The registrar for the
Juvenile Court confirmed Wednesday that the sentence was imposed
Tuesday, after the girl confessed during a court hearing to the charge
of fornication.
"She's staying in a
children's home now so we have ordered her to remain in a children's
home," registrar Zaima Nasheed Aboobakur told CNN.
"We have explained to her
how if she wants to receive the punishment (the lashings) right now she
can... or it can be postponed until she turns 18," she added.
Amnesty International told CNN the same girl was
the alleged victim of sexual abuse by her stepfather.
The Juvenile Court
registrar said she had no information on reported charges against the
girl's stepfather, as that case was being dealt with by the Criminal
Court, but she said that the teenager's fornication charge was unrelated
to the stepfather's case.
Neither the stepfather's name nor the girl's has been released to the public.
CNN, meanwhile, has
contacted the prosecutor's office about the specifics of the case
against the girl and the allegations against her stepfather. In an email
response, the Deputy Prosecutor General said the office is, "restricted
by laws in relation to the amount we can share with [the] public when
it involves a minor." The prosecutor's office did promise to provide "as
much information as we can," but has not yet responded to CNN's
followup email questions.
Spokesman for the
President's Office, Masood Imad, told CNN the government considered the
teenager to be a victim who should not be flogged, but said the
government was unable to intervene in the judicial process.
"We cannot just send a
memo to the judiciary and say, 'Don't lash anybody hereafter.' It
doesn't happen that way any more. We have to talk with them, get them to
understand, get them to initiate the laws or we initiate the laws
together and then pass it to the legislature," Imad said.
He said the Ministry of
Gender and Family was leading talks with the Ministry of Islamic Affairs
to try to convince the judiciary that the law needs changing. "We have
to engage with the judiciary and we've got to suggest to them that we
need to change these laws to better identify victims and perpetrators,"
Imad said.
The circumstances
surrounding the fornication charge against the girl are not known. The
case attracted the attention of rights groups last month, when Amnesty
International issued a statement urging the Maldivian authorities to
drop all charges.
"She has been sexually
abused and at the same time she has been charged with an offense that
carries a punishment of flogging. We are really outraged at this
punishment," Abbas Faiz from Amnesty International told CNN on
Wednesday.
Human Rights Watch
condemned the girl's punishment and urged the government to change the
law. "The Maldives should urgently reform its laws to ensure maximum
protection for children instead of engaging in further punishing a child
that they failed to protect," said Meenakshi Ganguly, Human Rights
Watch director for South Asia.
They just pretend she's been lashed. It's not a painful process... It's just a token exercise
Masood Imad, Maldivian president's spokesman
Masood Imad, Maldivian president's spokesman
Even as he condemned of
the sentencing, the President's spokesman, Masood Imad, played down the
physical effects of the lashing, referring to the punishment as
"ceremonial."
"They just pretend she's
been lashed. It's not a painful process. She is taken to one side and
she is patted on her backside with this lashing. It's not used hard.
It's just a token, a token exercise. It's a belief," Imad said.
Aboobakur also said,
"the lashes are not given that hard." She said she had witnessed
floggings and that most people "just keep quiet and still until it
finishes."
She said floggings were
carried out in a public area for adults, while the punishment was
administered to juveniles in a separate area nearby. The recipient was
not required to wear any specific clothing, she said, adding that the
lashes were delivered to the upper thighs and buttocks.
While Imad said the punishment didn't hurt, he acknowledged that the psychological impact of a flogging was undeniable.
"There are psychological
consequences... I understand this. I wouldn't want anybody, even with
the talk of lashing, going through this process. But this is the hard
reality and we're trying to change it."
However, Amnesty's Faiz said the government wasn't trying hard enough.
"It is for the
government to actually initiate a change and send a bill to parliament
and then if at that level they don't win, they can say we tried. But
they haven't at this stage even tried," Faiz said.
"They are not
interested, they don't show any interest in this," he added. "Every time
we talk about the judicial flaws that exist in the judicial system of
the country they say we have nothing to do with that because we're
separate from the judiciary. Of course you're separate to the judiciary
but you're the government," he added.
The Maldives is in a
state of political flux after the resignation last year of the country's
first democratically-elected president, Mohamed Nasheed, who is facing
charges of abuse of power -- charges he has denied.
The charges leveled
against the former president have focused attention on the country's
legal system which was most recently criticised by the United Nations
Special Rapporteur on the Independence of Judges and Lawyers. After an
eight-day visit to the country in February, Gabriela Knaul said she was,
"struck to hear how little trust the public has in the justice system
in the Maldives."
After leaving the court
following the girl's sentencing, registrar Aboobakur said the teenager
seemed "fine." She said she didn't think the girl would appeal the
sentence.
Faiz said official
claims that the floggings were "not hard" and only "ceremonial" were
difficult to verify as those sentenced to the punishment were reluctant
to speak about it.
"It is very difficult,
to get any of these victims to come and talk about their experience," he
said. "Why is that? Because they feel ashamed, they feel there is a
huge stigma in the country against that. It is a humiliating experience.
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