In mid-April, young people took to the streets of Male, the capital of the Maldives to protest the country’s culture of political impunity and nepotism. The trigger for these protests was a case in which a young woman was discovered unmoving on the tin roof of a warehouse in Malé, having fallen from a nine-storey apartment building next door where there had been a party. That building was co-owned by the minister for transport, and the minister’s nephews and members of the president’s office team were part of the group at the party with the young woman that night.

In the following days, the police were tight-lipped about the investigation but said that the case had no connection to the ruling party. People who had come out on the streets continued to protest. In a piece for Himal on this case, the journalist JJ Robinson wrote that that they were calling out police incompetence and a culture of victim-blaming, but overwhelmingly the impunity allowed to those with connections to power, calling it the biggest explosion of discontent since the Maldives’ president Mohamed Muizzu came to power in October 2023.

In this episode of State of Southasia with Nayantara Narayanan, Robinson describes the Maldives’ system of almost corporatised corruption, culture of political intimidation and of control through gangs.

This episode is also available on:

🎧 YouTube: https://youtu.be/vAAif2Z-faw

🎧 Apple podcasts: https://apple.co/4dTWmCd

🎧 Website: https://www.himalmag.com/podcasts/maldives-muizzu-corruption-politics-nepotism

Episode notes

JJ Robinson’s recommendations:

- The Maldive Islanders: A Study Of The Popular Culture Of An Ancient Ocean Kingdom – Xavier Romero-Frias (non-fiction)

- Maldives: Islamic Republic, Tropical Autocracy – JJ Robinson (non-fiction)

- Descent into Paradise – Daniel Bosley (non-fiction)

- The Island President – Jon Shenk (documentary)

(Bonus recommendation – Rogue One: A Star Wars story The fictional planet Scarif was filmed on the Laamu atoll and the stormtroopers were played by members of the Maldives military.)

Further reading from Himal’s archives:

- Youth protests take on the Maldives’s political culture after a woman’s fall
- Interview: The Maldives makes a turn with new president Mohamed Muizzu
- Strains between Malé and the atolls in the Maldives
- The Maldives’ ruling party is fighting itself and the opposition in the race for president
- Unpacking the Maldives’ Transitional Justice Act

Himal Southasian is Southasia’s first and only regional news and analysis magazine. Stretching from Afghanistan to Burma, from Tibet to the Maldives, this region of more than 1.4 billion people shares great swathes of interlocking geography, culture and history. Yet today neighbouring countries can barely talk to one another, much less speak in a common voice. For three decades, Himal Southasian has strived to define, nurture, and amplify that voice.

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