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Police Presence In Public
Gatherings
The Maldivian, Ahmed
Asim 04/04/05 -
The purpose behind the publicizing of the crowd near the tetra
pod square is to encourage the curious onlookers to converge
there to enlarge the crowd. And the rumor is spread about the
arrest of the people there to show that unlawful activities
are being carried there. These are both cheap publicity stunts
designed to encourage further trickling of the crowd to the
tetra pod square.
The MDP supporters behind these gathering have realized that
they do not enjoy the popularity to amass a large crowd. So
the only chance they will stand is to gather curious onlookers
and make it look like a big crowd as clearly learnt form the
August incident last year.
And they seem to have succeeded to some extent although the
crowd who gathered there was not what they really expected.
The average sensible Maldivian was too busy in their work to
bother about these petty things and he did not want a repeat
of the August incident of last year. The result being, who
gathered there was a group of uneducated, unemployed youth who
habitually engage in crimes, especially drug related crimes.
They have come to be popularly known as "Parteys" throughout
the country.
One of the popular pet lines of MDP is about the presence of
police in these gatherings. Given their mandate of internal
security and peace it is not surprising that police makes
their presence known as deterrence to any trouble makers who
might try to take advantage of these gatherings to create
public unrest. In the same way we also see police presence in
the football matches where there is a large crowd. We also
sometimes see that the Police have to evacuate some people off
the ground for misbehaving and we take it in its stride
because it is the right thing we had come to expect from them.
Another clear example of the presence of Police is near the
mosques at the time of Friday prayers. Among other things they
control the traffic and the parkings in these large
gatherings.
We have seen there are many reasons why the police have to
make their presence felt in public gatherings. But there is
one more unique reason why we see a Police presence in the
tetra pod area. The majority of the people gathering there are
Parteys and many of them are invariably wanted by the police
and these gathering should offer a good opportunity to screen
them for wanted suspects.
In the last gathering there was also a fight between two
people there. Under these circumstances how can the Police
afford not to be there? Everyone is talking about the increase
of lawlessness and violent crimes in Male’. Who will be held
responsible if anything untoward happens there and the police
are not there to handle it? After all these are odd times.
When an accused jumps from a boat to escape and kill himself
in the process the coast guard gets the blame.
In principle it may not be a bad idea to hold peaceful
gatherings. But in the context of the present time when the so
called peaceful gathering of August 2004 had turned violent
resulting in the stabbing of two NSS personnel and arson it is
worthwhile for the police to take extra precaution to see that
we don’t have a repeat of the August incident of 2004 during
which the law abiding public was disappointed and furious that
the police did not take appropriate action before things got
out of hand..
Ends
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