Maldives police raid private TV station after declaring emergency

MALE, Maldives – Police in the Maldives on Friday, November 6,  raided a private television station in connection with a YouTube video that allegedly threatened President Abdulla Yameen, the network’s managing director said.

The move came days after President Yameen imposed a state of emergency, giving wider powers to police and armed forces to arrest and suspending freedom of assembly and freedom of movement.

Police on Friday stopped Sangu TV from broadcasting and searched its studios in the capital island Male in a pre-dawn raid, removing computer hard disks.

“They have taken all the hard drives of all our computer systems,” Sangu TV Managing Director Ibrahim Waheed told reporters.

“The station has come to a complete standstill.”

Meanwhile, the main opposition Maldivian Democratic Party (MDP) said it had suspended an anti-government rally planned for later Friday.

“Because of the state of emergency we will not go ahead with today’s rally, but we will have it no sooner (than when) the state of emergency is lifted,” MDP spokesman Hamid Abdul Ghafoor told AFP.

The government denied that the imposition of a state of emergency was aimed at suppressing the opposition’s protest, planned over a week ago.

Police had accused Sangu TV of uploading a YouTube video which reportedly showed three masked men issuing a death threat to the president with the flag of the Islamic State group in the background.

The Maldivian authorities had previously dismissed the video as a fake.

The motive for the raid was not immediately clear but there are growing concerns about radicalisation in the Maldives.

Local media saying dozens of the country’s citizens have travelled to Syria and Iraq to fight with the Islamic State group and at least five are known to have died.

Political turmoil

The honeymoon island nation has been in turmoil since the country’s first democratically elected President Mohamed Nasheed was forced to step down following a mutiny in February 2012. 

The unrest heightened after Yameen had Nasheed jailed in March on a charge of “terrorism” following a rushed trial which the UN says was seriously flawed. A UN panel last month called for Nasheed’s freedom, a demand rejected by Yameen.

On Thursday, Yameen fast-tracked the impeachment of his estranged vice president Ahmed Adeeb using emergency laws and ignoring calls from the US and Britain to immediately revoke the action, restore individual freedoms and free political prisoners.

Thursday’s impeachment of Adeeb, formerly a close ally of the president, is the second in just under four months — Yameen sacked former vice president Mohamed Jameel in July.  

Jameel, who was Yameen’s running mate at the controversial November 2013 election, is still on the run after the president accused him of trying to topple the government. 

Adeeb is already under arrest accused of links to the September 28 blast aboard the presidential speed boat. Yameen was unhurt, but says it was an attempt to kill him.

Adeeb, who had a meteoric rise in politics, was also a hate figure for the main opposition MDP, which accused him of dispatching underworld gangs to launch attacks against dissidents.  – Rappler.com