Maldives: a flicker of hope amidst a turbulent year for human rights

However, as 2018 draws to an end, that hope is still being kept alive despite the attempts across the globe to recede, denigrate and destroy the commitments to human rights that the world committed to 70 years ago. One flicker of that hope is coming from the Maldives, an archipelago in the Indian Ocean. 

In the Maldives, the year 2018 began with violent attempts to reverse the nation’s commitments to human rights and human dignity. In the preceding years, human rights violations allegedly committed by or at the behest of state agencies were ignored, and impunity was rife; the murder of blogger Yameen, the abduction of journalist Rilwan, and the as many as ten deaths in custody since August 2016 were some of the most egregious violations that showed us the dire state of human rights in the country. Human rights violations appeared to have no chance of being investigated let alone prosecuted, when then President of the Maldives, Abdulla Yameen, declared a state of emergency in February 2018. Prompted by a decision of the Supreme Court to free nine convicted politicians, the President declared a state of emergency and arrested the Chief Justice Abdulla Saeed along with Ali Hameed, another judge of the Supreme Court. This resulted in the remaining judges of the Supreme Court reversing the decision in an act of repression by the government to silence political opposition. Mass protests in the Maldives were promptly met with further repression and arbitrary arrests of peaceful protestors. In the weeks that followed, others were arrested including Maumoon Abdul Gayoom, former President of the Maldives, as well as his son and legislator Faris Maumoon. 

To be arrested in the Maldives is to literally deliver your life into the hands of the police and prison officials. According to the Committee Experts in the UN Committee against Torture, Maldives has the seventh highest incarceration rate (assumed to be a reference to per capita rating). With as many as ten deaths of prisoners in custody since 2016, several of these deaths are allegedly due to delays in providing medical care or due to unknown causes. As recently as 4 July 2018, Hamzath Ahmed Fathuhy a Maldivian man died of a stroke while incarcerated at Maafushi prison, the 10^th reported case of custodial death since 2016. He was 38 years old. He is alleged to have been shown to a doctor at the prison, but was taken to hospital only five hours later. Just two days before his death, on 2 July 2018, Ali Abdulla died in custody, also of unknown causes. He suffered from high blood pressure and a congenital heart problem. He had complained to his family that he was denied access to medical care, and had asked his family to provide medical care to him the day before he died. He was 30 years old. While previous prison deaths, like the case of Abdulla Rasheed in 2017, have prompted investigations by the Human Rights Commission of the Maldives, these reports and any results of the investigations have not been publicly available.  In 2009, the report of the Subcommittee on Prevention of Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment to the Maldives raised a number of human rights concerns related to prisoners, including that decisions on whether a detainee is seen by a medical doctor were determined by those who had no medical training. Previously in May 2007, the UN Special Rapporteur on the independence of judges and lawyers, Leandro Despouy, in his report, had also highlighted the poor access to medical facilities for prisoners.