Interview: Maldives confident of attracting tourists despite state of emergency

A Maldivian government minister on Thursday said that the state of emergency declared in the island nation would not affect its lucrative tourism industry as there were security concerns mainly in the capital and not the surrounding islands.

Tourism minister, Moosa Zameer in an interview with Xinhua said that the islands were "extremely safe" for any visitors and encouraged more tourists, including Chinese travelers, to visit the Maldives.

"We have the state of emergency right now which is largely concentrated in the capital city here. The Chinese tourists do not come to the capital, unless very rarely," Zameer said.

"This is a very isolated incident which has happened because there is a target on the life of the president. This has nothing to do with the general public but we believe there could be some unease for the people who are in Male," he added.

Maldives President Abdulla Yameen on Wednesday declared a 30-day state of emergency in view of threats to national security and public safety after a recent discovery of firearms and explosives in the capital city.

The government has maintained that according to intelligence reports, there were threats on the life of the president ever since he escaped unhurt in an explosion on the presidential speedboat on Sept. 28 which seriously injured his wife.

Several arrests have been made since then in order to maintain normalcy in the islands and security has also been tightened, mainly in the capital city, after the discovery of fake bombs.

"The president has declared the state of emergency on the advise he received from our national security advisory committee," Zameer said.

"These issues have mainly been concentrated on the president. Whatever attempt of attack has only been on the president. So I believe that until such time we have found the perpetrators, this emergency is going to be there. While the police has made very good advances into the investigations, we hope that all this will be over very soon," he added.

Despite the additional security in place in the capital city, Zameer vowed that tourists would be safe and said they had not received any intelligence reports stating that tourists would be targeted.

Zameer maintained that tourism has fared well this year and hoped that next year which has been declared "the Visit Maldives" year will fare even better.

The minister said that efforts to attract tourists in 2016 would be much more compared to previous years and said the government had planned many projects in the Maldives as well as in markets such as China, Britain, Germany and so on to attract a record number of tourists to the honeymoon islands. Endit