:: Dhivehi Observer :: Peoples Press ::

Personal retributions of a dictator
Legal experts should take Gayoom to task

By "Donim" - Thursday, 16th September 2004

The EU motion is the best thing to happen to ordinary Maldivians, who want to escape the rampant corruption and brutality of Gayyoom's regime. Finally, an influential external body with economic muscle is on their side. As if to add the general mood, Gayyoom and his family have reportedly flown out of the country. Many people will hope that they have seen the back of the dictator for good, but that may be too much to hope for.

Meanwhile scores of detainees, many of them children, are languishing in detention centres and prisons, more than a month after they were treated to a sample of police brutality and debasement which up until now had occurred in secrecy.

International attention, particularly EU inquiries, may have helped to stop the worst of the atrocities, but the damage has already been done.

Many men, women, and children have been severely beaten, sexually and verbally abused, and psychologically maimed for life. And, despite Gayyoom's efforts to hush the atrocities and instead concoct laughable conspiracy stories to justify police actions, the truth simply won’t go away.

Gayyoom has dealt with the mounting accusations against his government and calls for his resignation in the only way he knows how: locking the opposition and ordering his police to teach them a lesson.

Gayyoom's declaration of a state of emergency and the suspension of the limited rights that people have in this country is nothing but an act of personal retribution against people who forced him to accept a truth he has hid from himself for years: Maldivians are sick and fed up of him and want no part of him or his family in the future they envisage for their country.

Gayoom now wants his attorney general to prosecute the opposition under some cock-and-bull story that everyone knows people won’t buy.

Despite the EU motion and other external pressures, Gayoom may still hold on for a while, taking out his anger and frustration on the detainees.

This is why we now need a group of experienced international lawyers to represent them and start making demands for their release.

Gayyoom's emergency laws do not authorise the torture and terrorisation of people, nor his attempts to deceive the people, especially the rural population, and it is now time for legal experts to take the dictator to task for his actions.