Nasheed urges CMAG to keep Maldives on its agenda

Former President Mohamed Nasheed has urged the Commonwealth Ministerial Action Group (CMAG) to keep Maldives on its agenda until ‘conditions are in place for fresh elections’.

Nasheed said this in an article written by him, published on UK’s The Guardian.

“If Cmag were to remove the Maldives from its agenda the chances of securing justice for the victims of human rights violations, and of ever again having free and fair elections in the country, would disappear. The Maldives would once again become a police state, and our cherished democracy relegated to a footnote in the history books – a one-off experiment that failed.

“So I urge the group members to keep the spotlight on my country until all violations have been dealt with, all victims have received redress, and conditions are in place for fresh elections,” says Nasheed in his article on The Guardian.

The article is entitled, “In the Maldives, our democracy is being suffocated. We need help”.

“Their goal, in addition to revenge for their electoral defeat, is to prevent me standing in next year's election. Gayoom and his allies made the mistake once of losing power through a free and fair election: they will not make the same mistake twice,” writes Nasheed.

Nasheed also mentions that Home Minister Dr Mohamed Jameel Ahmed has said that he will be imprisoned for the rest of his life.

Maldives was included in the agenda of CMAG following the controversial transfer of power in February 2012.

CMAG has informed that no decision could be made on the issue of Maldives, due to a technical problem during their teleconference held after the Commission of National Inquiry (CNI) completed its investigation.

The CMAG will make a decision on Maldives in its meeting in London on 28 September.