5th November 2015 / Blog /

Paranoia in paradise? Or release Nasheed . . .

WATCHING from many thousands of miles away in Britain, it is hard to make sense of the ins and outs of the latest troubles in the Maldives.

Was a bomb responsible for the explosion on President Yameen Abdul Gayoom’s boat in late September or not? The government seems to think ‘yes’, independent investigators from America’s FBI say ‘no’.

Whatever the cause, the result of the explosion – which sadly caused minor injuries to the president’s wife and a bodyguard – is that around 24 hours ago President Gayoom declared a 30-day state of emergency in the Indian Ocean country.

His decision is believed also to have been swayed by the discovery at the end of October of a “cache” of rusty weapons sunk in bin bags secured by rocks by the harbour entrance to the island of Hibalhidhoo on Baa Atoll. Then came the apparent uncovering of a bomb near the presidential palace on Male, the island’s capital, on Monday.

In the midst of this seeming skulduggery, the country’s vice-president, Ahmed Adeeb has been arrested and detained in connection with an alleged plot to assassinate the president. For good measure, the defence minister and police chief have also been sacked.

The “bomb” on the boat, the rusty guns in bin liners and the “defused bomb” by the presidential palace have combined to bring the country to its knees: a “state of emergency” in the world famous tourist destination – so popular with honeymooners.

It just so happens that there is to be an anti government protest tomorrow, organised by the Maldivian Democratic Party. The protesters are calling for the jailed ex-president of the Maldives, Mohamed Nasheed, to be released from prison.

Nasheed is serving a 13-year sentence on what is widely regarded as a trumped up terrorism charge designed to sideline him from politics. Amnesty International, various world leaders, influential people in the tourism industry including airline tycoon Richard Branson, US Senators, and so on have called for his release. Nasheed is now being represented by the widely respected human rights lawyer Amal Clooney.

What a mess.

During the current state of emergency, the security services have extra powers to tackle those considered a threat to the nation, while regular human rights are suspended. What exactly the latter means is unclear, and being so, the powers of the police and soldiers have become stronger still.

The “bomb” on the boat, those rusty guns, and the mysterious “defused bomb” have given President Yameen Abdul Gayoom the green light to let his strongmen do (just about) as they please when the pro-democracy protesters hold their rally.

To reiterate, President Yameen Abdul Gayoom has just arrested his vice-president, and got rid of his defence secretary and chief of police. This is after jailing his main political opponent – to the incredulity and outrage of the world.

I may be many thousands of miles away, but having developed an interest in the Maldives during the writing of a travel book about the country as well as a deep affection for its beautiful islands and rich culture, it seems abundantly clear that paranoia is now well-established at the top.

The state of emergency, with troops in camouflage uniforms yielding guns, will have a terrible effect on tourism. Chinese holidaymakers – increasingly important to the Maldivian economy – in particular do not like such things. European tourists are waking up to the situation now that figures such as Clooney and Branson are speaking out. The state of emergency just draws attention to the deteriorating situation.

Matters have truly come to a head. If there is violence and bloodshed tomorrow – unfortunately quite possible when a leader is losing his grip and handing extra powers to his military – the Maldives could well be tipped into “no go” territory, taken off the holiday map. Once overseas foreign ministries start advising against visiting a country on the grounds of instability, the hotel and white sand beaches game is up.

Foreign tourists are fickle . . . just look at what might be about to happen to the already beleaguered tourism industry in Egypt following the crash of a Russian plane this week, quite possibly due to an on-board bomb.

President Yameen Abdul Gayoom would seem to have one last chance. And that chance happens today. By releasing the ex-leader Mohamed Nasheed he would at one fell swoop bring international praise. By calling for an election to sort out the current muddled politics (the country’s last presidential election was murky with votes believed to have been “bought”), further plaudits would come.

Tourism, responsible for half of the nation’s GDP, would be secured.

From talking to Maldivians – many of whom have expressed deep sadness over latest events – and by following what is happening on the internet, it seems clear that big, positive decisions need to be made – and soon.

What the honeymooners by their infinity pools are thinking right now it’s hard to imagine, beyond: ‘Maybe we should have gone to Mauritius.’ The president could change this by squaring up to the reality of the situation. The freeing of Nasheed and a new election, as one Maldivian contact says to me, would seem to be the only way to go.

The president’s palace on Male, capital of the Maldives:

13th July 2015 / Blog /

A fish out of water: the rudest “fooking” diner in Britain?

I HAVE dined in many hotel restaurants as part of my job as a hotel reviewer, and I have become accustomed to being seated next to inconsiderately noisy diners.

It’s just the (bad) luck of the draw.

On a recent visit to a hotel in the north of England – which I will not name as it is no reflection on the hotel (bad luck of the draw for them, as well) – I came across the rudest fellow diner I have had the misfortune to sit within earshot of.

He had a broad Lancastrian accent, a crew cut, a pot belly and a flushed red face. He was with his wife (or partner). They appeared to be “celebrating” some sort of anniversary or special occasion.

Here is how it went:

“Is this fooking good enough for you?” the Lancastrian asks his wife/partner.

Wife/partner: inaudible whisper.

They are in a fantastic spot, with a view across the countryside, in a room with crystal chandeliers, gilded mirrors and white table clothes with candles. They regard the menu for a short while.

Raised voice, coming out of the blue: “Do you want me to dance on the fooking table and say I love you?”

W/P: inaudible whisper.

“Well fooking ‘ell … Fooking …”

Voice of man trails off, muttering.

Waiter arrives to take their order.

“I’ll have the duck and the beef,” says the man in a polite-but-pointed voice.

“And for you madam?” asks the waiter.

“Oh I won’t have a starter,” she says. The restaurant offers a set five-course menu, which the waiter explains to her. It does not do a la carte.

The man butts in, choosing her starter – and main – on her behalf. “You can’t have nothing! She’ll have the tuna carpaccio and the lamb.”

The woman says nothing. The waiter says: “Very good.”

“And we’ll have them all at the same time,” says the man.

The waiter raises an eyebrow. “The starters and the mains at the same time?”

“Yes,” says the man. “Oh yes, and I’ll have a white wine. No, make that a Peroni.”

His W/P seems not to be given the option of a drink.

The waiter departs.

The maître d’ arrives and explains that it’s easier for the dishes to be staggered in the usual manner.

“OK, then,” says the man.

Silence for a while.

“Shut up! Fooking shut up. I love you and all that, so fooking shut up,” he says.

Inaudible whispers. Further silence.

The waiter comes with the starters.

The man switches to a polite voice: “Oh thank you very much. Cheers.” He then takes a phone call and discusses meeting up with a friend, while his W/P eats her starter.

Sound of whispers from the woman.

The man says: “I’ll smash him. Smash him. Simple as that.”

I glance in their direction, hoping that he is not referring to me. Perhaps they have sensed that I am, whether I like it or not, eavesdropping. I am the only person within earshot.

Man changes tack. “If I spend 300 quid here tonight, I’ll do what I want,” he says. The couple must be staying at the hotel.

“Don’t treat me like…” says the woman; her voice trails off so I can’t catch what she does not wish to be treated like.

“I can’t fooking be worrying about that,” replies the man.

Waitress arrives with an “intermediate course”.

“Thank you,” says the man, sounding almost sweet. He looks at the dish, and is surprised it is not his beef. Instead it’s a small scoop of sorbet. “To be fair, I just want my main course, please,” he says.

The waiter once again raises an eyebrow: “So you don’t want the sorbet?”

“Yes,” says the man.

The waiter takes the sorbets away.

The man says: “Fooking fancy.”

The W/P says nothing.

Dessert finished, I get up to leave. The man glares at me. He says “fooking”, followed by something or other, to his W/P. I am unsure if he is directing a comment at me. He does seem to have an opinion on most matters.

I depart, wondering how the meal will end . . . dancing on the fooking table, a declaration of fooking love, and a smashing of a fooking waiter or two for good measure?

At least, I suppose, he was taking his W/P for a fooking night out to celebrate their fooking anniversary.

I didn’t see them at breakfast.

8th July 2015 / Blog /

Arab Spring goes full circle

THE SEASIDE resort of Sousse, where the massacre of 38 foreign holidaymakers took place more than a week ago, is about 100 miles from Sidi Bouzid, the town where the Arab Spring began.

Sidi Bouzid’s proximity is strikingly close and – now that the immediate shock of the act of terrorism has passed – it bears contemplation.

When on December 17, 2010, Mohamed Bouazizi, a 26-year-old fruit seller sick of bullying at the hands of corrupt local police, set himself alight in front of the governor’s house in dusty, little-visited Sidi Bouzid – previously best known by historians for a minor battle during the Second World War – he triggered the revolution that was to follow in Tunisia.

Frustration with the corrupt authoritarian regime of President Ben Ali overflowed with many violent protests (Bouazizi died several days later). The panic-stricken ruler, fearing his game was up, fled in a plane to Saudi Arabia, where he still lives in Jeddah. The people took over.

Within weeks, President Mubarak fell in Egypt. The Egyptians, inspired by the example of Tunisia, were eager to topple their ageing autocrat.

Libya was next. By October 2011, Gaddafi was dead, dragged from a gutter and savaged in the street.

Trouble flared across the Middle East: in Bahrain, Yemen, Jordan and, most bloodily, in Syria. Leaders who had ruled with an iron fist for years were under pressure.

In Syria, President Assad has clung on, but at what cost? The ramifications of his loss of control of much of his country are now being felt across the world. Isis, which thrived in Syria’s lawlessness, is now the world’s undisputed public enemy number one.

Coping with Isis is now, of course, at the forefront of western foreign policy, more pressing even than President Putin’s goings-on in Ukraine. (Putin has cynically used western paralysis in the Middle East to seize initiative at a time when the focus has been elsewhere – yet another effect of the Arab Spring).

So Sidi Bouzid represents a lot. And so does the June 26 attack in Sousse.

When I visited Sidi Bouzid for my travel book, A Tourist in the Arab Spring, almost exactly a year after Mohamed Bouazizi’s death, the Arab Spring still evoked hopeful thoughts.

I sought out his grave in his home village, just outside Sidi Bouzid. His simple burial place was no different from others in the graveyard. With the help of a local I found it and squatted beside his stone, wondering what the corpse beneath the coppery soil had unwittingly begun.

Those I later met as I travelled across Tunisia, through Libya and on to Egypt, crossing the country as far as its border with Israel on the Sinai Peninsula, were in two minds about the Arab Spring.

The revolts could either result in liberalism and a more western way of life or to a difficult future in which Islamic radicals filled the power vacuum left by the dictators, they said.

People were nervously contemplating the likelihood of the latter. The greatest fear of those I talked to in Libya was of the revolution against Gaddafi leading to “another Iraq”.

Well, the worst is happening now. Seen through the prism of tourism alone, things do not look good. A holiday in Libya now would be suicidal. A failed jihadist attack at the Karnak Temple in Luxor in Egypt on June 10 has highlighted the fragility of peace in Egypt (the two terrorists alone died, at the hands of alert security officers).

The massacre in Sousse shows that even in Tunisia – considered by many to be the most successful and stable of the Arab Spring countries (despite the deaths of 21 at the Bardo Museum in Tunis in March) – all is very far from well.

As anyone can see, law and order is unraveling across these once, on the surface, stable states. (It is a bitter irony that the former dictators’ laws may not have been fair, but at least they delivered order).

The Middle East has witnessed an extraordinary rush of events, with a staggering lack of effective reaction among the leaders of the West.

The arrival of Isis in early 2014 (the group’s threat had seeming gone unnoticed until the moment black flags appeared as towns fell in Iraq) sealed that fate of the revolutions started in 2011. It also showed how little “experts” knew of what was happening on the ground.

But back to Tunisia. Jihadists so close to the town where the Arab Spring began marks a new phase in these troubled times.

Events have now gone full circle, and another circle is about to begin.

What will boats across the Mediterranean Sea and the prospect of failed European states, with Greece looking as though it may lead the way, mean to Europe?

29th April 2015 / Blog /

Pravda in the Maldives

SO now the Maldivian government has taken control of state television and radio and announced a requirement for there to be a daily printed state newspaper . . . just as there was in the Soviet Union during the days of communism under the likes of Breshnev and Stalin.

Too much coverage was being given to the awful plight of Mohamed Nasheed, the unfairly jailed ex democratic president of the country, so the top dogs have in their wisdom created a new “governing board” that will ensure that standards of journalism are maintained to prevent such errors of judgement occurring again.

Of course, it all reeks of absolute desperation.

With mass protests against the treatment of Nasheed – imprisoned on ridiculous charges of “terrorism” – planned for Friday (May 1), the government has grabbed control of television channels to censor the pictures that might get out to the world.

What are they afraid of letting slip?

Well for the past few days, as photographs have revealed on the internet, soldiers in riot gear have been carrying out vigorous exercises as though they are preparing to unleash their worst on whoever moves their way. Take a look on Twitter and the message is clear: “Step out of line and we will stamp down hard.”

It’s not entirely clear whether these pictures were taken to make this point, or whether they were clandestine and subsequently leaked. But they are chilling, however they came to be. And surely, you cannot help but think, deeply disturbing for anyone who happens to be on holiday in the Maldives at the moment.

In advance of Friday’s mass protest many boatloads of Maldivians from distant atolls have already arrived in Male, the capital, to lend their voice to calls for an end to the current “tyranny” (the organisers’ apt description) of the government of the country. As many as 25,000, or more, could take part.

Not only are opposition figures concerned for their safety at the hands of overzealous soldiers, but also from hired thugs who are believed to have been co-opted to stir up trouble . . . giving the soldiers an excuse to steam in and do their worst.

This would not make the best publicity for President Yameen (half-brother of the former autocratic leader President Gayoom, who ruled the archipelago for 30 years).

Might this be behind the decision to take control of the TV stations ahead of time?

It’s difficult not, at the very least, to speculate on the point.

As I said, it’s desperate stuff. Especially so when most people have mobile phones with good video cameras and can post images beamed around the globe in an instance.

Twitter feeds such as @EthicalMaldives and others issuing messages showing the “Sunny Side of Life” (a holiday slogan for the country) with police grabbing people in previous smaller protests are already available.

A member of parliament representing the ruling Progressive Party of the Maldives has said that the state has taken charge of broadcasting channels as there was too much coverage of the campaign to free Nasheed. He complained that not enough attention was being given to the hard day-to-day work of President Yameen . . . who must, it seems, be feeling sorely overlooked.

The writer George Orwell once said that “freedom is the right to tell people what they do not want to hear”. It appears that the top dogs have heard too much and are ready to issue a stream of propaganda designed to censor the truth.

It won’t work. It didn’t in the Arab Spring – dubbed the “Facebook revolutions” by some.

President Yameen should give it up before it’s too late, set Nasheed free, prevent any potential trouble ahead of time, re-establish legitimate politics, and reap the benefits of tourism in the future (because holidaymakers will not be around for long if this keeps up).

26th April 2015 / Blog /

Maldives tourism teetering on edge

RECENTLY I talked to one of the major tour operators sending holidaymakers to the Maldives about their plans regarding the uneasy political situation in the country.

The representative – whom I promised not to name as their business in the Maldives is so big that it could affect many livelihoods (both at home in the UK and abroad) – was clearly concerned that the jailing on trumped up charges of the former democratic leader Mohamed Nasheed after the coup against him in 2012 could soon lead to a total tourist pullout.

Contingency plans were already being put in place to offer alternative destinations in readiness of further trouble ahead, I was informed. And were this company to cut its links with the Maldives, the effect would be felt immediately across the Indian Ocean country.

By allowing the imprisonment of Nasheed and by cracking down on dissent, the current government of the Maldives is clearly jeopardizing the well-being of the nation.

Yet it seems as though the arrogance and hubris of the politicians in charge is such that their primary concern is about losing face over making what is obviously required: a u-turn on the Nasheed ruling . . . and, as would seem sensible, a subsequent fresh presidential election to establish political legitimacy at the top.

The latest story from Male, capital of the Maldives, is of police in riot gear pepper-spraying students who were offering them roses as a gesture of peace. Three students were detained and two are, as I write, still held for having “disobeyed orders”.

The country is no longer a happy holiday place – and those around the world flicking through travel brochures as they select their honeymoon destination are getting the message that the Maldives no longer represents an ideal “paradise” in which to begin life together.

According to Ethical Maldives, a group that has created a list of resorts to avoid because owners have definite links with the current corrupt politicians in power, one resort that it describes as “high risk” in this regard is struggling to fill rooms. Occupancy is just 30 per cent – down from the usual 90 per cent – and the hotel is in danger of having to let staff go.

This has prompted a backlash from the Maldives government, which is clearly increasingly desperate about how its choice to cling to power at whatever cost is affecting the golden goose of tourism. The High Commission of the Maldives has issued a statement saying that, as the people behind Ethical Maldives are anonymous, their motives are questionable.

However, yesterday I was sent a Twitter message by those representing Ethical Maldives saying that they dared not reveal their identities for fear of persecution. They pointed out that Amnesty International has doubts about both the fairness of the judiciary system and police behaviour as well as grave concerns about the jailing of Nasheed.

It’s so sad to see a country that recently appeared to be opening up to the world turning so rapidly in the wrong direction – as I describe in my travel book that includes interviews with Nasheed, the former autocratic leader Gayoom (whose half-brother Yameen is now the current president), those who had been detained arbitrarily by the police, victims of human rights abuses in prison, and reporters fearful that they were being followed and their phones being tapped.

With a major worldwide tour operator now on the brink of pulling out, it’s time for those at the top to wake up and smell the coffee.

Let Nasheed go free, clean up politics and reap the rewards of booming tourism in years to come.

14th March 2015 / Blog /

Maldives latest: revolution in paradise?

LAST night Mohamed Nasheed, the former democratically-elected leader of the Maldives (that string of 1,200 or so beautiful islands in the Indian Ocean that holidaymakers love so much), was sentenced to 13 years in prison.

The charges against him were trumped up by figures connected to the current leader of the Maldives, President Abdulla Yameen – the half-brother of a dictator who ran the country for 30 years prior to Nasheed’s democratic election in 2008.

This may sound complicated but the basics are this: an honest man who tried to bring forward-thinking policies to the Maldives – taking on corrupt politicians and resort owners – has found himself banged away on false allegations, without having had the chance for proper legal representation.

In court Nasheed issued a statement accusing the judges in the case of having been bribed and called on Maldivians “to not be afraid of being arrested or facing a long sentence; to take all of your lives in your hands and to go out onto the streets in protest. Do not consider the security of your personal lives or the transitory happiness of your wives, husbands, children, parents and relatives; for the security of all of your children and their children is in jeopardy”.

In short: start the revolution.

This has been coming for some time. Trouble has been percolating in this honeymoon “paradise” and now it is about to boil over.

I sensed (and reported on) this undercurrent of angst when I visited the watery nation for my just-published travel book about the Maldives (Gatecrashing Paradise).

Now all the upset has come to the surface in the mistrial of Nasheed, whom I interviewed in the book and who predicted turbulence ahead.

Tour operators sending holidaymakers to sip cocktails by infinity pools need now to sit up and pay close attention. Tourists themselves need to begin to question why they should chose to visit a country to relax when there is such a strong undercurrent of discontent.

Nasheed’s call to take to the streets is not just about his personal circumstances. It represents the frustrations of many of the hijacking of power from an on-the-surface democratic system (albeit a young one), financial corruption among tax-dodging tourist resort owners, widespread bribery, a rise in Islamic fundamentalism encouraged by the current dictator in order to foster an appearance of legitimate support, a blind eye turned to human trafficking (mainly Bangladeshi workers on big construction sites), the harassment of journalists who try to pursue stories sensitive to regime, and much else…

Tourists: are you still lying comfortably on your sun lounger?

With one fell swoop, the current President Yameen could have offered the Maldives – such a world-renowned symbol of “paradise” and happy holidays by beaches – a chance. He could have ordered the dropping of the strange charges against Nasheed, which related to the arrest of a judge several years ago when Nasheed was briefly in power before being ousted by a police and military coup.

He could have faced up to the possibility that he might not win the next election.

He could have remained a wealthy man.

He would have had a clear conscience.

However, he chose not to take this route, risking the security of the country that he is meant to protect in order to hang on to power.

Well done President Yameen.

When people do take to the streets, which undoubtedly they will, he would be wise to realize that the game is now up.

* Nasheed’s court statement in full

* Gatecrashing Paradise

22nd February 2015 / Blog /

Arrest of ex President Mohamed Nasheed in the Maldives — tourism boycott to come?

TODAY the former democratically-elected president of the Maldives – Mohamed Nasheed – was arrested on terrorism charges in Male, the capital of the Indian Ocean nation.

The charges relate to the arrest of a judge said to have obstructed the course of justice during Nasheed’s time as president.

This is the act of “terrorism” that is the basis of Nasheed’s incarceration, despite the fact that he was cleared of the accusations by the Prosecutor General earlier this month.

Nasheed, the leader of the opposition and the Maldivian Democratic Party, has effectively been randomly rounded-up and put in prison.

Nasheed was elected president of the Maldives in 2008 but was ousted in a coup in 2012. While I was researching “Gatecrashing Paradise”, a book about the darker side of the “honeymoon heaven” holiday destination that graces the covers of so many glossy travel magazines, Nasheed told me that the safety of his family had been put under threat by those orchestrating the revolt.

He had had no option but to stand aside.

Afterwards many months passed before a further presidential election was held in which the half-brother of a former dictator of the Maldives, who had ruled for 30 years, was “voted” into power. Some referred to this vote as a “buy election”… in other words, money changed hands so the right boxes were ticked.

Those opposing the newly “elected” leader, President Abdulla Yameen, have since faced intimidation. One journalist who poked around in the wrong places has disappeared. Ahmed Rilwan Abdulla, a talented reporter for Minivan News, one of the only sources of independent news in the country, has not been seen since last August.

I devoted an earlier post to his disappearance. It seems clear that he was abducted and there are great concerns about what has happened to him.

This is the current state of play: a democratically-elected leader ousted and now thrown in prison on trumped up charges while those who speak out against the regime fear the very real possibility of “disappearing” if they touch the wrong nerve.

Welcome to paradise. About an hour ago, I tweeted a message about the news of Nasheed’s arrest to which I received a garbled response from a figure clearly supporting his jailing that ignored the fact that the Prosecutor General had already cleared Nasheed. It read: “He abducted a judge. He shall face consequences. This is our country we roll things the way we want yo!” I think he meant “to” at the end.

I replied that Nasheed had been treated very unfairly and that when word gets out, tourists may wish to stay away… a hugely important part of the economy is being put at risk.

He replied: “Tourism won’t boycott. Dream on. Maldives is too much of a famous brand for that to work.”

The London-based human rights lawyer Kirsty Brimelow QC has also been on Twitter this afternoon. She wrote: “Former President Nasheed publicly predicted he would be arbitrarily arrested. He remains Maldives’ hope for democracy. International support is required.”

Meanwhile, the Maldivian Democratic Party says that there is little hope that Nasheed would have “anything approaching a fair trial” should it go ahead.

Voices need to be raised about what is going on in the Maldives . . . tourists continue to sip cocktails by the infinity pool while the country is run by authoritarian figures who stamp down on dissent.

The travel industry – and holidaymakers themselves – need to take notice, and do so before there is even further trouble in paradise.

12th January 2015 / Blog /

Thoughts from Hotel El Tel: Terry Venables on golf, football and bandy legs

TERRY Venables and his wife Yvette have just opened a hotel in the Alicante Mountains. It’s called La Escondida (“the hideaway”) and has ten stylish rooms. It’s in a quiet spot. The Venables, who have owned the old place for almost 20 years, had at one time considered creating a hillside version of La Manga, the massive sports resort on the coast. Then they changed their minds after the economic collapse of 2008 as it would all be too costly.

The result is a chilled out place to stay without Sky Sports or pool tables. It’s got a bit of a Texas ranch feel, minus the horses and cattle (though horse-riding can be fixed).

I wrote a piece that can be seen at thetimes.co.uk/travel about the hotel… but here are a few ‘off-cuts’ that didn’t make the story. I’ve put them into bullet-points, for ease of reading:

* On golf:
TV: “Practice makes…”
TV leaves it hanging for me to complete the sentence.
TC: “Perfect?”
TV: “No! No! No! Practice a bad shot the whole time, slice it off. Are you going to get better? No! No! No!”
TV swings his arms several times as though playing a bad golf shot.
TC: “So what does practice make?”
TV: “Practice makes permanent!”
TC: “What do you mean?”
TV: “Practice makes it second nature. Permanent. Practice makes permanent!”
Pause.
TC: “OK, I’ll remember that.”
Pause.
TV: “Actually, I’m about the only one.”
TC: “The only one who what?”
TV: “The only one in football who doesn’t play golf.”

* On the state of English football:
TV: “We’ve got to have winners. Over the last 50 years [since England’s World Cup victory in 1966], we’ve had all these good players. They consistently play well for their clubs: ‘Look at me, I’m going to be man of the match.’ But do it under pressure.” He was referring to ‘doing it’ at the World Cup or European Championship.

* On looking back on things:
TV: “You can’t rewrite history, but you can rewrite your memories.”

* On the Football Association bigwigs:
TV: “They haven’t got enough know-how to milk a cow.”

* On having video tapes of football games taken at customs in Oman:
TV: “They thought they were sex tapes. They confiscated them.”
Yvette [Terry Venables’ wife, who was sick of him watching football games the whole time], with a strong hint of sarcasm: “They must have been bitterly disappointed.”
TV, ignoring this and looking at me: “They thought they were Debbie does Dallas or something.”
Yvette: “When they were gone, I thought: ‘Whoop! Whoopee! Take them away!'”

* On bungs:
TV: “I hadn’t even used the word when it was mentioned to me. Cricket, that’s the crooked game. Crooket! You can have that.”
[This word appeared to have been invented on the spot… TV was inviting me to ‘have it’ to use in the future, which I just have].

* The maitre ‘d joins us at our table and mentions the hotel’s wi-fi password (pronouncing it wi-fee):
TV, cuts in: “I’ve got a wif-ee as well.”
TV looks at his wife Yvette, and chuckles.

* On leaving his job as England manager after Euro 96:
TV: “What do you do after the Lord Mayor’s parade? Alf Ramsay, after the World Cup, went to [manage] Birmingham.”

* On letting Maradona go from Barcelona when he took over management of the club in the mid 1980s:
TV: “He’d have 16 friends with him, but no lady friend. He’d pay for everything. He was like Gazza like that: popular. He pleaded with me to let him go to Napoli. I didn’t want a player who didn’t want to play for me. ”

* On life, accumulating wealth, running a hotel and being an entrepreneur:
TV: “You’ve got to keep up standards – and some. Push. It’s like money in the bank. If you let it stand still: you lose.”

* On a friend he knows with bandy legs:
TV: “He couldn’t stop a pig in a passage.” [big laugh]

* We go with a group of locals who hunt rabbits using birds of prey. Some of the birds are better than the others at catching the rabbits, and when one escapes:
TV: “That’s like missing a penalty!”
We watch a few examples of hawks chasing rabbits, of which quite a few get away. At the end of the day the rabbits are on top.
TV: “It’s 4-3 to the rabbits!”

* Ordering rose wine from maitre ‘d Jose at lunch at the hotel:
TV: “Rose from Jose! Lovely!”

And so end Terry Venables’ thoughts and comments as told at La Escondida (hotelescondida.com). Rooms are from 140 euros a night, in case you’re interested, and easyJet flights to Alicante are dirt cheap.

Escondida may be a far cry from the likes of Dixie Dean, Leslie Compton and Frank McLintock running pubs after their football days were over, but that was a different era – things move on.

A final thought, of my own: what a pity Venables was not given a shot at leading the England team in the 1998 World Cup. It’s tantalising to think of what might have happened if he had. Only the FA knows why they did not appoint him – and El Tel has a few opinions on that…

Terry and Yvette Venables at La Escondida in the Alicante Mountains:

7th January 2015 / Blog /

The last tourist in Libya?

YESTERDAY the last foreign airline operating flights into Libya suspended operations. Turkish Airlines cancelled its service into Misrata and that was that: outsiders considering visiting the beleaguered post Arab Spring country must now, it appears, arrive by land or boat.

With Libyan airlines banned last year from travelling into EU airspace for security reasons, the country is effectively cut off.

Nobody much seems to have noticed how far Libya has slumped. The odd report on the latest flare-up of violence – a beheading, an attack on an oil tanker (two crew members killed), Coptic Christians seized by militants – occasionally makes the news.

But the ghastly events in the country with the biggest southern Mediterranean shoreline – facing tourist resorts across the water where so many of us will be spending our summer holidays – are going largely unnoticed.

The rise of Isis in Syria and Iraq came out of the blue. The intelligence agencies of the West failed to see it coming last year and we have been living with the shock effects ever since. Great swathes of the Middle East now, as we have seen, appear ungovernable.

It seems that something of the sort is quite likely to happen in Libya, much closer to home than the badlands of Iraq, where we sent our troops to defeat Saddam Hussein, thus starting the chain of events that has led to the current mess there.

Much of western Libya is now controlled by a militia based in Misrata. Meanwhile, in the east of the country Islamic militants were responsible for beheadings in November. Reuters ran chilling pictures of men in Derna waving black flags from the back of pick-up trucks fixed with anti-aircraft guns. And all of this just an 11 hour drive from Cairo.

The attack on the Greek-owned oil tanker was also in the east, in the port of Derna. A colonel said that the action was justified as the ship had not responded to a radio message. “We bombed it twice,” he commented, matter-of-factly.

None of this unravelling of rule of law and public order comes as a surprise, given the steady nature of the country’s decline. Yet when I visited Libya in February 2012 for my book A Tourist in the Arab Spring it was a golden, honeymoon period for the long-suffering nation. Gaddafi had fallen the previous October and many were optimistic about the country post dictatorship.

There was an air of “praise Allah he’s gone”. There was also a tangible sense of amazement that locals were free to talk openly to a foreigner such as myself without fear of being overheard and reported to the secret police. Such spying could lead to people “disappearing” – as one man told me had happened to his brother when I visited the magnificent Roman ruins at Leptis Magna, not far from Tripoli.

Nobody else was at the World Heritage Site when I travelled there. Indeed, everywhere I went people said I was the first foreign tourist back. They were frankly shocked. Was this the beginning of tourism proper once again?

That possibility hung in the air. Before I left to visit Libya I had consulted an expert from an adventure travel company as I was concerned about how safe the journey I planned from Libya’s Tunisian border to its far east would be. He was already considering restarting holidays to Libya at the time – to take in its famous Roman and Greek sites, plus its desert interior. He advised: “Bon voyage, but take care.” Mass tourism, he felt, could just be round the corner with Gaddafi gone.

So I bought a ticket. I went accompanied by a Libyan driver all the way. We never ventured out of our hotels after nightfall (for fear of ‘police’ who were not police accosting us under the cover of darkness). We never hung about in one place for long. Better to move and not let anyone get ideas, especially when visiting the likes of Gaddafi’s bombed out bunker in Tripoli or the moving Commonwealth War Graves. We smiled at the brigade men with guns at checkpoints. And all went well – apart from a harrowing few hours when we were detained by police inspecting my driver’s papers at a checkpoint in Benghazi.

Almost as soon as my trip was over, just a couple of months later (and I doubt many others would have gone in that time), everything went awfully wrong. The US ambassador to Libya, Chris Stevens, was killed in an attack by extreme Islamists in Benghazi.

In one fell swoop Libya was taken off the tourist map. And that is where it has remained ever since.

With the government of Libya now holed up in a 1970s hotel in Tobruk in the far east of the country – close to Egypt’s border – it’s almost as though one of the last internationally-recognised authorities in the country is about to flee for fear of attacks by militants.

If, or perhaps when, it does, the prospects do not look good for Europe’s Mediterranean neighbour. Stories of refugees dying in sinking ferries as they seek refuge across the sea is just the start of it. When it all goes upside-down, as seems likely, there could be far reaching implications. A spread into Tunisia, Egypt? More refugees? Attacks across the Med? Another Syria/northern Iraq, this one with beaches, just a channel of water away from the EU?

0ne thing’s for sure: tourism is finished, for a long time to come. A country without flights is going to find it tricky pulling in the punters.

It was a strange experience being (possibly) the last tourist in Libya – and it feels even odder now.

* A Tourist in the Arab Spring, published in March 2013 by Bradt: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Tourist-Spring-Travel-Guides-Literature/dp/1841624756

Anti-Gaddafi graffiti on a wall in Tripoli in February 2012:

24th December 2014 / Blog /

Trouble in paradise: what happened to Maldivian journalist Ahmed Rilwan Abdulla?

ON August 8 this year Ahmed Rilwan Abdulla, a 28-year-old Maldivian journalist, disappeared.

He was returning home at around 1am from Male, capital of the “honeymoon heaven” that so many couples (including a fair few celebrities) will be heading to this festive period, to Hulhumale. This is an artificially-built island next to the airport island, a short ferry ride from Male. It is where many people, escaping the overcrowded capital, now live.

He was pictured on CCTV at the Male ferry terminal and sent a tweet from his account @moyameeha at 1.02am, presumably on the ferry. However, eyewitnesses say that at around 2am, a man fitting his description was taken at knife point into a vehicle. Screams were heard outside his apartment while a tall figure held his hand over a man’s mouth and bundled him into the car, which then sped away. A weapon was dropped on the ground. This was later taken by police.

Ahmed Rilwan Abdulla has not been seen since.

The journalist wrote for the independent news website Minivan News (“minivan” translates as “independent” or “free” in Dhivehi, the local language). He was known for his stringent reports highlighting corrupt politics, Islamic extremism and gang culture. He had written an article on death threats made to more than a dozen local journalists. He had also exposed Maldivian militants going to fight in Syria.

The CCTV camera at Male’s ferry terminal was subsequently found to show that a number of men appeared to have been following him. A clip of him and others entering the terminal can be seen on YouTube if you enter his name.

The police began an investigation into the journalist’s disappearance after his family reported him missing on August 13. Four men were eventually, in late September, detained. They have since been released. Known gang members had been spotted at the ferry terminal on the night he went missing.

Ahmed Rilwan Abdulla’s family has criticised the police for not conducting a sufficiently probing investigation, as has the Maldivian Democracy Network, which carried out an independent inquiry highlighting several potential leads that had not been followed up. This research was conducted by a Glasgow-based company named Athena Intelligence and Security, hired on behalf of the MDN.

The Maldives Police Services described their report as being made for “political gain”. However, some believe that the police themselves have become politicised: that they are turning a blind eye as radical Islamic support is key to propping up the vote of the current president, Abdulla Yameen, who attained a narrow victory over Mohamed Nasheed of the Maldivian Democratic Party in the last election.

Daniel Bosley, the editor of Minivan News, was a Macclesfield postman who took an internship at the Maldivian High Commission in Male and found himself immersed in the 2012 coup that saw the democratically-elected leader Mohamed Nasheed ousted from power.

It has been a turbulent period in paradise.

Bosley was later made editor of Minivan News and he has said of Ahmed Rilwan Abdulla’s disappearance: “After putting together his last movements and establishing clearly that this is a case of abduction, the trail has gone cold. No new evidence, no one claiming responsibility.”

The international group Committee to Protect Journalists further quotes Bosley as describing his hiring of Rilwan – as he is generally referred to – as “without a doubt the best decision I have made in my time as an editor”.

This was because of his excellent reporting. Since the apparent abduction, however, Minivan News has come under further attack. A machete was lodged in the front door of its offices and journalists have received a threat that “you will be killed or disappear next. Watch out”. They have moved office.

The website findmoyameehaa.com includes more information about Rilwan’s tragic case.

Having been in the Maldives for several weeks while researching a new travel book about the country and meeting reporters for Minivan News – one of whom told me that there was a fear of “a man with an iron bar in the hall” although “they leave us alone for the moment” – the series of events is especially disturbing.

It was as though they had seen it coming. The journalists I talked to even reported that they believed their phones were being tapped. When I met them – on the airport island before travelling back across the water to the same ferry port used by Rilwan – we were clearly “observed” by figures monitoring us, as I describe.

None of these matters make the holiday brochures. Nor do they get reported in the travel press. Few sitting by the infinity pools as I write this will know anything of Rilwan.

But it will not stay that way for long. Unless the authorities in the Maldives take this case – and others like it – seriously, the story will gain a wider audience.

In June 2012 a Maldivian blogger named Ismail Rasheed, who had written about gay rights, had his throat slashed in Male after being attacked by a gang. The knife missed an artery by millimetres and he survived, though he fled the country for his safety.

This is just one – extreme – example of a series of attacks and threats on journalists. And the word extreme is apt as it is clear that “extremism” is on the rise.

The group Reporters Without Borders now puts the Maldives at 108th out of 180 countries in its press freedom index. It has fallen in this index for four consecutive years.

Welcome to the Maldives (visitmaldives.com), motto: the sunny side of life.

Ahmed Rilwan Abdulla:

http://minivannews.com/files/2014/08/moyameehaa.jpg

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Category: Blog