UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Navi Pillay. Photo: Reuters
WHEN the UN's High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay
visited the Maldives late last year, she urged that the practice of
flogging women for having sex outside marriage - and very rarely
punishing men in the same way - should be abolished.
''This practice constitutes one of the most inhumane and degrading forms of violence against women,'' she told local reporters.
The response was as vicious as it was unexpected.
The next day protestors rallied outside the UN building,
carrying placards that read ''Ban UN'', ''Islam is not a toy'' and
threatened to ''Flog Pillay''
Similar protests have followed, and a growing religious
divide between moderate and fundamentalist Muslims - constitutionally,
all Maldivians are obliged to follow Islam - has led many to question
the direction of religion in the Maldives and, in particular, the place
of women in Maldivian society.
Anecdotal reports suggest female circumcision is undergoing a resurgence in the Maldives, particularly on the outer islands.
Maldives President Mohamed Nasheed conceded an emergent
religious fundamentalism had changed the way women were viewed, and were
treated, in his country.
He said he was distressed by groups who campaigned for girls to be circumcised or to be kept home from school.
''We were a matriarchal society, our inheritance, also, in the past was from women,'' he told The Age.
''But with a new kind of radical Islam, the perceptions some of them
have on women are not familiar to many Maldivians.'' Shadiya Ibrahim, a
member of the newly formed Gender Advocacy Working Group and a long-time
campaigner for women's rights, said the society was growing steadily
more oppressive of women.
''Day by day, it is becoming harder for women to live in this country,'' Ms Ibrahim said.
She told The Age the practice of flogging women for
extramarital sex was common. ''It happens everywhere. Normally, this
punishment is given when you give birth, which is why it is almost
always women. If you have 140-odd women being flogged, you have only two
or three men.''
Aneesa Ahmed, President of advocacy organisation HOPE for
Women, said a domestic violence bill before the Maldivian parliament,
would raise awareness of an issue rarely discussed in the Maldives.
But the legislation has been in parliament more than 14 months.
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