5:41 PM
Editor
Prominent Maldivian blogger and journalist Ismail ‘Hilath’ Rasheed is
in a critical condition after he was stabbed in the neck near his house
in Male’ on Monday evening.
Police Sub-Inspector Hassan Haneef confirmed that Rasheed was stabbed
around 8:15pm and was undergoing emergency treatment in ADK hospital.
No arrests have been made, “however there is CCTV in the area and we are trying to get something on it,” Haneef stated.
Police had cordoned off the area around the blood-stained pavement at
time of press. There was on Monday evening no indication as to the
motivation of the attack.
An informed source at ADK hospital said Rasheed was bleeding but
conscious when he was brought to the hospital, and that he was expected
to remain in surgery until 2:30am.
“They slit his throat clean through the trachea, and missed a vital
artery by millimetres,” the source said, around 11:30pm, giving Rasheed a
“five percent chance … It doesn’t look good.”
Early on Tuesday morning the source reported that Rasheed’s condition
had stabilised: “He’ll be in intensive care for a couple of days. He’s
breathing through a tube now.”
Sub-Inspector Haneef said a second individual was stabbed in the back
at 11:00pm near Male’s garbage dump and had been taken to Indira Gandhi
Memorial Hospital (IGMH) in a critical condition. Local media reported
that the victim was believed to be a Bangladeshi national.
Second attack
Rasheed, a once outspoken blogger against extremism and former editor
of newspaper Haveeru, was previously attacked by a group of men on
December 10, 2011 – Human Rights Day – while attending a protest calling
for religious tolerance.
A group of men attacked the protesters with stones, and Rasheed was taken to IGMH with a fractured skull.
He was subsequently arrested by police for questioning over his involvement in the protest gathering, and jailed for over three weeks.
Amnesty International declared him a ‘prisoner of conscience’,
and said it was “dismayed that instead of defending Ismail ‘Khilath’
Rasheed, who has peacefully exercised his right to freedom of the
expression, the government of Maldives has detained him. Moreover, the
government has taken no action to bring to justice those who attacked
the ‘silent’ demonstrators, even though there is credible photographic
evidence of the attack.”
The Foreign Ministry subsequently called for an investigation “by relevant authorities” into the attack on the protest.
Reporters Without Borders (RSF) also condemned both the December 10
attack on Rasheed and his arrest, noting that he was not only one of the
country’s leading free speech advocates, but one of the few Maldivians
bloggers to write under his own name.
“The Maldivian constitution bans the promotion of any religion other
than Islam but guarantees freedom of assembly and expression as long as
it does not contravene Islam.
Rasheed professes to be an adherent of
Sufism, which emphasises the inner, spiritual dimension of Islam,” RSF
stated at the time.
Censored blogger
Rasheed’s popular and controversial blog, www.hilath.com, was blocked in November 2011
by the Communications Authority of the Maldives (CAM) on the order of
the Ministry of Islamic Affairs. The Ministry made the request on the
grounds that the site contained anti-Islamic material, CAM confirmed at
the time.
Hilath claimed he was being censored for expressing his version of
Islam, and called for more freedom of interpretation within the faith.
“I call upon all concerned to amend the clause in the constitution
which requires all Maldivians to be Sunni Muslims only,” his statement
read. “‘Unto you your religion and unto me my religion,’ and ‘There is
no compulsion in religion’,” he said, quoting Qur’an 109:6 and 2:256.
Hilath claimed at the time that the blocking of his website had a
political edge: “If Sunni Muslims are the conservatives, then the Sufi
Muslims are the liberals,” he told Minivan News. “I think this is a
conservative attack on the site. They think if you’re not a Sunni,
you’re an unbeliever.”
Following the blocking of his blog and his attack in December,
Rasheed became less outspoken on the subject of religion and withdrew
from the public spotlight.
On May 12 he tweeted
his intention to stop blogging altogether, and stated that he had
“repented and am now a Muslim. But a very tolerant one at that.”
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