Detention of Yameen's half-brother likely to split loyalties of Maldives forces

Agencies
February 7, 2018

Malé, Feb 7: The political crisis in the Maldives deepened this week after embattled President Abdulla Yameen declared a state of emergency and ordered the arrest of top judges and a former president.

The upmarket holiday paradise does not often find itself in the news but a shock Supreme Court decision last week ordering the release of top opposition politicians has triggered a furious response from authoritarian ruler Yameen.

How will the latest round of political strife play out in the Indian Ocean archipelago?

What's going on?

Yameen, who came to power in 2013, has presided over an escalating crackdown on dissent that has battered the Maldives' reputation. He has jailed almost all the political opposition.

The Maldives was plunged into fresh chaos this week after the president refused to comply with the Supreme Court's Thursday order to release nine dissidents and restore the seats of 12 legislators sacked for defecting from Yameen's party.

The Supreme Court ruling gives the opposition the majority in the assembly — meaning they could potentially impeach the president.

In a stunning blow to the regime, it also paves the way for exiled former president Mohamed Nasheed — the first democratically elected leader who was controversially convicted of terrorism in 2015 — to return and run for president this year.

On Monday, Yameen sent soldiers to storm the court and arrest judges, with Maldives police also detaining Yameen's estranged half-brother and former president Maumoon Abdul Gayoom, who had sided with the main opposition.

Hundreds of people gathered outside the court complex and police used pepper spray to disperse the crowds.

Where do the security forces stand?

The head of the armed forces is publicly backing Yameen.

"The Maldives military will not stand by and watch the Maldives go into a crisis," military chief Ahmed Shiyam said Sunday, warning he would not obey "unlawful orders" from the Supreme Court.

But as ex-president Gayoom — who ruled for 30 years until 2008 elections — was led out of his house, riot police saluted him, according to the local Maldives Independent website, and analysts have warned his arrest could split the security forces as he still commands deep respect.

The emergency declaration gives sweeping powers to security forces to arrest and detain individuals, curtails the powers of the judiciary and bars parliament from impeaching Yameen.

The opposition says it shows Yameen is "desperate" and Nasheed, who has previously expressed fears of unrest in the troubled Indian Ocean nation, said it amounted to imposing martial law.

Yameen has drawn close to China and Saudi Arabia during his time in office, with both countries investing heavily in the tiny tourist archipelago in the Indian Ocean, and may feel he has enough support to weather the storm.

How did we get here?

Mohamed Nasheed became the country's first democratically elected president in 2008 and swiftly became an international celebrity because of his urgent pleas to address climate change. He held a cabinet meeting underwater to highlight the low-lying archipelago's plight.

The country has been locked in a slow-burn political crisis since Yameen won a controversial run-off against Nasheed in 2013 presidential elections.

During his time in power "President Yameen has systematically alienated his coalition, jailed or exiled every major opposition political figure, deprived elected Members of Parliament of their right to represent their voters... revised laws to erode human rights (and fired) any officials who refuse orders," the US State Department said.

What about the tourists?

The tensions have already hurt the tourism industry — the largest contributor to the country's economy — despite government assurances that visitors are safe.

China — the number one source of tourists for the Maldives — and neighbouring India have already warned their national to defer all non-essential travel, and the UK and the US have warned their nationals to exercise caution in Male.

In 2015, when the government declared a state of emergency because of fears of terrorism, tourist booking plummeted which hit economic growth hard.

Nearly 1.4 million foreigners visited the Maldives last year, up from 1.28 million the previous year.

What happens next?

All eyes are on the security forces to see what will happen now that Gayoom is in detention and whether further street protests will break out despite the state of emergency.

Nasheed has already said he will run again in elections scheduled for this year and has called for regional superpower India to intervene.

Yameen, who has previously faced several unsuccessful opposition attempts to impeach him for alleged corruption, looks determined to fight off all challenges to his rule

Opposition legislators have also called on the international community to pressure Yameen.

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News Network
May 5,2024

Iran.jpg

Iran has urged Muslim countries to cut all relations with the Israeli regime as means of pressuring Tel Aviv to end its ongoing genocidal war on the Gaza Strip.

Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian made the remarks on Saturday, addressing the 15th Heads of State and Government Summit of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) in Gambia’s capital Banjul.

“Beyond doubt, this time period will also pass by, despite all its hardships and adversities for the Palestinian nation,” he said.

“However, the manner and quality of the role that is played by us, Muslim states, in the face of this crisis will go down in history,” the top diplomat added.

“Undoubtedly, severance of diplomatic and economic ties and [imposition of] practical arms and trade embargo [on Israel] serves as an important means of cessation of its genocide in Gaza and atrocities in the West Bank and the Noble al-Quds.”

At least 34,654 people have died in Gaza since October 7, when the Israeli regime began the war in response to al-Aqsa Storm, a retaliatory operation by the coastal sliver’s resistance groups.

Despite the unabated campaign of bloodshed and destruction, the regime has so far fallen short of realizing its goals, including defeating Gaza’s resistance, causing forced displacement of the territory’s entire population to neighboring Egypt, and enabling the release of those who were taken captive during al-Aqsa Storm.

Amir-Abdollahian said Gaza’s developments proved that elimination of the Palestinian resistance “was nothing but an illusion.”

“Because the Israeli regime is not a legitimate government. It is only an occupying apartheid power,” he said, adding, “Passage of time is not going to lend legitimacy to an occupying power.”

The foreign minister asserted that realization of sustainable peace and security in the region was only possible through cessation of the regime’s occupation of Palestine, Syria, and Lebanon, return of the Palestinian refugees to their homeland, and manifestation of Palestinians’ right to self-determination.

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News Network
April 28,2024

USprotest.jpg

Campuses of several US Universities have been witnessing massive protests with the students seeking a ceasefire in Israel's war with Hamas. Police have arrested over 550 protesters and some universities are witnessing violent crackdown of protests by the ruthless cops. 

Law enforcement officials at the behest of college administrators have deployed tasers and tear gas against students protesters at Atlanta's Emory University, even though the protests have been largely peaceful, say activists and media personnel present at the spot.

Emil' Keme, professor of English and Indigenous studies, at the University said that the scene reminded him of the civil war in Guatemala as a teenager.

"Police immediately began to force people to move. I felt like I was in a war zone, with all the police and their weapons, the rubber bullets. We were pushed away," Mr Keme told the Guardian describing what happened as soon as cops entered the Emory campus.

“Police took the student next to me, pushed an older lady nearby and then pushed me.”

Student protesters say they are expressing solidarity with Palestinians in Gaza, where the confirmed death toll has topped 34,305, according to the Hamas-run territory's health ministry. They want universities to cut their investments in everything tied to Israel and weapons that fuel the war in Gaza. That means funds run by BlackRock, Google as well as Amazon's cloud service, Lockheed Martin and even Airbnb.

Video circulated widely on social media shows two women who identified themselves as professors being detained, with one of them slammed to the ground by one officer as a second officer then pushes her chest and face onto a concrete sidewalk.

Atlanta police and Georgia troopers are leading a joint operation within the campus to dismantle the tents and camps the activists have set up at the school's quadrangle. Within minutes of the authorities entering the campus, 28 people, 20 of whom were "Emory community members", had been arrested, the institute said in a statement.

The school president said that the videos of police clashing with the students "are shocking" and that he is "horrified horrified that members of our community had to experience and witness such interactions."

The university's response was likely the quickest show of police force in response to a divestment protest among the dozens nationwide that have occurred in recent weeks. It was also probably the only one where pepper balls, stun guns and rubber bullets were used.

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News Network
April 28,2024

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Students in Paris blocked access to a campus building at a French university on Friday, as pro-Palestine demonstrations reach Europe.

The students occupied the central campus building of the Paris Institute of Political Studies, known as Sciences Po, and dozens of others blocked its entrance, echoing protest action at American universities.

Students inspired by Gaza solidarity encampments at campuses in the United States blocked access to a campus building at the prestigious French university on Friday.

They blocked the entrance with trash cans, wooden platforms and other items.

The occupation of the Paris university campus came after police broke up a separate protest at the university’s amphitheater outside one of its Paris campuses.

Scores of student protesters gathered at the building’s windows, chanting slogans and holding placards reading “We are all Palestinians,” in defiance of administrators who students say called the police on their peers two days earlier.

Pro-Palestinian student protesters had occupied the amphitheater outside one of the university’s Paris campuses on Wednesday evening.

The US-style student protests, which began over the months-long Israeli regime’s genocidal war against Palestinians in the besieged Gaza Strip, kicked off in the United States and have now spread to European capitals as well as Australia.

In the German capital Berlin, several people were arrested as police violently cleared a camp of Gaza war protesters at the German parliament.

Pro-Palestinian activists are demanding a permanent ceasefire, an end to the Israeli atrocities, and an arms embargo of the Tel Aviv regime.

The Israeli regime launched the war on Gaza on October 7 last year. The genocidal war has killed more than 34,356 Palestinians, most of them women and children.

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