Immigration tells foreign journalists and observers with visa issues to contact sponsor 'to complete process'

Maldives Immigration has called those foreign observers and journalists having visa issues to contact ‘sponsors to complete the process’.

While the Elections Commission published its official list of approved international observers and monitors for the presidential election on Thursday, a number of journalists on the list, as well as an election observers’ group, have since come forward with ‘no visa’ complaints.

In a tweet sent out on Friday night, Maldives Immigration said that it has approved visas for all journalists, elections monitors’ and observers ‘from India, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, United Kingdom, Jordan, Hungary, Switzerland, Portugal, Japan, Romania, Greece, Palestine, Albania and Israel’.

“We urge applicants to contact their sponsors to complete [visa] process”, reads the tweet.

Some of the journalists that have raised visa issues include, The Wire’s Devirupa Mitra, Amitabh P.Revi and Parul Chandra from Strategic News International (SNI), Dipanjan R. Chaudhury from Economic Times, Sidhant Sibal from WIONews, Meera Srinivasan from The Hindu and Simon Sturdee from Agence France-Presse (AFP), as well as election observers group Asian Network for Free Elections (ANFREL).

One of the journalists, Emmanuel Derville from France’s Le Figaro- also on the list- noted that sponsors ‘recommended by the EC’ are asking for USD 1,500 ‘for the visa procedure to be initiated’.