NEW DELHI, Aug 17 (OneWorld) - An international media watchdog has condemned efforts by the Maldives government to combat political dissidence by cutting off the south Asian nation's Internet links last week -- the latest in a series of measures to block freedom of information on the island.
The Paris-based Reporters Without Borders (RSF - or Reporters Sans Frontieres) has called upon the international community to press the government of the Maldives to lift restrictions on the media.
Maldivian President Maumoon Abdul Gayoom ordered a crackdown after political dissidence snowballed last week, rocking the island-nation. Some Members of Parliament are among the 90 people believed to have been arrested after the demonstrations.
Emergency and curfew have been declared in the Maldives, where political parties are banned. President Gayoom has been ruling the one-party nation for 25 years.
According to global media group, the RSF, the British-owned Telecommunications firm, Cable & Wireless - which handles Internet access in the Maldives - has confirmed that the government severed all Internet connections on August 13.
"This grave and irresponsible step is unprecedented anywhere in the world and President Gayoom has embarked on a spiral of repression that is extremely worrying," says RSF.
Last month, RSF had urged the firm to put pressure on the Maldives authorities to "end abusive Internet censorship."
RSF has also demanded the release of three detained journalists of an e-mailed newsletter, Sandhaanu, who have been missing since the protests.
"The Maldivian government has been repressing the media for decades. It already controls the television, radio and newspapers. It is now controling the Internet," says Julien Pain of the RSF's Internet Freedom desk. "These measures are unheard of," he says.
Amnesty International has also expressed concern over the curbing of rights in the Maldives. "In the past decade, dozens of people - including politicians, journalists and others protesting government policies - have been detained arbitrarily in defiance of their fundamental right to freedom of expression and assembly," it says.
On Friday, RSF says the police violently dispersed a demonstration by an estimated 5,000 people who were calling for the release of political prisoners.
The media organization stresses that after Gayoom announced that the organizers of the protests had been identified and would be punished, the police attacked the demonstrators with truncheons and iron bars.
In September 2003, Gayoom set up a commission to probe human right violations. "But in practice, he continues to crack down on any form of dissent with brutality," says RSF.
"Crushing this demonstration contravenes all the promises made by President Gayoom since June to set up a democratic and transparent political system," RSF says. "We demand that the government ends such repression at once, does not prosecute any of the protesters and frees opposition figure Naushad Waheed and the Sandhaanu cyber-dissidents."
Naushad Waheed, a painter and political dissident, had earlier been arrested on December 9, 2001, for sending an email to the international human rights body, Amnesty International. Severely tortured while in detention, he was sentenced to 15 years in prison in 2002 for "an anti-government act."
Waheed and the three cyber-dissidents were put under house arrest in April this year. Reports from the Maldives say the four joined the demonstration last week and have not been seen since then.
The protests were triggered by the arrest of five political dissidents, including Mohamed Yusuf, who was released soon after the demonstration started.
A leaflet was distributed at the rally, criticizing the curbs on press freedom in the country.
RSF - which has put Gayoom on its worldwide list of "predators of press freedom" - says in a recent report on Internet surveillance, the situation in the country - where there are some 15,000 Internet users - is "very serious."
In January 2002, Ibrahim Lutfy, Mohamed Zaki, Ahmad Didi and Fathimath Nisreen were arrested for producing Sandhaanu - an email newsletter about human right violations and corruption.
Accused of "defamation" and "trying to overthrow the government," Lutfy, Zaki and Didi were sentenced to life imprisonment on July 7, 2002. Nisreen, Lutfy's assistant, who was 22 at the time of the trial, was given a 10-year prison term.
Lutfy escaped when he was taken to Sri Lanka in South Asia for the treatment of an eye problem. He is now based in Switzerland where he has been given refugee status.
"The Internet has a bad reputation," says RSF secretary-general Robert Menard. "With authoritarian regimes, that's no surprise."
The information technology (IT) sector believes the Internet is often one of the first victims of a political clamp-down. "There are reasons why an illegal or an unpopular regime would want to take over the Internet," says New Delhi-based IT consultant Raj Mathur.
"Any such regime would want to control the dissemination of information," says Mathur. "And the Internet is one of the easiest ways of spreading information," he stresses.
The Internet, the experts agree, is a potent political tool. "It is not just cheap but easy to access," Mathur emphasizes. "And anything that is posted on the Net can reach millions of people at once," he says.
RSF stresses that it will continue to campaign against the restrictions imposed on the media in the Maldives.
"We'll alert medias and governments on the political situation of this "paradise" island," says Pain.
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