Thursday
2nd May 2024
Dhivehi Edition
A Maldivian Democratic Party (MDP) activist has vandalised the outer wall of the Shaviyani Funadhoo School with the messages "India Out" and "Say No To Indian" made in black spray-paint.
According to a resident of Funadhoo (Shaviyani Atoll), the graffitti had been spray-painted by an MDP activist who lived on the island. The resident said that the activist had vandalised the school after a phone-call that he had received from Male, and that many people who lived on the island knew that he was responsible for the graffitti.
"The purpose is to give a bad name to this patriotic campaign to remove the Indian military from the Maldives", said the resident. "But that won't happen, if God wills!"
Members of the Funadhoo Island Council also believe that the act of vandalism had been committed by the local activist.
The opposition leader, former President Abdullah Yameen Abdul Gayyoom, is currently leading the "India Out" campaign which calls for the removal of all Indian military personnel and assets from the Maldives. The Solih administration has made many attempts to give the adopted grassroots campaign a bad name. The government has, on various occasions, accused the campaign as being organised and run by "drug traffickers", and has also attempted to link it to religious extremism.
Earlier last year, an anonymous Twitter user had used the "India Out" hashtag and had publicly threatened to blow up the Indian High Commission. After a brief investigation, the Twitter user had turned out to be a prominent MDP activist who had run in the MDP's 2019 parliamentary primaries. He has since gone free.
The government's initial response to the tweet had been to attempt to link it with an article published by Dhiyares, the sister-newspaper of The Maldives Journal.
The MDP and many bodies of the government have made statements and issued press releases calling for a stop to such vandalism, and that the vandalism has "instilled fear in the hearts of expatriate Indian teachers" living on the island.
The Ministry of Education had issued a press release earlier today in which they had mistaken the name of the school that had been vandalised for a school on another island. The press release had stated that "'India Out', this phrase, had been written on the wall of Shaviyani Atoll Madharusaa not much time had passed since a political leader had called for the 'India Out' slogan to be inscribed on the walls of houses".
This had been a reference to the opposition leader's call for all of the island's supporters of the "India Out" movement to write the slogan on the walls of their own houses.
Shaviyani Atoll Madharusaa is located on Kan'ditheemu (Shaviyani Atoll). Sources told The Maldives Journal that the press release had been prepared before the vandalism had occurred.