A footballing triumph has provided some light relief for the people of the Maldives, more use to a diet of poverty, repression and censorship. Nick Milton in The Guardian:
In the middle of the Indian ocean, the people of the Maldives are celebrating a great footballing victory. In a gripping game to rival anything in Euro 2008 they beat the favourites, India, 1-0 on Saturday night to secure their first South Asia Football Federation Championship title. Cheering on the winning side was Asia’s longest serving and increasingly autocratic ruler, President Maumoon Abdul Gayoom.
For Gayoom the win provides the ideal platform from which to launch his audacious bid for a record seventh term in office. However, for the 330,000 Sunni Muslims living in the Maldives the football win provides a short respite from the poverty, repression, torture and censorship which have come to symbolise his 30 years in power.
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