With Millions Under Climate Threat, Gayoom (and Oxfam) Are Unethical
Today’s IHT sported what may be the most absurd climate-related speech by a politician. In a sentence, we are lectured on human rights by somebody that has been President of his country since November 1978.
That’s not all:
- President Maumoon Abdul Gayoom is officially the Dictator of the Maldives
- He has been re-elected since 1978 five times, every time by 90%+ of the votes (as sole candidate for the job)
- He is Head of Government, Head of State, Commander-in-Chief (well, George W Bush is that too) but has also been for a very long time Defence Minister and Finance Minister before being ridiculed about it
- having been forced towards democratic reforms, President Gayoom is working hard to get himself re-elected under a Presidential system (for a change)
- as recently as 2003, he was still imposing “severe restrictions on freedom of the press, and political parties were unable to function.” according to Amnesty International
- as recently as August 13, 2004, responded to popular protests by declaring a State of Emergency, sending the police to rough up unarmed civilians, and arrested parliamentarians and members of the opposition
- despite all his earlier promises, President Gayoom has just rescheduled to an unspecified date the first multi-party Presidential elections expected for 10 October
Wouldn’t the above recommend to thread carefully on the subject of human rights, if only to avoid the risk of being called a hypocrite, coming out in the open so clearly picking up only the “human rights” of one’s convenience?
Of course not.
See “With millions under threat, inaction is unethical” by Maumoon Abdul Gayoom.
And that’s still not all: apparently, President Gayoom has teamed up with Oxfam, and he specifically mentions the upcoming “Climate Wrongs and Human Rights” Oxfam report. Too bad that report contains a lie.
Oh well…what’s a little untruth when there is a chance to prop up a ruler of three decades, by lucky chance exactly during his election campaign?
Oxfam should be more than ashamed by this.
The Unbearable Nakedness of CLIMATE CHANGE 
As a Maldivian I am very concerned that the world is viewing Maumoon as an environmentalist. For us, forget about his 30 years of repression, just looking at the environmental aspect of his policies, we see environmental destruction. His governments has a population consolidation policy (where persons on remote islands which are difficult to develop and with accessibility problems) are to be shifted to larger islands( which the government is to supposed to develop) is a contradiction in itself. Each election year he will spend our scarce resources on dredging the perfect beach areas of islands where the population could be as less as 200 people in the hope of securing more votes for him. Of course those islanders are desperate for easy accessibility through boat to their islands as the alternative would be to waddle through chest high water with kids and the unwell mounted on their shoulders to reach a boat. He also reclaims land areas of some small islands with no opportunity for growth to make it bigger and is also making artificial islands such as “Hulumale”. (we do have around 2000 islands and only around 200 are inhabited) If Maumoon were to implement his population consolidation policies he wouldn’t be destroying the natural make up of these beautiful islands. Tourists might come here for beaches, but in a lot of our islands we no longer have beaches and beautiful sea. The picture foreigners see when they come here are different as they only see the artificially perfected resort islands. Visit an uninhabited island any day and you shall see how our islands were..green, turquoise and pure white and fresh.
Wonder why he is suddenly interested in Human Rights? Check this
http://doreview.blogspot.com/2008/08/no-nobel-prize-for-dictator-gayoom-say.html
He is being nominated by his Deputy Foreign Minister (who just happened to be his daughter) for the Nobel Prize for Peace!