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By Hilath Rasheed
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| Expatriate workers on August 23 work on raising the breakwater of Male’s eastern seawall which protects the crowded capital hosting a third of Maldives’ local population. (Haveeru Photo: Millzero) |
MALE, August 26, 2007 (Haveeru News Service) – Friday is the only holiday for the 60,000 or so expatriate workers, mostly semi or unskilled laborers, working in construction and tourism industry of Maldives. Due to lack of entertainment, like most locals, the expatriates usually get relief by hanging out with friends in outdoor areas of the crowded capital Male.
Like most of my friends, I normally do not pay any attention to them (due to my own subconscious racism?) But since the spate of attacks began against Bangladesh workers, I was very self-conscious as I walked along Boduthakurufaanu Magu behind STELCO yesterday afternoon, aware of the lines of expatriate workers sitting subdued on the breakwater.
I glanced at them from time to time and for the first time, I was disturbed because from the look they gave me, I felt that they were disturbed and even apprehensive, because I stared at them.
I wasn’t surprised.
A Bangladeshi worker chained for about 10 days at H. Sikkage while our “honorable” MPs, who go to parliament house almost every day in front of Sikkage, failed to notice it. Rather, most MPs ignored it, according to reports.
Then the spate of attacks against Bangladeshi workers at a dormitory in Male, carried out by local youths wielding makeshift weapons, leaving some seriously injured.
What was most disturbing about this particular incident was, as the Bangladesh High Commission rightly pointed out, the failure of police to arrive on time. In the two-square kilometer capital, I too find it questionable that police took 45 minutes to arrive at the scene!
A friend of me earlier had this conspiracy theory: “Maldivian police -- they do not want confrontation. Rather, they prefer to come later and clean up the mess.” How true I don’t really know.
Then the gruesome murder of a Bangladeshi worker in Haa Dhaalu atoll Kulhudhuffushi island.
Police said that the Bangladeshi coworker has confessed to having a homosexual relationship with the murdered 28-year-old Mogul Hussain and then attacking him.
But what set off more conspiracy theories is the missing gaps in information: the worker did not admit to delivering the fatal blow, according to the Dhivehi report published in Haveeru.
It was like in “The Shawshank Redemption” -- the couple dead on the bed while Tim Robbins’ character fires the shots afterwards and gets imprisoned for his “crime.”
The Maldives’ internet community right now is abuzz with such conspiracy theories.
“Police have been known to force confessions before the September 2003 riots. The Attorney General’s Office officially admitted so earlier, cautioning that we should not deliver verdicts based on confessions because the record was bad in the past. So how do we know this hasn’t happened this time as well. I mean, Maldives’ government is now under pressure from Bangladeshi and other South Asian governments due to failure to ensure security for Bangladeshi and other South Asian workers. So it just might be a ‘deal’ the government struck with the Bangladeshi coworker. I mean, he has 2,000 pounds to pay in debts to the recruiting agency. So if the Maldives’ government strikes a deal with him, whereby he will be paid, but also convicted and then secretly deported back to Bangladesh, wouldn’t he grab at the chance? So, isn’t this a likely way that the Maldives government can get the Bangladeshi government off its back?” a blogger commented.
This conspiracy theory seems to have stemmed from the fact that residents of Kulhudhuffushi insist that Mogul courted a local woman, and that the Kulhudhuffushi community traditionally harasses any outsider, whether Maldivian or foreign, if they get romantically engaged with a Kulhudhuffushi woman.
Haveeru on Thursday quoted an anonymous Kulhudhuffushi resident saying that he had witnessed such harassment earlier whereby the “outsider” will be splashed with mud and paraded around the island naked.
Some Maldivians are of the belief that Maldivians are “peaceful” and not capable of such a gory act.
However, dig this: under trying circumstances, where a human being is driven almost to temporary insanity, one might actually commit such an atrocity.
And this has already happened in Maldives though the media have not been able to highlight it due to lack of press freedom before the September 2003 riots.
A woman’s throat was slit in South Male atoll Maafushi island while a man was decapitated in North Male atoll Kaashidhoo island several years back.
And in the 1990s, the media reported that a woman and her boyfriend, with whom she was having an extra-marital affair, got together and killed the woman’s husband after he found out about the affair. The incident occurred in North Ari atoll Rasdhoo island.
What the media failed to write in detail at the time was that, the man’s body was actually cut into pieces before it was buried, something that even audiences of the “Saw” movies might vomit after seeing. This has been documented by a Haveeru journalist but the story in this detail have not been published in local media, according to him.
But what sickens right thinking people is that the attacks against Bangladeshi workers have not stopped.
In the most recent case, a Bangladeshi man was found chained at G. Vega house in Male; police subsequently have arrested the owner.
Some claim the earlier shackling incident occurred because the Bangladeshi was showing symptoms of psychosis. However, it still is no reason why any person should be given such degrading treatment. Rather the employers, recruiting agencies and the government itself have a duty to see that they are taken care of and given the proper medical attention.
And what is more disturbing is that, despite years of pressure from foreign governments, the Maldivian government has largely failed to strengthen measures to protect expatriate workers rights, leading to the local human rights NGO Hama Jamiyya to call upon the government last week to become a signatory to the International Convention on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Their Families. Whether the government will again show a lax attitude towards this, only time will tell, but this time, I am of the view that the government will be forced to become serious about the issue.
Another conspiracy theory on the internet community is that there is “an organized secret campaign of violence so that expatriate laborers will be forced to move out of the country giving more breathing space to locals.”
But I doubt this will work. Our local youth are too lazy and snobbish to fill in the menial jobs that will be left vacant.
However, there is one thing I am sure of: the present racism and xenophobia among the Maldives youth is the result of the government’s neglect to integrate civic education in the curriculum. Ethics, morality and civility are divorced from our “education” system. Rather, the government seems to be more concerned in promoting applied sciences, rather than giving a thought as to the philosophy behind humanity and what it means to be human. Thus the message of human suffering is lost on most Maldivian youth.
Posted in: Society
