Violence in the Maldives as Protests Continue

A few days after the Fourth of July, the United States ambassador to the Maldives, Patricia A. Butenis, held her annual celebration of America’s independence at the Traders Hotel in the capital, Male. She invited the people she invites every year including Mohamed Nasheed, the former Maldivian president, and Hamid Abdul Ghafoor, a minister in his political party, the Maldivian Democratic Party.

“But how can we go for your celebrations when we’ve been thrown out of government illegally?” Mr. Ghafoor recalled wondering. A celebration of independence was too bizarre for Mr. Ghafoor, who, along with party supporters, maintains that Mr. Nasheed was ousted from power in a coup when he resigned in February.

Instead, they marched that day, July 8, toward Republican Square – which Mr. Ghafoor describes as the Maldives’ Tahrir Square – to protest five months of the coup. And they haven’t stopped since, often clashing with police in full riot gear.

On Thursday night, violence escalated in Male as police arrested 45 demonstrators.

“The police have responded violently, baton-charging demonstrators, using pepper spray and reportedly firing rubber bullets at unarmed protesters,” the Maldivian Democratic Party said in a statement.

The police deny using rubber bullets and say that minimum force was used to disperse protesters.

The Maldives, a group of islands in the Indian Ocean known mainly for its luxury tourist resorts and which got democracy as recently as 2008, has been in political turmoil since February, when Mr. Nasheed resigned. The demonstrators are calling for elections this year while the current administration wants to hold them next year when they’re due. The Commonwealth group and the European Union appear to back early polls.

The Maldivian Democratic Party has over the past few days released photographs of injured demonstrators from this week’s protests on its Twitter page.

Before the protest on Thursday, 91 people had been arrested this week. Along with Thursday’s arrests, 69 people are still in custody, according to the police.

The police say they’ve made arrests because the protests weren’t peaceful.

“Every day they’ve been throwing chili powder and crude oil packets at police,” said a police spokesman, Hassan Haneef, adding that protesters had also been assaulting police, breaking through security barricades and damaging storefronts.

A police station on one of the islands, Noonu Atoll Holhudhoo, was also torched early Thursday morning, Mr. Haneef said.

The current administration is critical of the protests.

“Every night the former president is calling out a mob on the streets,” said Abbas Adil Riza, a spokesman at the president’s office. “He wants a political deal to escape punishment for crimes he committed during his tenure.”

The police reported that nine officers were injured in Male, two critically. Protesters also torched a police motorbike and van Thursday night, Mr. Haneef said, and a car belonging to the minister of gender, family and human rights, Uza Fathimath Dhiyana Saeed, was damaged on Wednesday.

Ms. Butenis, the U.S. ambassador, said she was alarmed at the recent reports of violence. “Intimidation of protesters, and in particular attacks on journalists, threaten Maldivians’ freedom of expression and their right to information, and only contribute to instability,” she said.

Mr. Nasheed, the former president, said Friday through his Twitter feed that the Maldives’ security forces were publicly threatening to attack a minister of his political party. He also called for the international community to urge the police to show restraint.

The Committee to Protect Journalists, which is in New York, has reported that at least four journalists have been attacked by protesters and the police during the demonstrations in the capital this week. The police said that journalists had been arrested for disrupting police duty but were later released.