Joint Opposition reiterates call to transfer ex-President Maumoon, especially for sanctity of Ramadan

Maldives’ allied opposition parties have on Thursday released a joint statement reiterating its call to have ailing former president Maumoon Abdul Gayoom transferred to house arrest.

The statement, released to mark the passing of a hundred days since his incarceration, highlighted that his incarceration during the month of Ramadan is 'unessecarily inhuamane'.

The Joint Opposition, a union of four prominent parties that signed a coalition agreement last year, added to their reiteration that keeping the former strongman in incarceration, especially during the holy month of fasting for Muslims, is further inhumane.

Maumoon’s family and legal representatives have publicly expressed concern that he has not been allowed access to proper medical care, and that the instructions doctors have given for his care have not been followed.

Former president Maumoon, who was in office for thirty years of which most was single-party rule, has been diagnosed with a type of vertigo disease that makes him vulnerable to sporadic collapses. Doctors have advised that a caretaker be with him at all times.

Maumoon still leads one faction of the ruling Progressive Party of Maldives, which split between him and incumbent President Abdulla Yameen in 2016, and his opposition partners have been vehement in calling for his arrest. In a show of ardent unity, Maumoon’s wife – and the Maldives’ long serving first lady – Nasreena Ibrahim has asked that she be ‘incarcerated with him, if he cannot be brought home’.

The former president faces allegations of bribery, destroying evidence, and terrorism for ‘conspiring to overthrow’ President Yameen’s embattled regime. The Joint Opposition has denounced the charges against him as false, his incarceration as arbitrary, and the process of judicial proceedings in the matter a case of gross human rights violation.