Given the pervasive threat of rising sea levels, the assault on democracy in the Maldives is the last thing the low-lying island nation needs.
The event evoked both comedic absurdity and ironic sadness. In October 2009, amidst an ultimately fruitless United Nations conference on climate change in Copenhagen, then-president of the Maldives Mohamed Nasheed chose to protest global inaction by conducting a meeting of his cabinet underwater. The half-hour meeting, featuring eleven cabinet members and the president in full scuba gear, produced a resolution calling for a worldwide decrease in carbon emissions. President Nasheed hoped that the stunt would give the island nation’s dire straits some international attention. As he told reporters from the BBC, “We’re now actually trying to send our message, let the world know what is happening, and what will happen to the Maldives if climate change is not checked.”
While the protest might have been tongue-in-cheek, the reality that this island nation faces is grave. A 2013 report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change projects that as a result of climate change, sea levels can rise by as much as 98 centimeters (about 3.2 feet) by 2100. This is awful news for this nation of almost 2,000 coral atolls in the Indian Ocean southwest of India, where the highest point is a mere 2.4 meters (about 7 feet) above sea level, and where nearly 80% of the islands are below one meter above sea level. High waters have wreaked havoc on the Maldives in the past, to devastating consequences. The Indian Ocean Tsunami of December 26th, 2004––which caused over 80 deaths, $470 million in damages, and completely inundated entire atolls in the chain, according to the US Geological Survey––demonstrates how vulnerable these low-lying islands might be to rising sea levels in the future. Beyond sea levels, issues of freshwater contamination, declining fishing yields, and the higher threat of dengue fever serve as constant reminders of the impact of climate change on daily life. Climate change has proved a challenge to Maldivian statehood, and to the endurance of the islands themselves. In 2008, the Nasheed government proposed creating a sovereign wealth fund to direct tourism revenues toward purchasing real estate in either India, Sri Lanka, or Australia in the event of having to evacuate the country, whose beaches and coastlines are rapidly eroding.
Yet instead of striving to squelch this nothing short of existential threat, the current government of the Maldives seems vested in squelching something entirely different–– democracy. Earlier in February, during a trial marked by high irregularities, Nasheed was arrested, tried, and sentenced to a thirteen-year jail sentence on charges of inciting terrorism as president. At trial, Nasheed was initially barred access to defense counsel, two presiding judges of the case served as prosecution witnesses, and the hearing was not public. In response, human rights group Amnesty International has called the trial “deeply flawed,” “politically motivated,” and a “travesty of justice.” Three journalists attempting to investigate Nasheed’s arrest and trial have themselves been arrested, without warrants. The US State Department, in a recent press briefing, reported the arrest of former defense minister Mohamed Nazim on similar charges as Nasheed. The briefing also called for the Maldivian government to “take steps to restore confidence in its hard-fought democracy and the rule of law, including judicial independence and freedom of the press.” These disturbing developments have been met not only with pro-democracy opposition––which staged protests in late February of 8,000 to 10,000 people in the capital city of Malé calling for the release of Nasheed and others––but also commitments by the police to crack down even further on protesters.
This rampant governmental abuse of power and suppression of civil liberties is nothing new for the Maldives. From 1978 to 2008, the country was under the iron fist of Maumoon Abdul Gayoom, Asia’s longest-serving leader when he departed from office. During his presidency, he presided over gross human rights abuses, silencing free expression and jailing and torturing political dissidents. The Maldives’ dictatorship came to an interregnum in 2008, when the country’s first democratically-held elections brought Nasheed––who was imprisoned and tortured by the Gayoom regime at the notorious Dhoonidhoo Island detention center for his activist activities––to succeed Gayoom.
However, amidst Nasheed’s efforts at democratic reforms, the interregnum proved short-lived. Conservative Islamists (the country is overwhelmingly Sunni Muslim) and cronies of the dictatorship attempted to undermine and undercut Nasheed throughout his time in office. In February 2012, Nasheed arrested Judge Abdullah Mohamed, a vestige of the Gayoom regime who had been blocking many of Nasheed’s reforms. Amid opposition toward the decision, Nasheed resigned — while being held at gunpoint by military forces. Nasheed says the move amounted to a “coup d’état.”
Mohammed Waheed Hassan, Nasheed’s successor, subsequently appointed ministers with Gayoom ties. This year, the arrest of Judge Mohamed was offered as proof for Nasheed’s “terrorism” charges. Nasheed was defeated in late 2013 run-off elections by Gayoom’s half-brother Abdullah Yameen; the elections were marked by attempts by the judiciary to both nullify the results of the first round of elections (in which Nasheed had been leading), as well as continually postpone or cancel the date of the run-off election. In September of last year, reports surfaced of journalist abductions and disappearances, to the point that a Maldives Broadcasting Commission poll found that 84% of journalists surveyed said they had been “threatened.”
What will this return of the Maldives’ ghost of dictatorship mean for the country’s ability to fight climate change? Unquestionably, by putting a chokehold on Nasheed, the government has stifled one of the Maldives’ most vociferous and productive advocates for action on the issue. For a country that few in the West know beyond tourism, Nasheed was able to garner unprecedented international media attention to the trials of the Maldives, even becoming something of a celebrity as the subject of the 2011 documentary The Island President. Chronicling Nasheed’s efforts toward the adoption of a robust climate deal at the 2009 UN Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen, he is shown in the documentary relentlessly wrestling his country’s way towards a deal, confronting developed and newly industrializing countries alike to reduce carbon emissions. On the domestic front, his proposals were bold and audacious; Nasheed even went so far to propose that the Maldives should become a carbon-neutral country by 2020. The Maldives would plan to achieve this by amplifying research and investment in renewable energy sources like wind turbines, gradually phasing out the diesel fuel the country so heavily relies upon. Some have questioned how feasible such measures are given the inevitability of climate change’s catastrophic effects on the Maldives. In response, Nasheed’s Minister of the Environment Mohamed Aslam notes, “We have to accept the fact that change has already happened. We can’t undo what has been done…So it’s about having that in mind and then reorganizing ourselves to live with the realities of these changes that are going to happen.” Put more pithily, Nasheed remarks in The Island President before the British Parliament, “We know that the Maldives becoming carbon neutral is not going to stop us from annihilation…but at least we can die knowing that we’ve done the right thing.”
Even if nothing can be done to save the Maldives, there is no question that Nasheed rightfully put climate change at the forefront of a very global agenda.. Perhaps the most important element of the Nasheed government’s campaign against climate change, however, was that it weaved into Nasheed’s struggle for liberal democracy. The Nasheed administration believed that the only way the islands’ leaders would address the issue would be if voters restless for change and action legitimized them in a popular election. As noted in the Berkeley Journal of Sociology, “The two campaigns—one for global climate justice, the other for democracy in the Maldives—had become inextricably connected, the fate of each depending on the other succeeding.”
Preoccupied with reversing the gains made by Nasheed in liberal democracy rather than actually tackling climate change, it is clear that the current government and its allies have no vested interest in either. For proof of this, reports reveal how little the subject of climate change arose in the discourse of the 2013 election that brought Yameen’s government to power. Even with respect to climate policy itself, President Yameen seeks to backpedal on Nasheed’s progress. The Berkeley Journal of Sociology notes, “In contrast to Nasheed’s sustainable development plan, Yameen Gayoom, the half-brother of the former autocratic president, pledged to create jobs by pursuing oil exploration.” Such an effort would pose an undeniable roadblock to the Maldives’ efforts to become carbon neutral. The candor, albeit mixed with vigor and energy, with which Nasheed approached the prospects of climate change ought to force the current government to keep its actions in perspective. If there is any action of Nasheed that should alarm Yameen’s government the most, it should not be his “incursions” on “traditional Islamic values” or the 2012 arrest of Judge Abdullah Mohamed, but his 2009 underwater cabinet meeting. It should serve as a jarring reminder of the collective future all people of the Maldives, whether democrat or dictator, will face.
In an February 2012 op-ed in The New York Times shortly after his ousting addressed to the aspirations of freedom from the protesters of the Arab Spring, Nasheed wrote, “At times, dealing with the corrupt system of patronage the former regime left behind can feel like wrestling with a Hydra: when you remove one head, two more grow back. With patience and determination, the beast can be slain. But let the Maldives be a lesson for aspiring democrats everywhere: the dictator can be removed in a day, but it can take years to stamp out the lingering remnants of his dictatorship.” Unfortunately, for all of his patience and determination, Nasheed may have succumbed to the Hydra of dictatorship for now. However, the current government of the Maldives must take heed: by taking increasingly autocratic measures, the government undermines the robust, liberal, and stable democracy necessary for this nation to slay a far more destructive Hydra––one of climate change and rising sea levels––which will rear its ugly heads over these pristine islands in the decades to come.