Yameen Rasheed, a ‘liberal’ blogger was stabbed to death in Maldivian capital Male. The 29-year-old was found in the stairwell of his apartment with multiple stab wounds to his neck and chest today and died shortly after being taken to hospital.
His blog, The Daily Panic, had a considerable following and was known for poking fun at politicians in the nation of some 340,000 Sunni Muslims.
Following the murder, exiled opposition leader and former president Mohamed Nasheed demanded action on the latest killing. Maldives is facing political crisis after a failed bid by the opposition to impeach the country’s parliamentary speaker late last month.
Here’s all you need to know about Yameen Rasheed:
- Yameen Rasheed, an outspoken critic of the government in his satirical blog, had received many death threats.
- Rasheed is the third media personality to be targeted in the Maldives in the past five years. Blogger Ismail Rasheed, also known as Hilath, was stabbed and wounded by an unidentified attacker in 2012.
- A journalist with the independent Minivan News, Ahmed Rilwan, was likely abducted in August 2014 and has been missing ever since. Exiled opposition leader and former president Mohamed Nasheed today demanded action on the latest killing of an independent journalist.
- Apart from being a blogger, Rasheed was also a civil rights activist.
- He was also a fierce critic of the government’s increasingly authoritarian rule and rising religious extremism in the country, as well as the world. He advocated free speech and an end to human rights violations.
- Yameen was arrested and imprisoned for three weeks in 2015 after taking part in an anti-government rally.
