Often, when you start to dream about taking a holiday, what you're craving above all is simplicity. You want to strip life down to its essentials, to spend a week or two somewhere far away from the cares of the world. I live in East London, and it's been a stressful year. I've been running around like the proverbial blue-arsed fly, and Islamic radicals seem particularly attracted to my local bus routes. Winter is closing in, and there's no way I'll make it through the grim and slushy months without feeling the sun on my face at least once. I want to chill out. I want to amble from my hammock into the sea, then swim around wondering what to have for lunch.

So the Maldives looked perfect. Where could be more simple? A bunch of green dots in the middle of the Indian ocean. Nothing much to engage with, no great feats of sight-seeing to achieve. Just me and the beach and a few fat novels - the ones I've been saving for an occasion when I could really take a run-up at them. As the official tourist board website puts it, "sun, sand and sea, a thousand 'Robinson Crusoe' islands, massive lagoons with different depths and infinite shades of blue and turquoise, dazzling underwater coral gardens; a perfect natural combination for the ideal tropical holiday destination." Nice, I thought. Where do I sign up?
"However," the tourist board site goes on, "there is more to the Maldives than just that". Too bloody right there is, as I found out the other day when I attended a meeting of PEN, the writers organisation. PEN campaigns for freedom of expression, working with people around the word who've been imprisoned or otherwised abused for writing or saying things their local authorities don't like. The Maldives, while it's one of the world's third-division nations, turns out to be premier league in the torture, imprisonment and disappearance stakes. Since 1978 it's been ruled by the avuncular-looking President Maumoon Abdul Gayoom.

You can check him out, hob-nobbing with the British High Commissioner, Bill Clinton, and other notables here. President Gayoom was elected for a record sixth five-year term in 2003. Though there were no other candidates, we should still congratulate him on becoming Asia's longest serving leader. His unprecedented popularity is assisted by his total control over the Maldivian media, and his practice of imprisoning anyone who criticises his regime.

Source: Dhivehi Observer