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EDITOR IN CHIEF- ABDULLAH BIN SALIM AL SHUEILI

Tourist haven in peril

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The Indian Ocean island nation of the Maldives is famed as an upmarket tourist destination of white beaches and turquoise waters but is threatened by rising sea levels and endured stifling political control.


After the surprise election win of opposition leader Ibrahim Mohamed Solih in weekend elections, here is some background about the Muslim nation.


The country is a collection of 1,192 tiny islands scattered 800 km across the equator. Only 200 islands are inhabited with the country’s population put at 340,000 in the last census in 2014.


Tourism is the principal income earner, providing 41 per cent of gross domestic product (GDP) in 2016 and nearly 20 per cent of jobs, the World Travel and Tourism Council says.


The archipelago’s beauty drew nearly 1.4 million foreign visitors in 2017, with the destination especially prized among honeymooners.


Maumoon Abdul Gayoom ruled with an iron fist for 30 years until 2008 when he lost the first-ever multi-party poll to human rights activist Mohamed Nasheed.


Nasheed was forced to resign in 2012 after a police mutiny and demonstrations that he said were part of a coup plot.


In disputed elections the following year, he was defeated by Gayoom’s half brother, Abdulla Yameen, a strongman president who was defeated in elections on Sunday.


Yameen, whose regime has been bankrolled by China in a departure from the country’s traditional alliance with India, imprisoned or forced into exile all his main rivals while curtailing press freedom and social networks. Nasheed, who became an opposition leader, was jailed in 2015 on a terrorism charge widely criticised as politically motivated.


The following year he was granted prison leave for medical treatment in London, where he secured political asylum with the help of high-profile human rights lawyer Amal Clooney.


In February this year judges ordered the release of jailed opponents of Yameen, who hit back with a 45-day state of emergency, suspending the constitution and arresting the Chief Justice and another judge of the Supreme Court.


His aged half-brother Gayoom was also jailed for allegedly conspiring with the Supreme Court to topple him.


Eighty per cent of the Maldives is less than a metre above sea level, making it one of the countries most threatened by rising sea levels linked to climate warming. In 2009 Nasheed held a cabinet meeting underwater to raise awareness of the risk, also warning his people could become climate refugees. Situated along Indian Ocean trading routes and about 650 km southwest of Sri Lanka, the Maldives has been colonised several times. Once a Buddhist kingdom, it converted to Islam around the 12th century. — AFP


AMAL JAYASINGHE


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