Amendment to make homosexuality major criminal offence

An amendment was put forth during the Parliament session held on Tuesday to bring changes to the Penal Code of Maldives in order to make homosexuality a serious criminal offence in Maldives.

The amendment was submitted by MP for Maamigili constituency, leader of Jumhooree Party Qasim Ibrahim.

Qasim said that homosexuality needed to be included among the serious criminal offences dictated under the Penal Code of Maldives.

He further noted that seeing this as an ordinary crime allows offenders to easily walk back into society during investigative stages and further spread such actions.

Currently, under the Penal Code, there are 12 crimes listed as major crimes in Maldives. This includes murder, terrorism, financing terrorism and money laundering. Recently child abuse and rape were included in this list.

This amendment comes after numerous explicit videos of Maldivians engaging in homosexuality were leaked on social media.

While criminal charges have been pressed against some of them, the others remain unscathed by authorities.