Police used force to disperse hundreds of protesters in the Maldives following demonstrations against the country’s president.
Dozens were injured after authorities used batons and tear-gas to evict around 400 protesters from the capital Male, after a peaceful demonstration on Saturday night turned into a riot. The protesters were calling for the resignation of President Mohamed Nasheed because of the worsening economy.
Opposition spokesman Mohammed Shareef said that police moved in to disperse protesters on Sunday morning.
“The demonstration was crushed brutally,” he told AFP. “At least 30 of our supporters were arrested including a parliamentarian, and scores of women supporters.”
President Nasheed took office in 2008 in the country’s first election following 30 years of autocratic rule.
The president’s office said that demonstrations were organized by Z-DRP, a faction of the main opposition Dhivehi Rayyithunge Party (DRP) which is led by the country’s former ruler, Maumoon Abdul Gayoom.
A spokesman for Maldives police, Ahmed Shiyam told the Al Jazeera news channel that the crowd had turned violent.
“After we received some complaints from residents, the police approached demonstrators to tell them to return home, and they began throwing stones and bricks at the policemen,” Shiyam was quoted as saying.
“We had to use tear gas and batons to break up the crowd as it began smashing shop windows.”
The Maldives is an archipelago of over 1,100 islands in the Indian Ocean about twice the size of Washington, DC. The economy of the country is largely driven by tourism, and Islam is the only official religion for the entire population of 314,000. There are also about 80,000 foreign workers.
