Government spokesman Ahmed Shaheed said paramilitary forces moved in on the crowd after it torched a government building and tried to charge a police station and that it used minimal force, but activists said the break-up was violent.
“It’s over. The NSS (National Security Service) came and chased the people using tear gas and riot gear,” said a resident of the capital Male who did not want his name to be used.
President Maumoon Abdul Gayoom, Asia’s longest-serving leader, announced reforms in June that sought to address his country’s poor human rights record just months after a riot threw a spotlight on simmering unrest in the nation famed for its palm-fringed beach resorts.
But activists said Gayoom had yet to make good on promises of democratisation and took to a square in the capital, Male, on Thursday night to demand the release of five reformists detained in the past week.
During the night the crowd swelled to several thousand, and although the five were released, the crowd refused to disperse through most of Friday until government forces moved in to break up the demonstrators.
A report on the dissident Maldives Culture Web site said police had beaten protesters and arrested a number of reformists, and that police plants in the crowd had incited the violence as an excuse the break up the demonstration.
Shaheed said police arrested about 90 people.
“We were not looking at activists, we are looking at those inciting violence ... A minimal of force was used. I understand only one person was seriously injured and about three to four police have been injured,” he said.
One reformist member of parliament said the protesters wanted to see some sign Gayoom was sincere about his reform pledges in tourism-dependent country of 300,000, a string of tiny islands dotted through the Indian Ocean and often depicted as paradise isles.
He said in response to Gayoom’s calls for reform he began a series of public meetings in July but that the government had recently cracked down on the gatherings, refusing to provide venues and in the past week detaining reformists.
“This is not an incident which just happened in a single day. It has been building up,” he said.
A special assembly called last month to discuss changing the constitution broke up soon after it began over a dispute over how to elect a speaker.
It was due to reconvene on Monday but Shaheed said that was now in question.
“We hope to lift the emergency as soon as we find out which elements were trying to subvert the political process and incite violence,” he said, adding the constitutional meeting would likely be on hold until then.
Gayoom’s proposed amendments include allowing the formation of political parties, changing the way the president is elected, setting up a human rights commission and giving the judiciary more independence.
The Maldives Culture report said several members of the constitutional assembly were among those arrested.
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