He wasn't in Male' at the time and sounded surprised, and said he would check with his webmaster and respond to me.
Sure enough I got the following SMS the next day:
"Dhiraagu has sent an e-mail to my webmaster saying my website has been officially blocked due to an offical request from Telecommunication Authority of Maldives"
According to him, the email sent by his hosting provider gave no reasons for the ban, nor any word on who originally demanded the censorship.
A Sun Online report the next day, however, carried a statement from TAM saying that the ban was carried out at the behest of the Islamic Ministry, which is run by the same Adhaalath party mullahs who are often heavily criticized by Hilath in his posts.
This is worrying for several reasons. When a so-called democratic government assumes the power to unilaterally silence its critics without any notice, then you know that tyranny has taken hold.
It is even more alarming when you realize that this was no formal media organization or news website. It was a citizen's personal blog that has been shut down by the self-appointed gatekeepers of Islam.
The man has been pushing the boundaries of free expression in the Maldives, speaking openly about fanatic wahhabism, gay rights, and the all-round hypocrisy of the Maldivian state - a country that has in recent weeks virtually become unadulterated pornography for anyone who gets off on intolerance and bigotry.
At least the burnt, smashed and petrol bombed remains of the SAARC monuments in Addu could be explained away as the actions of crazy fundie idiots who are incapable of reasoning, and whose hatred and paranoia is known to explode into all-too-familiar violence and destruction.
But when a government run by the Maldivian "Democratic" Party, led by President Nasheed who was once a condemned journalist himself, goes about censoring websites and silencing critics, then it is time to sit up and take notice.
This isn't, after all, the first time this government has clamped down on free speech. In the first few months after coming to power, the government shut down a dhivehi language Christian website and several other websites critical of the Adhaalath party mullahs.
Apart from this, the government intelligence agencies continue to spy on citizens' personal communications and police personnel have been discovered to anonymously harass ordinary citizen bloggers, including me.
Today, the hollowness of Anni's promises of making the Maldives 'a haven for dissident writers' lies exposed.
Instead, the message is quite clear: kneel down before the Islamists in the government, or they will gag you and force you into submission.
If anyone still has any illusions that we're living in a democratic state, they can lose them now.
~Peace!
