Secular Café: The hell of the Maldives

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The hell of the Maldives Apr 12th 2013, 09:20 Tourists go there and think it paradise, bt they are segregated from the population. http://www.independent.co.uk/news/wo...s-8567893.html Hilath Rasheed, the first openly gay and secular blogger in the Maldives, was about to walk through his front door one afternoon last year when he felt the box-cutter slice through his neck. Quote: It took a moment to notice the blood pouring down his shirt. As his attackers sauntered off, Hilath staggered to the main road, clutching the loose skin over his throat with one hand. He managed to hitch a lift to hospital from a horrified motorcyclist. When a doctor in the emergency room asked him to move his hand away, a policeman and nurse fainted. Following a miraculous recovery – doctors told him there was less than a 1 per cent chance of surviving such an attack – Hilath, 35, now lives in exile in Sri Lanka. He misses home, but a country where it is illegal to be non-Muslim and violent forms of religious fundamentalism are on the rise is no place for a homosexual secularist, he says. "Extremism is the biggest threat my country faces," he said at a coffee shop in Colombo. "I was the first person to talk openly about homosexuality and religious freedom. People said I was brave, but often I think I was stupid." That quote just gives a taste of what it is like. Please read the article.

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