Maldives: Mullah Dictator campaigning for Nobel Peace Prize

Maumoon Abdul Gayoom is in a marketing overdrive not only to sell himself to the Maldives electorate for a staggering 7th term in office, but also to the committee that will award the coveted Nobel Peace Prize this year. After causing 30 years of human rights abuse and environmental degradation, Asia’s longest serving dictator is now demanding international acclaim for what he and his family regard as exceptional contribution to the advancement of the environmental cause and human rights.

Maldivians will find it incredulous that the Nobel committee can even consider Gayoom for the prize but there is reasonable ground to believe that they actually might laureate the dictator. Firstly, Gayoom’s foreign ministry team, headed by his daughter Dunya Maumoon, is arguing that it was Gayoom who introduced the idea of environmental rights as a human right to the world, and this concept has been gaining support among international developmental circles. Secondly, the Nobel Peace Prize has never been awarded to anyone in South Asian, a region comprising a sixth of the world’s population, and the organisors may well want to broaden laureates geographically. With co-ordinated effort by the foreign ministry, unscrupulous diplomats in South Asia, and perhaps even a Maldivian environmental NGO hastily put together for the purpose getting Gayoom laureated, the prospect does not seem so inconceivable after all.
Read more here at Maldives Dissent

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.

From: The Unbearable Nakedness of Climate Change

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