Ousted Maldives Pres. Mohamed Nasheed a Leading Voice for
Island States Threatened by Global Warming

    For years, Mohamed Nasheed was the most vocal world
    leader on the threat climate change poses to residents
    of small island states. After becoming the first
    democratically elected president in Maldives, he pledged
    to make the nation the first carbon neutral country and
    once held a cabinet meeting underwater. We discuss
    Nasheed's ouster and his outspoken campaigning on global
    warming with environmental activist Bill McKibben, whose
    group 350.org has collected some 30,000 signatures on a
    petition in support of Nasheed. We also speak with Jon
    Shenk, director of the new documentary film, "The Island
    President," which chronicles Nasheed's rise from jailed
    pro-democracy activist to the Maldives presidency and
    island-state champion. McKibben says Nasheed was "in
    certain ways, the first precursor of the Arab Spring,
    the Mandela of the Indian Ocean, who really brought
    democracy to a country where it hadn't been before," as
    well as "the most outspoken head of state around the
    issue of climate change on our planet." McKibben further
    argues Nasheed "was a thorn in the side [of the U.S.],
    because he kept bringing up the topic of climate change,
    a topic they're not that keen on. On the other hand, he,
    almost to a fault, was cooperative with U.S. efforts to
    try and do something-you know, what little we're doing-
    about climate change. The State Department owes him, and
    I hope that they take this seriously."

Democracy Now! 
February 09, 2012

http://www.democracynow.org/2012/2/9/ousted_maldives_pres_mohamed_nasheed_a

Guests:

Paul Roberts, adviser on international media and
communications, the President's Office, Republic of
Maldives. He is currently in an undisclosed location.

Jon Shenk, filmmaker of the new documentary about now-
ousted Maldives President Mohamed Nasheed titled The Island
President.

Bill McKibben, longtime environmental activist and founder
of 350.org.

AMY GOODMAN: We're talking about the coup in the Maldives
and the ousting of the president there. In October 2009,
Maldives President Mohamed Nasheed held a cabinet meeting
underwater in an attempt to bring attention to the dire
consequences of global warming. Nasheed and 11 of his
government ministers wore scuba gear and plunged nearly 20
feet into the Indian Ocean.

    PRESIDENT MOHAMED NASHEED: We are actually trying to
    send our message, let the world know what is happening
    and what might-what will happen to the Maldives if
    climate change is not checked. This is a challenging
    situation. And we want to see that everyone else is also
    occupied as much as we are and would like to see that
    people actually do something about it.

AMY GOODMAN: That is the ousted president, Mohamed Nasheed,
of the Maldives. Bill McKibben, you're founder of 350.org.
Talk about what has happened this week.

BILL McKIBBEN: Sure. Look, Nasheed, who I know a little bit,
is a remarkable man for two reasons. One, he was the-in
certain ways, the first precursor of the Arab Spring, the
Mandela of the Indian Ocean, you know, who really brought
democracy to a country where it hadn't been before. Second,
he's been the most outspoken head of state around the issue
of climate change on our planet. He has provided the
leadership, both symbolic and practical, that we desperately
need. You know, until Tuesday, the Maldives was on target to
become the first carbon neutral nation on earth. That won't
save the climate, but it's the kind of thing that should
shame the West into beginning to act itself. They also were-
he and his government did a tremendous job of cooperating
with activists around the world to try and bring attention
to this most desperate of problems.

JUAN GONZALEZ: And Bill, the denial of the State Department
that this is even a coup?

BILL McKIBBEN: You know, it's so depressing to hear that.
Let's hope that the State Department is getting new
information. We're sending more than 30,000 signatures over
there today that we've gathered in the last few hours from
people around the world in the 350.org network who are
incredibly upset at what's going on.

I was at the Maldives 20 years ago, at the height of the
Gayoom thugocracy, and it was an unpleasant place-people
with machine guns on corners and things. Malé, the capital,
during the Nasheed years was a very different place: open,
vibrant, alive democratic, humming with people trying to
make a difference in the world. It's just the saddest of
thoughts to think that we might be moving backwards and that
the State Department-I mean, one trusts that they're not-you
know, that they're taking this seriously.

Clearly, in certain ways, Nasheed was a thorn in their side,
because he kept bringing up the topic of climate change, a
topic they're not that keen on. On the other hand, he,
almost to a fault, was cooperative with U.S. efforts to try
and do something-you know, what little we're doing-about
climate change. The State Department owes him, and I hope
that they take this seriously.

AMY GOODMAN: Let me turn to a new documentary, The Island
President, about Mohamed Nasheed, the one we just played a
clip of, directed by Jon Shenk. This part looks at Nasheed's
time as a political dissident under the old regime.

    PRESIDENT MOHAMED NASHEED: After graduation, I came back
    to the Maldives. By this time, the state had become more
    and more repressive. So we decided that it would be good
    to come up with a magazine.

    MOHAMED ZUHAIR: Nasheed and I and a few others began a
    publication called Sangu, which was a political
    publication.

    PRESIDENT MOHAMED NASHEED: It was talking about two
    things: corruption and human rights abuse. It was very
    critical of the regime. One night, at about 3:00 in the
    morning, they came to my house. They raided my home and
    took a whole lot of papers.

    LAILA ALI: They came in. They took him away. It was in
    the middle of the night. I mean, we had heard so many
    stories of what they were doing in the jails and all
    that, so it was terrifying, you know, really.

AMY GOODMAN: That was Mohamed Nasheed's wife.

    PRESIDENT MOHAMED NASHEED: I refused to give a
    confession. So, because of this, I was taken to a
    corrugated iron sheet cell. The whole cell is five feet
    by three feet. You had a mat. That's all.

AMY GOODMAN: Mohamed Nasheed eventually went into exile but
returned to Maldives to lead a fledgling pro- democracy
movement. Here is another excerpt from The Island President.

    PRESIDENT MOHAMED NASHEED: The Maldives was looking very
    much like an occupied country.

    MOHAMED ASLAM: I would be lying if I tell you that I
    wasn't afraid. But-and he keeps telling us all the time,
    you know, "You must get courage from each other. So,
    stand by together."

    PRESIDENT MOHAMED NASHEED: Demonstrations were taking
    place all throughout the country. There were huge
    demonstrations in Fares-Maathodaa, Thinadhoo, Kinbidhoo,
    Ukulhas - you know, many, many, many islands. This was
    spreading like wildfire. It just finally came to a point
    that Gayoom had to relent, and he had to allow free and
    fair elections.

AMY GOODMAN: An excerpt from the new documentary, The Island
President. We are joined by Jon Shenk, who's its director.
This news-you have spent a good deal of time with the ousted
president in the Maldives. This history-he has been held, he
has been beaten and tortured by the ousted-by the former
dictator. What about what's happening now, Jon?

JON SHENK: Well, thanks for having me.

You know, when I arrived in the Maldives in 2009, a few
months after the first-ever democratically presidential held
election there, it was a-it was a very strange place. You
know, on one hand, you had people who were clearly still
looking over their shoulders from, you know, decades of
having lived in a police state. And then you had, on the
other hand, Nasheed and the new fledgling democratic
government there, you know, acting in the most open, kind of
democratic, transparent way that you can imagine a good
government acting.

So, what is happening now, in some ways, is obviously
shocking and stunning and, to those of us who know Nasheed
well, very sad-but not surprising, given just the kinds of
things that we heard during the making of the film, which is
that, you know, it's in a small country that was ruled for
so long by an entrenched dictatorship. You had so much of
society, you know, sort of, quote-unquote, "in his pocket,"
or, you know, sort of-or at least fearful of repercussions
that might occur, you know, speaking out against him.

JUAN GONZALEZ: Well, I'd like to ask Paul Roberts, the
adviser to the ousted president, Nasheed, about this-the
Maldives and the WikiLeaks documents concerning the
Copenhagen climate talks. In 2010, The Guardian newspaper
published an article titled "WikiLeaks Cables Reveal How US
Manipulated Climate Accord." The Guardian reported that
within two weeks of the Copenhagen-the climate change
conference, "the Maldives foreign minister, Ahmed Shaheed,
wrote to the US secretary of state, Hillary Clinton,
expressing eagerness to back [the accord]."

By February 23rd, 2010, "the Maldives' ambassador- designate
to the US, Abdul Ghafoor Mohamed, told the US deputy climate
change envoy, Jonathan Pershing, his country wanted [quote]
'tangible assistance', saying other nations would then
realise [quote] 'the advantages to be gained by compliance'
with the accord."

According to a leaked cable, "Ghafoor referred to several
projects costing approximately $50 [million]."

Your response to those WikiLeaks documents?

PAUL ROBERTS: Yeah, sure. I mean, I was in Copenhagen with
Nasheed, and I saw him battling very vigilantly to get a
deal. We were very nervous at that point that there would be
no deal, with this almighty row that was breaking out
between America and China. And eventually we did get a deal.
It was a very bad deal. It was a very poor deal. It was a
compromised deal. But it was a deal. And Nasheed played an
instrumental part in that and in preventing those talks from
collapsing. And then, you know, we've-since then, we've had
some baby steps forward in Cancún and Durban, which seems to
sort of justify his decision to keep the U.N. talks on the
road. But, I mean, the last day of Copenhagen, Nasheed said
publicly, and in writing, that the Maldives had written-
sorry, had supported the Copenhagen Accord. So this was two
months before these meetings.

But the-you know, one of the key parts of any U.N. accord is
that some of the poor, vulnerable countries, like the
Maldives, but like many others in Africa, have to spend an
increasing proportion of their budgets on adaptations. In
the Maldives, this is tens of millions of dollars on sea
walls and beach revetments and stuff to protect these
islands from the rising seas. So, you know, what the
Maldives was saying was that, you know, if we can have some
help, then-you know, then that's great, and for other
developing countries, too, that needs to be part of the
accord. And suddenly there's at least $50 million worth of
sea walls and revetments and water breakers that are in need
of building in the Maldives alone.

But I think one thing where some of the analysis is
incorrect is that somehow the Maldives kind of used money as
a bargaining chip to sign on to the accord. That's not true.
We had already signed on to the accord a month, months or
weeks before any of these meetings took place.

AMY GOODMAN: And did the U.S.-

PAUL ROBERTS: But as I-

AMY GOODMAN: Did the U.S., Paul, deliver the money, the $50
million?

PAUL ROBERTS: Well, we never asked them for $50 million. If
you look at the cable in detail, what it says is we have $50
million worth of adaptation that we need doing, and so, if
anybody would like to help, that's great. And, you know, of
course, one of the big things at Copenhagen was that there
was supposed to be this transfer from the rich to the poor
to help pay for these sorts of things. But no, Amy, no, they
didn't deliver a cent. There's been no financing from the
U.S. for any adaptation in the Maldives.

AMY GOODMAN: So what's going to happen now, Paul Roberts?
You know, we go back to different attempted coups. In
Venezuela, Chávez refused to sign a resignation letter,
which seemed very important to the coup makers. He remained
in office. President Aristide in Haiti was being pushed to
sign a resignation letter by the-one of the U.S. officials
from the U.S. embassy before he was ousted the second time.
He did sign, and he was ousted and could not return. What's
going to happen now to your president, as we wrap up?

PAUL ROBERTS: Well, we're very concerned. We think-you know,
the new regime have got the-they already had-they always had
the judiciary in their pocket. They've now stormed the state
TV, so they have-they basically have most of the fourth
estate in their pocket. They now have the executive in their
pocket. And they'll probably be able to get the legislature
in their pocket, as well. The only thing they don't have in
their pocket is the fact that Nasheed is still extremely
popular, then likely to win any new election. But this is
where I think there's another insidious thing going on. I
think they are trying to arrest him. They've said they're
going to have 14 cases for his arrest. And I think what they
will do is they'll try and charge him with anything, with
something, so he'll have a criminal record, and that will
prevent him standing in any future election.

AMY GOODMAN: Well, we thank you very much for joining us,
Paul Roberts, adviser to the Maldives. Can you say where you
are?

PAUL ROBERTS: I'd rather not. There's been arrest warrants
out for all of Nasheed's former aides.

AMY GOODMAN: As well as yourself?

PAUL ROBERTS: I believe so.

AMY GOODMAN: Paul Roberts, speaking to us from an
undisclosed location, an aide to the ousted president,
Mohamed Nasheed, of the Maldives. Jon Shenk, thanks for
being with us. His new documentary film, The Island
President, has premiered at the Sundance Film Festival.
Before we go, Jon, what will you do with this film now? It
seems this is the point, more than ever, to get this
information out.

JON SHENK: Yes, absolutely. You know, the film is being
distributed in the U.S. by Samuel Goldwyn Films, and we're
moving ahead with our release next month, and obviously
trying to get the word out. I think that, you know, one
remarkable thing about the film is that it really is an
unprecedented look at a sitting head of state. To my
knowledge, no other project has ever followed a head of
state with such transparent access. So I think, just by the
nature of watching the film, I think people will get a sense
of who the real Nasheed is. It's kind of undeniable that he
approaches his presidency, and pretty much everything he
does, with just, you know, honesty and openness and a can-do
attitude.

AMY GOODMAN: Jon Shenk, director of The Island President.
And Bill McKibben, thanks very much for being with us,
founder of 350.org, among his books, Eaarth: Making a Life
on a Tough New Planet.

___________________________________________

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