Defense Minister Adam Shareef Umar accuses foreign countries of publishing travel advisory notes and updates about Maldives without proper fact checking and validation.
Minister Umar's remark came in response to United States releasing a travel advisory recently citing that Maldives was under an unprecedented threat of an imminent terrorist attack without any prior warnings.
Speaking at a press conference on Monday at National Counter-Terrorism Center (NCTC) Minister Umar said that such travel advisories and tourist recommendation blogs are published or released globally without validating the facts with Maldivian state.
Defense Minister had pointed out that the recently published travel advisory by US had been compiled without communicating the developments found by US authorities to Maldivian state. He also asserted the primary source of information US relied to compile their advisory was mainly social media posts and statuses.
Minister Umar advised Maldivians to be cautious with their publicly view statements, posts and statuses on various social media platforms as misleading opinions or facts could lead to international bodies to conceive the original situation of the country from a different perspective - a rather negative one.
The Maldivian Defense Minister had also claimed that at the time US released their travel advisory, Maldives was working in collaboration with UK's transport authority and British Airways.
Umar also noted that the IED attack on Australia's airport in 2017 led to Maldives increasing the country's internal security measures based on information relayed by both Australia and US.
