One of the world’s leading scholars on non-violent conflict, Dr Mary
King, has compared the resignation of former President Mohamed Nasheed
with the ruthless crushing of democratic movements in Communist China
and Soviet Russia.
“For 300,000 Maldivians, President Nasheed’s ouster was the
historical equivalent of Tiananmen Square in 1989 or the Soviet invasion
of Czechoslovakia in 1968: the sensation of new freedom one day, its
threatened disappearance the next,” said Dr King.
Dr King’s comments were included in a statement from the
International Centre on Nonviolent Conflict (ICNC), which will today
award Nasheed with the James Lawson Award for Achievement in the
Practice of Nonviolent Action. The ceremony will take place at Tufts
University in Massachusetts.
The press release stated that the award is in recognition of
Nasheed’s “leadership during many years of the nonviolent opposition to
dictatorship in his country, his courage in the face of an armed coup
earlier this year which forced him from power, and his renewed
nonviolent action on behalf of restoring genuine democracy in his
country.”
Dr King, a professor of Peace and Conflict studies at the
UN-affiliated University for Peace in Costa Rica, is a former recipient
of the James Lawson award herself.
The award is to be presented by Dr James Lawson himself, a leading
activist in the American civil rights movement who is best known for
devising the Nashville lunch-counter sit ins of the 1960s.
President and founder of the ICNC, Jack Du Vall, said that nonviolent action can be the only basis for a ruler’s legitimacy.
“The question for the Maldives is whether it will have a real
democracy or not, and whether it will be led by a person who was elected
to that office by the people and whose elevation to power was based
solely on nonviolent action,” he added.
President’s Office Spokesman Abbas Adil Riza said that he was not
aware of the statements, saying that the ICNC was “free to say whatever
it wished.”
Asked for a government response to such opinions, Abbas said: “The
Maldives is a free society and has a free media. Only the courts will
decide if it was a legal change of government.”
The Commission of National Inquiry (CNI) mandated to investigate the
circumstances surrounding the February transfer of power was recently reformed in order to enhance its credibility.
The group began its investigations on June 21 and is scheduled to have completed its work by July 31.
The CNI is not a criminal investigation and will hand its findings
over to the President, the Attorney General (AG) and the Prosecutor
General (PG).
Nasheed’s US visit has included a speech
at the United States Institute of Peace (USIP), a briefing given to the
Senate Foreign Relations Committee and a follow up meeting with the
Subcommittee on the Middle East and South Asia Committee on Foreign
Affairs after it had sent a team to the Maldives earlier in the year.
Nasheed is also said to have met with State Department Assistant Secretary Robert Blake as well as having briefed the International Republic Institute on the political situation in the Maldives.
Nessun commento:
Posta un commento