Maldives police patrolled the streets of the capital Male during the state of emergency.

AFP
Male
The Maldives government yesterday bowed to mounting international pressure and lifted a state of emergency imposed last week after an alleged plot to blow up the president onboard his speedboat.
The government said it had decided to end the week-long emergency after the Indian Ocean archipelago’s security forces advised President Abdulla Yameen that “the overall security situation in the country has improved”.
“The Government of the Maldives today has lifted the state of emergency in the country with immediate effect,” said a foreign ministry statement.
“With the lifting of the state of emergency, all fundamental rights that were suspended, have been restored.”
Yameen imposed the state of emergency last Wednesday in a move that gave wider powers to police and armed forces to arrest and suspending freedom of assembly and movement.
The former colonial power Britain as well as the United States, the European Union and neighbouring Sri Lanka had called for an immediate end to the emergency which was seen as a tool to suppress dissent.
The main opposition Maldivian Democratic Party (MDP) welcomed the end of emergency rule, saying the decision to invoke the emergency was designed to give the government legal cover to crack down on its opponents and impeach his own estranged vice president Ahmed Adeeb.
The Maldives, a popular destination for honeymooners, has been rocked by political unrest in recent months, which reached new heights last week when Adeeb’s impeachment was fast-tracked using emergency laws.
“Yameen’s increasingly erratic, paranoid and dangerous behaviour is damaging the country and proves he is unfit to be president,” the MDP said in a statement. “He has failed and should step down.”
Adeeb, whose predecessor was also impeached in July, has been accused of high treason over an explosion on the presidential speedboat in September that left Yameen unhurt but injured his wife and one of his bodyguards.
Yameen had insisted that it was necessary to use draconian powers to deal with at least three attempts to kill him and the stability of the nation of 340,000 Sunni Muslims living in a cluster of 1,192 tiny coral islands across the equator in the Indian Ocean.
While reading out a presidential decree removing the emergency, Yameen’s attorney-general Mohamed Anil said there was no longer a threat to the atoll nation, whose tourism industry nosedived after the emergency.
Shortly before the announcement, Sri Lanka took the unusual step of accusing Yameen’s regime of abusing its friendship and violating diplomatic protocol and demanded an end to the emergency.
Sri Lanka also blasted the Maldives over the repatriation of an 18-year-old social media campaigner Ahmed Ashraf who had been arrested 10 days ago in Colombo and handed over to the Maldivian high commission.
“Sri Lanka hopes that the Maldives will take steps to end the state of emergency, initiate measures to respect and protect freedom of expression and ensure that recent developments will not reverse Maldives’ hard-won democratic achievements,” Sri Lanka said.
Yameen is also under intense international pressure to release the jailed opposition leader Mohamed Nasheed whose incarceration has been ruled as illegal by a UN panel.
Nasheed was the country’s first democratically elected leader, but he was forced to step down in February 2012 after a mutiny by police and security forces.
Colombo accused its smaller neighbour of abusing their “close relationship” to crack down on dissidents on its shores.
“The government finds it deeply disturbing that Sri Lanka, a country which has always maintained the closest friendly relations with the Maldives is being used to initiate questionable action against political and social media activists,” the Sri Lankan foreign ministry said.
Sri Lanka has also expressed concern over the arrest of two its nationals late last month in the Maldives in connection with both the explosion on the speedboat and two other alleged plots against Yameen.
However, the FBI has said the September 28 speedboat blast was not caused by a bomb and downplayed claims of an assassination plot.