Khadija, a client in the waiting room of the Malé Health Centre told Haveeru Daily that she was there to vaccinate a child and that she was dissatisfied because of the large number of foreigners who share the services of the Centre.

"When we come to vaccinate our young babies it is unsatisfactory to have to sit next to dirty foreigners", Khadija told Haveeru.

If one thought this type of unashamed, blatant racism ended with Apartheid in South Africa, one is absolutely wrong. It is alive and well in the Maldives, where slavery is still enforceable under the Islamic Sharia law, very much in force even now. Foreign guest workers are treated with utmost contempt in the Maldives, a self declared, 100% Islamic state.

A Maldivian who recently posted a comment in Dhivehi Observer lamented the fact that fellow Muslim Bangladeshis are mistreated. Non-Muslim guest workers are generally regarded as scum not worthy of even a mention. An increasing number of Maldivians are migrating to the West where they demand equal treatment with locals. They demand, and receive the right to be able to worship in mosques, which is a reciprocal right denied non-Muslims in the Maldives. Non-Muslims living in the Maldives, mainly guest workers from Bangladesh, India, Sri Lanka and the Philippines, are denied the right to worship in their own temples, synagogues and churches.

My family kept ducks for meat and eggs when I was a child in Malé. Our ducks were treated better than these foreign guest workers.

Letter in Dhivehi Observer photo album: Bangladeshi living quarters in the Maldives. we shud stand against these kinds of anti humanism activities.. even though they are bangalhees still they all are human beings..aprt from all most of them are muslims so we shud be ashamed to treat as such to our "akh" while being muslims

Our reply

I find the following statement by an anonymous writer on the treatment of guest workers from low-income countries as outrageous:

"aprt from all most of them are muslims so we shud be ashamed to treat as such to our "akh" while being muslims".

Don't non-Muslim human beings deserve being treated according to the international norms of decency to which the Maldives is a state party in the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights? The anonymous writer implies that Maldivians ought to be ashamed of the shabby treatment Bangladeshis receive only because the Bangladeshis are Muslims.

I ask the anonymous writer to put himself in the shoes of a Muslim worker from the Maldives working alongside a Christian worker from the Philippines in the United States, for example. What will the anonymous writer feel if an American colleague said as follows of the Filipino?

"We have two guest workers in this organisation, one is a Filipino Christian and the other is a Maldive Muslim. We Americans ought to be ashamed of treating our Filipino Christian brother shabbily".

The fact is that an average American would not even think in those terms. They are decent and treat human beings as humans. They won't even dream of treating someone who doesn't share their religious beliefs as "apes and swine".

If Maldivians wish to be part of the civilised world they will have to respect and treat all human beings with respect; not just Muslims. All human beings living in the Maldives, local and foreign, must be treated according to the Maldives' obligations under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.