiction, and deserves
some thought as to why.
The bill contradicts the very pillars that uphold the essence of
transitional justice – the right to the truth, the right to justice, the right
to reparations and the guarantee of non-recurrence because by eliminating a
large portion of the most vulnerable people who have endured violence and duress
at the hands of the state, it is impeding the entire process of justice.
Disclaimer: Above is an exclusive opinion written to Adamington Online
by Shahindha Ismail who was the Former President of Police Integrity Commission from
July 2009 to October 2012 during the reign of Former President Mohamed Nasheed.
She was also the Founder of the dissolved Human Rights NGO, Maldivian Democracy
Network (MDN). She holds a demonstrated
history of experience in the civic & social organization industry, being extensively
skilled in Non-profit Organizations, Policy Analysis, Customer Service,
Strategic Planning and Volunteer Management. Views
expressed by writers in this section are their own and do not reflect
Adamington Online’s point-of-view
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