South Asian Media
Friday, November 24,2006

MALE: It has been reported that police are targeting Minivan Daily following an interview it published, in which the Global Protection Committee accused President Gayoom of corruption. According to the newspaper, the police are investigating its Editor, Aminath Najeeb, and Sub-Editor, Ahmed Nazim Sattar, who reported last week that Gayoom had supposedly transferred up to $80 million of public money, including tsunami funds, into private bank accounts abroad. The Government has denied the allegations. After reportedly searching across Male’ for Najeeb, who is currently out of the country, the police issued a summons chit to Sattar that told him to report to the police station at 8pm tonight (Thursday).

In response, Sattar said: “Recently the government has stepped up its intimidation of the press. Two international journalists who witnessed police brutality were asked to leave the country, which brought harsh criticism from Reporters Without Borders. They demanded that ‘the harassment of Minivan and Minivannews.com journalists must stop’. It seems that the government has ignored their call.”

Sattar went on to say that the Maldivian Government could not claim to be serious about press freedom when they continued to arrest anyone who wrote or said anything critical of them.

“The government will try to point to proposed legislation as evidence of their commitment to press freedom,” said Sattar, “but an analysis of the Bill on the Freedom of the Press by the NGO Article 19 notes that ‘its new provisions and ambiguities could even make the Maldives a less free country than it is today’.

If Minivan Daily’s accusations are correct this could well be the case.

Some analysts, however, don’t find the newspaper’s recent troubles surprising. They say that assaulting press freedom is a bad habit that the Maldivian Government just can’t seem to give up.

In their Annual Press Freedom Report for South Asia, published in May, the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) said: “Despite a government pledge to enhance press freedom as part of the reform agenda, Maldives continues to score poorly according to indices of freedom…authoritarian censorship protocols affect hundreds of journalists who are detained, beaten and tortured for performing their duties.”

Also in May, before a delegation including Reporters Sans Frontieres (RSF) and the IFJ, Agnes Callamard, the Executive Director of ARTICLE 19 said: “The government has produced an agenda for reform, but the independent and opposition media and activists continue to be targeted. Therefore we call on the Maldivian government to show more commitment to protect press freedom and freedom of expression.”

As Satter pointed out, it appears that the government has ignored all of the NGOs’ suggestions.

But the question asked by many is: “Why?”

Critics have said that the only logical reason is because the government has something to hide. They say that the extreme sensitivity shown by the government after Gayoom’s corruption allegations were published, followed by the attacks on Minivan Daily, speak much louder than all the DRP members claiming that the newspaper is printing lies.