State of emergency in Maldives

The Maldives declared a state of emergency yesterday after using tear gas and truncheons to break up thousands of demonstrators making an unprecedented call for political reform in the tiny resort island nation.

Government spokesman Ahmed Shaheed said paramilitary forces moved in on the crowds after they torched a government building and tried to charge a police station and that minimal force was used, 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 to be identified.

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 Mr 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 yesterday until government forces moved in to break up the demonstrators.

A report on the dissident Maldives Culture website said police had beaten protesters and arrested a number of reformists, and that police agents in the crowd had incited the violence as an excuse to break up the demonstration.

Mr 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.

Ibrahim Ismail, a reformist member of parliament, said the protesters wanted to see some sign Mr Gayoom was sincere about his reform pledges in the 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 Mr Gayoom's calls for reform he had started a series of public meetings last month 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," Mr Ismail told Reuters.

The Friends of Maldives, a group concerned with human rights abuses in the country, said Mr Ismail was one of five members of a special assembly called last month to discuss changing the constitution who were jailed in the crackdown.