On reading that the Maldives are to ban Israeli passport holders from entry as an alleged protest over the war in Gaza, I hooted with laughter. That dump – I wouldn’t go there if you paid me, – which is exactly what happened in 1995, when the Sunday Times sent me abroad for the very first time. I was 35, and due to a combination of being very keen on London, where I lived, and not wanting to have extra sex with my first and second husbands (which I’d heard was probable when one went en vacances) I’d never missed visiting the rest of the world. If I wanted to swim, I’d go to Brockwell Lido; if I wanted to sunbathe, I’d go and play sardines in Soho Square. But in the honeymoon stage of my relationship with my new young mistress, I was keen to show her a good time.
It really isn’t worth the punishing ten-hour flight, let alone the subsequent fortnight’s boredom
We’d have been better off staying in Kensington. Used to the hustle and bustle of our over-stimulated media whore lives, the isolation of the Maldives was about as welcome as the sensation of a cold, damp swimsuit working its way up one’s nether regions. There was no television, no radio, and no mobile phones back then; I remember I had a Walkman and an audio book of The Picture Of Dorian Gray which I became increasingly addicted to as the endless fortnight wore on; ‘No gentleman looks out of the window,’ Oscar once said, referring to the shallowness of a beautiful view, and here I was, desolate, having abandoned the tattle of my brilliant friends for the banal romance of the most beautiful view on earth, allegedly. I found myself comparing the Maldives unfavourably with Butlin’s of Bognor, where I’d spent many idyllic holidays as a child and – unfairly – blamed my young paramour for being insufficiently scintillating; whatever, the relationship was basically over before we were through Arrivals at Heathrow.
It’s not that I don’t love beaches; I’ve lost count of the time I’ve winced my way through the feet-tearing pebbles on Brighton so-called Beach, keen to frolic among the excrement in our churning sea. I’ve got nothing against lying still and reading a book in the sunshine; once I actually took a tanning holiday in Tenerife solely in order not to rock up pale in Barbados a fortnight later. But a country needs something more than beaches if it’s not to be boring – and the Maldives does not. This is because they isolate their tourists, seeing them as somewhat less than human.
Only Muslims are allowed to be Maldivian citizens; no tourist may practise their religion in public. Capital punishment is a legal punishment for defendants over seven years old – though, to be fair, no one has actually been executed since 1952. However, things are getting worse rather than better. In 2013, a 15-year-old girl was sentenced to 100 lashes after being raped by her step-father; in 2015, a woman was sentenced to death by stoning after she was convicted of committing adultery (although the sentence was later overturned), leading Eva Abdulla, a Maldivian MP, to say:
We need the British and all other tourists to be aware of just where they are going to when they book that ticket to the Maldives…visiting tourists need to be aware of the institutional discrimination against women within the judicial system. Consider the statistics on flogging: that 90 per cent of the cases are women. Consider the statistics on rape charges: 0 per cent success rate of prosecution, with the latest being the release of four men accused of raping a 16-year-old, on the grounds that there wasn’t enough evidence.
Only a half-wit would claim that any Islamist country treats women decently, and the same goes for our LQBT cousins, no matter how much Queers For Palestine may stamp their little feet and wave their little banners. Homosexuality is criminalised by Maldivian law. Under Shariah, which is part of the country’s penal code, gays face fines, prison sentences, and lashings. But don’t think that being extravagantly straight is going to get you into your island hosts good books, you heathens; in 2010 there was a shocking – if hilarious – incident when, to quote the Daily Mail:
Renewing their wedding vows in the exotic surroundings of the Maldives was meant to be a memory one couple would savour forever. But this hapless pair were instead humiliated when the man presiding over the ceremony took advantage of the language barrier to publicly brand them ‘pigs’ and ‘infidels’.
The supposedly spiritual service was captured on video and beamed around the world via YouTube. In the 15-minute clip, employees at the Vilu Reef Beach and Spa resort abuse the couple in their native Dhivehi tongue. The hotel’s food and beverage manager Hussein Didi is heard hurling insults at the pair as he conducts the service pretending to be the celebrant. He even declares their marriage to be illegal.
Chanting in a tone favoured by religious scholars, Didi says: ‘You are swine. The children that you bear from this marriage will all be bastard swine. Your marriage is not a valid one. One of you is an infidel. The other, too, is an infidel and, we have reason to believe, an atheist, who does not even believe in an infidel religion.’
The unfortunate woman, wearing a white dress, and her husband, also in white, smile at each other lovingly and remain oblivious as Didi calls for the marriage to be enshrined in Islamic law. Despite more than ten employees watching, none of them attempts to stop the event and some even take photographs. As the bride bends down to plant a coconut tree, a man shouts: ‘Can see her breasts!’
But the ghastliness of the Maldives doesn’t just extend to disapproval of the way visiting foreigners may choose to live their personal lives; law-abiding Maldivian Muslims have also had what little freedom they enjoyed trampled all over in recent years, as is generally true of Islamic countries, where democracy is seen to be a decadent remnant of western influence. Going right back to the depopulation of Havaru Thinadoo in 1962, when ethnic cleansing killed two-thirds of the 6,000 islanders through murder and starvation, the Maldives are a savage patchwork of violent suppression behind the commercial facade.
The democratic stirrings represented by the election of Mohamed Nasheed’s Maldivian Democratic Party in 2008 were dashed by his arrest and the subsequent state of emergency declared by the military coup. This led to a scuffle between no less than Amal Clooney and Cherie Blair – as the Independent put it in 2015: ‘The pair of international human rights lawyers have clashed repeatedly since Mrs Blair began acting for the autocratic government that helped organise the overthrow and prosecution of the country’s first democratically-elected leader.’ Mrs Clooney added that it was “very sad” that the wife of the former prime minister was “working against the people of the Maldives”.’
The Maldives was forced to convert to Islam in the 12th century, but only began to suffer from an extreme version of the religion since 2004, when a Saudi-funded influx of preachers arrived to tell them that the tsunami was their fault for not being devout enough. It’s all been downhill since then, with the reversal of progress which can principally be seen in the way women who once let the sun shine upon the bodies the Lord gave them now scurry about in shrouds. And now Israelis are to be banned from entering this heavenly hell-hole in a ‘protest’ over the war in Gaza.
So let me assure any Israelis – or indeed readers of other nationalities – who’ve always fancied the Maldives that it really isn’t worth the punishing ten-hour flight, let alone the subsequent fortnight’s boredom. There are loads of lovely cities where the beaches are fine and where the culture isn’t brain dead, like Tel Aviv and Barcelona. If really gorgeous beaches are what you’re looking for, there’s beautiful Barbados – wonderful people and the perfect blend of Christianity and hedonism; or the Bahamas – especially the Pink Sands Resort on Harbour Island; or gorgeous Mauritius, which is like the Maldives but run by people who don’t hate everyone who’s different from them. The Maldives proper have always been like a beautiful dining companion who doesn’t have any bantz; if they’re going to start banning Jews, its collective IQ will fall a few more much-needed points. Trust me, as one who’s been to this ghastly place, you’ll have more fun at an Ultimate 1980s Long Weekender at Butlin’s.
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