Hilath Rasheed, the first openly gay and secular blogger in the Maldives, was about to walk through his front door one afternoon last year when he felt the box-cutter slice through his neck.
It took a moment to notice the blood pouring down his shirt. As his attackers sauntered off, Hilath staggered to the main road, clutching the loose skin over his throat with one hand. He managed to hitch a lift to hospital from a horrified motorcyclist. When a doctor in the emergency room asked him to move his hand away, a policeman and nurse fainted.
Following a miraculous recovery – doctors told him there was less than a 1 per cent chance of surviving such an attack – Hilath, 35, now lives in exile in Sri Lanka. He misses home, but a country where it is illegal to be non-Muslim and violent forms of religious fundamentalism are on the rise is no place for a homosexual secularist, he says.
(...)
Recent weeks have put a spotlight on Islamic fundamentalism in the Maldives after a 15-year-old girl who had been repeatedly raped by her stepfather was sentenced to 100 lashes for "fornication". A petition by the global advocacy group Avaaz has been signed by more than two million people demanding a tourist boycott until the flogging sentence is annulled.
(...)
Few of the million visitors to the Maldives each year see this side of the country. Most are whisked off to uninhabited resort islands before even setting foot on the crowded, alcohol-free capital of Malé. But the flogging case was not an isolated incident – Islamic hardliners, many trained in Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, have become a shadowy but powerful presence here. They are blamed for a raid on the national museum last year in which a priceless collection of ancient Buddhist artefacts was destroyed. They are also thought to be behind the killing in October of a member of parliament who had spoken out against extremism. The police have made little progress in either case. Full story...
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It took a moment to notice the blood pouring down his shirt. As his attackers sauntered off, Hilath staggered to the main road, clutching the loose skin over his throat with one hand. He managed to hitch a lift to hospital from a horrified motorcyclist. When a doctor in the emergency room asked him to move his hand away, a policeman and nurse fainted.
Following a miraculous recovery – doctors told him there was less than a 1 per cent chance of surviving such an attack – Hilath, 35, now lives in exile in Sri Lanka. He misses home, but a country where it is illegal to be non-Muslim and violent forms of religious fundamentalism are on the rise is no place for a homosexual secularist, he says.
(...)
Recent weeks have put a spotlight on Islamic fundamentalism in the Maldives after a 15-year-old girl who had been repeatedly raped by her stepfather was sentenced to 100 lashes for "fornication". A petition by the global advocacy group Avaaz has been signed by more than two million people demanding a tourist boycott until the flogging sentence is annulled.
(...)
Few of the million visitors to the Maldives each year see this side of the country. Most are whisked off to uninhabited resort islands before even setting foot on the crowded, alcohol-free capital of Malé. But the flogging case was not an isolated incident – Islamic hardliners, many trained in Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, have become a shadowy but powerful presence here. They are blamed for a raid on the national museum last year in which a priceless collection of ancient Buddhist artefacts was destroyed. They are also thought to be behind the killing in October of a member of parliament who had spoken out against extremism. The police have made little progress in either case. Full story...
Related posts:
- 15-year-old rape victim in Maldives sentenced to 100 lashes for pre-marital sex.
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- Indian school teacher brutally raped in Maldives...
- Maldives police accused of sexually harassing female detainees...
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- Maldives closes hundreds of luxury resort spas for being "anti-Islamic"
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