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Maldives : Hell in Heaven

Les Maldives @ Laetitia Scuiller EnezGreen
Les Maldives @ Laetitia Scuiller EnezGreen

MEPs have called travel agencies to remove the Maldives from their catalogs. They also ask tourists to no longer travel to the archipelago because of autocratic dictatorship established by President Yameen.

Behind the image of the luxury tourist destination, a country in full political chaos

Known better for its luxury island resorts, the Indian Ocean nation became a democracy in 2008 after years of autocratic rule but its political transition has been rocky.

International attention on the Maldives has focused on the fate of former President Mohamed Nasheed, who was replaced by Mr Yameen in 2013 and jailed for terrorism over the arrest of a judge when he was in power. A further 1,700 of Mr Yameen’s opponents say they are being persecuted by the government for political reasons.

Richard Branson, the UK entrepreneur, was the latest to voice public support for Mr Nasheed this week, welcoming a finding by the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention that Mr Nasheed’s imprisonment was illegal.

“He is a democracy and human-rights hero within his own country — some people call him the ‘Mandela of the Maldives’,” Mr Branson wrote in a blog on his Virgin Group website.

He recalled Mr Nasheed’s underwater cabinet meeting in scuba gear to highlight the Maldives’ vulnerability to global warming and rising sea levels, and backed the sanctions calls. “I hope that the US, European Union and Britain now follow through and impose sanctions on rights abusers in the Maldives,” he wrote.

The Maldives are sold as a dream destination at a time when a dictatorial yoke has hit the archipelago

Moreover, the Sharia is restored since 2014 and the Maldives are now considered one of the regions that most regularly provides fighters to join the ranks of Daesch in Syria and Iraq. According to several observers, flags of Daesch bloom around the streets of Male, the capital of Maldives.. Many MEPs criticizes the indulgent attitude of the tour operator who act as if nothing had happened, continuing to sell the Maldives as a dream destination, at a time when a dictatorial yoke has hit the archipelago.The European Parliament asks the Commission and Member States urgently to prevent tourists about the catastrophic situation of human rights in the Maldives.