The final session of training for a batch of ten police officers from Maldives, who had enrolled in Mysore police academy, was conducted by Karnataka Coastal Security Police (CSP) in Mangalore on Monday.
As Maldives is an island, the batch of police officers were trained in coastal protection techniques through drills planned in Mangalore, Malpe, Karwar and other coastal security police stations.
In 1988, Maldives islands attacked by LTTE cadres.
Maldives government successfully fought the LTTE cadres with assistance from Indian army. Extending the goodwill, Maldives government signed an agreement seeking India’s assistance to train its police officers.
The police officers from Maldives have been trained in Maharashtra and other states. This is the third batch that has opted to train in state Police Academy. The batch includes an officer of rank of DySP, three chief Inspectors and six sub inspectors.
The initial training was given in Maldives and the officers were sent to India for higher training, Maldives police officer Mohammed Nadeem told mediapersons.
Maldives like coastal districts is humid and faces common problems like drugs smuggling, terrorism among others, Nadeem added.
Source: www.expressbuzz.com
Wednesday, October 14, 2009
Monday, October 12, 2009
Maldives International Boat Show 2009 Ship builders from Sri Lanka will also compete
The 3rd Maldives International Boat Show,will commence here today,with the participation of several Sri Lankan companies.
Managing Director of South Asia Exhibition Services, Arjun Dharmadasa, told the Island Financial Review, that big names in Sri Lanka,such as Solar Marine Lanka,Neil Marine,Barramundi Boat Yard and BTI,will be competing with companies from around the globe,including Europe,Australia and the Middle East.
Forty boat builders and suppliers worldwide,would be showcasing a variety of Kayaks,Super Yachts,modern technology,marine products and allied services,he said.
Maldivian Transport Minister Mohammed Aslam is scheduled to declare open the event.The Guest of Honour would be the Fisheries Minister Ibrahim Didi.Maldivian President Mohammed Nasheed,is also expected to visit the Show.
Maldivian High Commissioner in Sri Lanka, Ali Hussein Didi,said that a huge industry awaits Sri Lankan boat manufacturers,who participate in MIBS 2009.
"Sri Lanka has shared its resources with the Maldives in various fields and its boat builders,can now assist us to manufacture the boats we require",he said.
"The main source of transport,to and from the 200 inhabited islands in the Maldives,is by boat and this has created a big industry,with immense benefits for those willing to take up the challenge."
Maldives,appreciates the sharing and caring of its Sri Lankan brothers and sisters.The fact that MIBS 2009,is being organized by South Asia Exhibition Services,which is a Sri Lankan company,should be an incentive for greater participation by its business sector,in Maldives economic development.Our,status as a tax haven for investors,is an added attraction,Didi said.
"It was in 2007,that SAES Director,Imran Hassan sought approval to hold the inaugural MIBS in Male",he said "I was in charge of the Male Municipality at the time.Looking back I have no regrets in approving the application,because MIBS has proved to be a great success."
Commenting on a proposal by Neil Marine,that a sail boat service be started between Sri Lanka and the Maldives,Didi said that it was a novel idea.Asked,if he,as High Commissioner would pursue the project,Didi said that an Indian ocean sail boat service, would certainly have its attractions and needs to be explored.
Source: island.lk
Managing Director of South Asia Exhibition Services, Arjun Dharmadasa, told the Island Financial Review, that big names in Sri Lanka,such as Solar Marine Lanka,Neil Marine,Barramundi Boat Yard and BTI,will be competing with companies from around the globe,including Europe,Australia and the Middle East.
Forty boat builders and suppliers worldwide,would be showcasing a variety of Kayaks,Super Yachts,modern technology,marine products and allied services,he said.
Maldivian Transport Minister Mohammed Aslam is scheduled to declare open the event.The Guest of Honour would be the Fisheries Minister Ibrahim Didi.Maldivian President Mohammed Nasheed,is also expected to visit the Show.
Maldivian High Commissioner in Sri Lanka, Ali Hussein Didi,said that a huge industry awaits Sri Lankan boat manufacturers,who participate in MIBS 2009.
"Sri Lanka has shared its resources with the Maldives in various fields and its boat builders,can now assist us to manufacture the boats we require",he said.
"The main source of transport,to and from the 200 inhabited islands in the Maldives,is by boat and this has created a big industry,with immense benefits for those willing to take up the challenge."
Maldives,appreciates the sharing and caring of its Sri Lankan brothers and sisters.The fact that MIBS 2009,is being organized by South Asia Exhibition Services,which is a Sri Lankan company,should be an incentive for greater participation by its business sector,in Maldives economic development.Our,status as a tax haven for investors,is an added attraction,Didi said.
"It was in 2007,that SAES Director,Imran Hassan sought approval to hold the inaugural MIBS in Male",he said "I was in charge of the Male Municipality at the time.Looking back I have no regrets in approving the application,because MIBS has proved to be a great success."
Commenting on a proposal by Neil Marine,that a sail boat service be started between Sri Lanka and the Maldives,Didi said that it was a novel idea.Asked,if he,as High Commissioner would pursue the project,Didi said that an Indian ocean sail boat service, would certainly have its attractions and needs to be explored.
Source: island.lk
No danger from Al Qaeda to Maldives – Dr. Shaheed
Minister of Foreign Affairs Dr Ahmed Shaheed has said that Maldives will not face any dangers from terrorist organizations like Al Qaeda owing to Maldives’ announcement to strengthen diplomatic ties with Israel Dr. Shaheed said this responding to a question asked by Miadhu Daily.
Highlighting the points noted in the letter sent by Dhivehi Qaumee Party (DQP) to President Mohamed Nasheed, Dr Shaheed said that it was a “crazy” thought that Al Qaeda would attack Maldives because of its ties with Israel.
“How many people have we invited to Maldives, who were hot terror targets? Kadirmagar was a guest of the government. How many times did he visit Maldives? Kumaaratunga came to Maldives three times. Yaasir Arafat also came to Maldives. We never saw any bomb blasts when they came here. Where would we run back then if such a terror attack happened? American ambassador always visits Maldives. That’s a high target but nothing has happened so far. So we don’t face any such threats just because we have decided to openly conduct diplomatic relations with Israel.” said Dr.Shaheed
Rejecting the false conclusions derived by DQP that we may face attacks due to relations with Israel, Foreign Minister said that from the actions of Al Qaeda, it is clear that they do not attack countries which establish relations with Israel.
Dr Shaheed further said, “We have to first understand just where Al Qaeda is operating. Afghanistan is their base and their presence is wide spread in Pakistan. Then, we hear from news that there are Al Qaeda cells in Irag and that they may travel to Comoros islands. Al Qaeda exists in Indonesia, they may go to Malaysia, Singapore, India and they are making their nest in Bangladesh. There maybe Al Qaeda presence in Sri Lanka and Maldives. But have you heard of any attacks to Israel from these people?”
Further explaining why there won’t be any dangers from terrorists to Maldives, Dr.Shaheed said, “When Al Qaeda attacked Indonesia who did they target? Their first target was Americans and the second target was just Muslims. Among Muslims they target people who do not accept their ideologies. So we can say that Al Qaeda is not attacking Jews or Israel or countries which establish relations with Israel but to Muslims who do not heed to their fundamentalists ideas.”
In the letter sent by DQP to President Nasheed concerning Maldives – Israel ties, Dr. Shaheed’s name also cropped up.
“Speaking truthfully, I have to say that when I was the Foreign Minister in Maumoon’s government, we had much closer ties with Israel than now.”
He further noted that the number of Israeli’s and Jews coming to Maldives has not decreased before or even now and that a number of Jews has even invested in Maldives.
Field visits were carried out to the various units of Forensic Department and different tools used in forensic work were also shown. The units visited were forensic Laboratory, Finger Print and Document and Digital Evidence unit.
Source: www.miadhu.com.mv
Sunday, October 11, 2009
Can Mohamed Nasheed save the Maldives – and the rest of the world – from the rising seas?
The Maldives president roused the Tory faithful at Manchester last week. Next Saturday he will hold an underwater cabinet meeting to highlight the dangers of global warming
On a humid, airless night last March, Mohamed Nasheed – the 42-year-old president of the Maldives – opened up his palace in Male for an unusual public event. A projection screen was hung at the back of a ballroom and brightly coloured chairs were arranged in rows. Then the audience was shown in: lawyers, cabinet members, presidential advisers and journalists, along with a sizeable chunk of Maldives society.
Nasheed, dressed in an open-neck striped shirt and dark chinos, sat in the front row. The lights dimmed and scenes of environmental mayhem unfolded on the screen: Sydney Opera House in flames, ice sheets crashing into the seas, deserts spreading and forests burning.
Thus the people of the Maldives had their first glimpse of Franny Armstrong's documentary, The Age of Stupid, in which Pete Postlethwaite plays the last man left alive in a post-apocalyptic, climate-fried world.
The film is scrappy but passionate, a classic example of agit-prop cinema. But in the dripping night heat of Male, The Age of Stupid had a very different effect on its audience than it has had in the west. Its message seemed direct and immediate, a call to arms. Nor is it hard to understand such emotion. The islands that make up the Maldives are threatened with complete inundation, probably by the end of the century, as ice sheets melt and sea levels rise catastrophically, thanks to global warming.
The islands stand less than a couple of metres above sea level. In fact, their highest point, at 2.3 metres, is the "lowest high point" for any nation on Earth. It won't take much to inundate them. Hence the impact of the film which left its audience desperate for reassurance from their president as he moved to a microphone stand in the centre of the ballroom.
"If man can walk on the moon, we can unite to defeat our common carbon enemy," Nasheed told them. "And so today, I announce that the Maldives will become the first carbon-neutral country in the world."
The announcement was a typically slick PR exercise by Nasheed. He had only been propelled into power a few weeks earlier in a national vote that had made him "the world's first democratically elected president of a 100% Muslim country", as he puts it.
Yet he was already revealing himself to be an adroit and effective operator. The former investigative journalist, jailed six times by his authoritarian predecessor, Maumoon Abdul Gayoom, and made an Amnesty prisoner of conscience in 1991, has begun making waves – in every sense.
Apart from his pledge to turn the Maldives – a collection of atolls and islands in the Indian Ocean that have become one of the world's most luxurious tourist resorts – into a carbon-neutral state, he has revealed that he has embarked on an ambitious campaign to buy up land – in India, Sri Lanka or Australia – on which he will build a New Maldives to replace the old one when it disappears under the waves. This will be achieved by using the country's vast tourism revenues to establish "a sovereign wealth fund" to relocate its people.
"Our actions will be a template, an action kit for other nations across the world," he said recently.
Last week Nasheed – or "Anni" as he is generally known – was at it again. First, he wowed the Conservative party conference in Manchester with a flawlessly delivered speech – typically presented without notes – on the importance of centre-right politics when it comes to saving the world. Then he topped this performance by announcing that this Saturday he will chair the world's first underwater cabinet meeting.
The aim of this remarkable plan is to raise global consciousness about the issues that must be hammered out at the UN climate change conference in Copenhagen this December, he says. Thus Nasheed's ministers will don wetsuits and air tanks in six days' time, gather in the shallow waters off the island of Girifushi, and then get down to the business of governing the Maldives underwater – mainly by communicating through hand gestures. One minister, for education, has already had to pull out after diving experts announced he was not fit enough to take part.
The meeting will, as some observers have noted rather sardonically, bring politics in the Maldives, literally, to a new low. As one official remarked: "The paperwork should be challenging if nothing else."
The idea of an underwater cabinet meeting is certainly gimmicky but it will focus attention on a nation that stands to suffer more than any other from global warming. The Maldives could, quite simply, be wiped off the face of the Earth. "Unless something is done, my grandchildren will find these islands have completely disappeared under the waves," Nasheed said last week. Hence those undersea meetings and those carefully organised screenings.
Mohamed Nasheed was born in Male in May 1967, the son of a prosperous businessman. He was educated at Majeediyya secondary school in the Maldives before continuing his studies at a school in Colombo, Sri Lanka, in 1981 and then, a year later, at Dauntsey's school in Wiltshire where he sat his A-levels. Afterwards, he took a degree in marine studies at Liverpool John Moores University.
He returned to the Maldives in the late 1980s – and ran straight into trouble. He founded his own magazine, Sangu, and published a series of investigative reports about President Gayoom's regime, which he accused of being corrupt and guilty of a string of human rights abuses. After the fifth issue, Gayoom had had enough. Police raided the magazine's offices and arrested Nasheed. The 23-year-old spent several months in solitary confinement, accused of attempting to overthrow the government.
These allegations and bouts of harassment were repeated over the next 10 years. "I have personally experienced the worst that a malicious regime can contrive in order to suppress its people," he told the Conservative conference last week. "I was imprisoned on 16 different occasions and spent a total of six years in jail. Of these, I spent 18 months in solitary confinement."
The saddest aspect was that he missed the births of his two daughters, he said. "It was a tough reminder of a fundamental truth… that the freedom of the individual should not be destroyed at the whim of an over-mighty state." The remark, predictability, sent the Tory conference into ovation overdrive. But then Nasheed knows how to work a crowd, if nothing else.
In 2005, Nasheed fled the Maldives to Britain. You could "always talk to a western government about democracy", he said. He returned to his homeland after a few months, however, and in 2008 stood against Gayoom – then Asia's longest serving president – in the Maldives first ever democratic elections. Nashood won, with 54% of the votes.
He has since shown a striking sureness of action, though his short reign has not been without its critics. His remarks in Manchester last week, aimed to gee along his centre-right allies, together with his plans for underwater cabinet meetings and for moving the entire population to a promised land free of the threat of inundation, have led to accusations that he is a little light on political substance and too gimmicky for his own good.
Nasheed is scaring off investors, say opponents who include his predecessor, Gayoom. "This man is so hellbent on hogging the media limelight that he is forgetting to do his job, which is to run the country," said a spokesman for the former president.
Such criticism reeks of sour grapes, of course. Nevertheless, it is questionable just how far Nasheed can go for his country. Just who will sell him the land where he can build his New Maldives? And just what good will it do to make his nation carbon-neutral? Providing answers to these questions will not be easy, though in many ways they distract from the real purpose of Nasheed's plans.
We are all Maldivians, he argues. Every nation on the planet is threatened today by global warming. The Maldives and its inhabitants just happen to be first in line for the great calamity when it arrives. They may survive more than 100 years, of course, if rises in sea level remain modest. However, the oceans will continue to rise throughout next century and probably the one after it, scientists warn. The islands will therefore have to face their watery fate either in the 21st century or the 22nd, or even in the 23rd.
The actions of Mohamed Nasheed are therefore aimed at stimulating action by the west in the hope his country can reap some collateral benefit when a programme for dealing effectively with climate change is eventually hammered out. As he says: "If scientists are not able to save the Maldives, then they won't be able to save the world."
Source: guardian.co.uk
On a humid, airless night last March, Mohamed Nasheed – the 42-year-old president of the Maldives – opened up his palace in Male for an unusual public event. A projection screen was hung at the back of a ballroom and brightly coloured chairs were arranged in rows. Then the audience was shown in: lawyers, cabinet members, presidential advisers and journalists, along with a sizeable chunk of Maldives society.
Nasheed, dressed in an open-neck striped shirt and dark chinos, sat in the front row. The lights dimmed and scenes of environmental mayhem unfolded on the screen: Sydney Opera House in flames, ice sheets crashing into the seas, deserts spreading and forests burning.
Thus the people of the Maldives had their first glimpse of Franny Armstrong's documentary, The Age of Stupid, in which Pete Postlethwaite plays the last man left alive in a post-apocalyptic, climate-fried world.
The film is scrappy but passionate, a classic example of agit-prop cinema. But in the dripping night heat of Male, The Age of Stupid had a very different effect on its audience than it has had in the west. Its message seemed direct and immediate, a call to arms. Nor is it hard to understand such emotion. The islands that make up the Maldives are threatened with complete inundation, probably by the end of the century, as ice sheets melt and sea levels rise catastrophically, thanks to global warming.
The islands stand less than a couple of metres above sea level. In fact, their highest point, at 2.3 metres, is the "lowest high point" for any nation on Earth. It won't take much to inundate them. Hence the impact of the film which left its audience desperate for reassurance from their president as he moved to a microphone stand in the centre of the ballroom.
"If man can walk on the moon, we can unite to defeat our common carbon enemy," Nasheed told them. "And so today, I announce that the Maldives will become the first carbon-neutral country in the world."
The announcement was a typically slick PR exercise by Nasheed. He had only been propelled into power a few weeks earlier in a national vote that had made him "the world's first democratically elected president of a 100% Muslim country", as he puts it.
Yet he was already revealing himself to be an adroit and effective operator. The former investigative journalist, jailed six times by his authoritarian predecessor, Maumoon Abdul Gayoom, and made an Amnesty prisoner of conscience in 1991, has begun making waves – in every sense.
Apart from his pledge to turn the Maldives – a collection of atolls and islands in the Indian Ocean that have become one of the world's most luxurious tourist resorts – into a carbon-neutral state, he has revealed that he has embarked on an ambitious campaign to buy up land – in India, Sri Lanka or Australia – on which he will build a New Maldives to replace the old one when it disappears under the waves. This will be achieved by using the country's vast tourism revenues to establish "a sovereign wealth fund" to relocate its people.
"Our actions will be a template, an action kit for other nations across the world," he said recently.
Last week Nasheed – or "Anni" as he is generally known – was at it again. First, he wowed the Conservative party conference in Manchester with a flawlessly delivered speech – typically presented without notes – on the importance of centre-right politics when it comes to saving the world. Then he topped this performance by announcing that this Saturday he will chair the world's first underwater cabinet meeting.
The aim of this remarkable plan is to raise global consciousness about the issues that must be hammered out at the UN climate change conference in Copenhagen this December, he says. Thus Nasheed's ministers will don wetsuits and air tanks in six days' time, gather in the shallow waters off the island of Girifushi, and then get down to the business of governing the Maldives underwater – mainly by communicating through hand gestures. One minister, for education, has already had to pull out after diving experts announced he was not fit enough to take part.
The meeting will, as some observers have noted rather sardonically, bring politics in the Maldives, literally, to a new low. As one official remarked: "The paperwork should be challenging if nothing else."
The idea of an underwater cabinet meeting is certainly gimmicky but it will focus attention on a nation that stands to suffer more than any other from global warming. The Maldives could, quite simply, be wiped off the face of the Earth. "Unless something is done, my grandchildren will find these islands have completely disappeared under the waves," Nasheed said last week. Hence those undersea meetings and those carefully organised screenings.
Mohamed Nasheed was born in Male in May 1967, the son of a prosperous businessman. He was educated at Majeediyya secondary school in the Maldives before continuing his studies at a school in Colombo, Sri Lanka, in 1981 and then, a year later, at Dauntsey's school in Wiltshire where he sat his A-levels. Afterwards, he took a degree in marine studies at Liverpool John Moores University.
He returned to the Maldives in the late 1980s – and ran straight into trouble. He founded his own magazine, Sangu, and published a series of investigative reports about President Gayoom's regime, which he accused of being corrupt and guilty of a string of human rights abuses. After the fifth issue, Gayoom had had enough. Police raided the magazine's offices and arrested Nasheed. The 23-year-old spent several months in solitary confinement, accused of attempting to overthrow the government.
These allegations and bouts of harassment were repeated over the next 10 years. "I have personally experienced the worst that a malicious regime can contrive in order to suppress its people," he told the Conservative conference last week. "I was imprisoned on 16 different occasions and spent a total of six years in jail. Of these, I spent 18 months in solitary confinement."
The saddest aspect was that he missed the births of his two daughters, he said. "It was a tough reminder of a fundamental truth… that the freedom of the individual should not be destroyed at the whim of an over-mighty state." The remark, predictability, sent the Tory conference into ovation overdrive. But then Nasheed knows how to work a crowd, if nothing else.
In 2005, Nasheed fled the Maldives to Britain. You could "always talk to a western government about democracy", he said. He returned to his homeland after a few months, however, and in 2008 stood against Gayoom – then Asia's longest serving president – in the Maldives first ever democratic elections. Nashood won, with 54% of the votes.
He has since shown a striking sureness of action, though his short reign has not been without its critics. His remarks in Manchester last week, aimed to gee along his centre-right allies, together with his plans for underwater cabinet meetings and for moving the entire population to a promised land free of the threat of inundation, have led to accusations that he is a little light on political substance and too gimmicky for his own good.
Nasheed is scaring off investors, say opponents who include his predecessor, Gayoom. "This man is so hellbent on hogging the media limelight that he is forgetting to do his job, which is to run the country," said a spokesman for the former president.
Such criticism reeks of sour grapes, of course. Nevertheless, it is questionable just how far Nasheed can go for his country. Just who will sell him the land where he can build his New Maldives? And just what good will it do to make his nation carbon-neutral? Providing answers to these questions will not be easy, though in many ways they distract from the real purpose of Nasheed's plans.
We are all Maldivians, he argues. Every nation on the planet is threatened today by global warming. The Maldives and its inhabitants just happen to be first in line for the great calamity when it arrives. They may survive more than 100 years, of course, if rises in sea level remain modest. However, the oceans will continue to rise throughout next century and probably the one after it, scientists warn. The islands will therefore have to face their watery fate either in the 21st century or the 22nd, or even in the 23rd.
The actions of Mohamed Nasheed are therefore aimed at stimulating action by the west in the hope his country can reap some collateral benefit when a programme for dealing effectively with climate change is eventually hammered out. As he says: "If scientists are not able to save the Maldives, then they won't be able to save the world."
Source: guardian.co.uk
Tuesday, October 6, 2009
Maldives cabinet to go underwater
The government of the Maldives is to hold a cabinet meeting underwater to highlight the threat of global warming.
President Mohamed Nasheed and his cabinet will sign a document during the 17 October dive, calling for global cuts in carbon emissions.
An adviser to the president told the BBC the dive was "a bit of fun" but the cabinet intended to send a serious message about rising sea levels.
The low-lying island nation says it faces being wiped out if oceans rise.
The adviser, who asked not to be named, said ministers would communicate during the meeting using hand signals and waterproof boards and pens.
"Obviously the hand signals that divers can use are limited, so the amount of work the cabinet are going to get done will be limited," he said.
"But they will call on all nations - rich and poor, developed and developing - to take climate change seriously."
All cabinet members bar one - who has a medical condition that rules out diving - have been in training at a military base on one of the country's many islands.
Mr Nasheed, who is already a qualified diver, will also hold a press conference in the water.
While underwater, the government will sign a document ahead of the UN Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen in December, calling on all nations to cut down their carbon emissions.
World leaders at the summit are aiming to create a new agreement to replace the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, which expires in 2012.
'Friendly' sharks
The dive is being held to mark the 350 International Day of Climate Change Action on 24 October.
The day's organisers say they want to highlight the risks of rising carbon in the atmosphere and encourage world leaders to commit to reducing carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere to 350 parts per million.
That is the amount some scientists say is the safe upper limit to avoid irreparable damage to the environment.
Some 80% of the Maldives archipelago is less than a metre above sea level and is extremely vulnerable to any rise in sea levels as a result of global warming melting the polar ice caps.
Officials say that by the time the Maldives feels the full effect of climate change, it will be too late to save other countries.
Mr Nasheed has warned that the entire nation may have to find a new home if the oceans rise as predicted by the UN.
The president's adviser told the BBC that although the country's government was almost all going to be underwater at the same time, there was no real danger.
Each minister will be accompanied by a diving instructor and a military minder and the local sharks were "friendly", he said.
Source: news.bbc.co.uk
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