Maldives Opposition Calls Off Protest Rally After Arrests

Plans for a rally to call for radical reforms in the Maldives were abandoned yesterday amid widespread arrests and claims of violence and harassment by the security forces.

More than 100 people are understood to have been arrested as tensions grew on the islands, with the government claiming that the opposition had been planning a violent insurrection.

The Maldivian Democratic party (MDP) said last night it had unilaterally cancelled the protests planned for yesterday in the capital of Male because of fears for the safety of protesters who had been arriving from the islands. The demonstration was to call for faster reforms by a government that has been led for the past 28 years by President Maumoon Gayoom and has been the subject of criticism by Amnesty International over its human rights record.

The government claimed that there were plans for violence and a possible coup attempt. It described earlier arrests as an attempt to "break the backbone" of the protests and spoke of a plot to use arson attacks to destabilise the government.

"The government have clearly shown that they will use every available means to prevent this assembly, including jeopardising people's safety and lives," the MDP's chairman, Mohamed Nasheed, said yesterday. "We feel very strongly about the need for faster and better constitutional reform. But if we proceed with this gathering, our supporters are at the mercy of the government's violence. We cannot compromise their welfare.

"They [the government] detained an entire boatload of people from Addu, taking the number of detainees to 102. It's also very worrying that they have told journalists and observers to leave the country and asked diplomatic missions based in Colombo not to come to Male right now."

The author Hari Kunzru, who is in the Indian Ocean islands on behalf of the Guardian, said police had used pepper sprays and batons to disperse people, ejecting opposition supporters from cafes and harassing those who spoke to journalists.

Sarah Mahir, of the Friends of Maldives, said last night from Male: "It was the right decision to cancel the demonstration because it probably would have ended in casualties. Sadly, the government doesn't respect the freedom of assembly."