China Grabbed More Land Than East India Company: Ex-Maldives Prez

Nasheed accused the previous Abdulla Yameen-led government of putting Maldives in deep debt by conniving with China.

File photo: Former Maldives president Mohamed Nasheed. 

(Photo: AP)

Former Maldivian President Mohamed Nasheed has compared China to the East India Company, and said that without firing a bullet, Beijing has grabbed more land than the British company, news agency ANI reported on Wednesday, 4 September.

Nasheed, who is currently serving as Speaker of the Maldivian Parliament, accused the previous Abdulla Yameen-led government of putting the country in deep debt by conniving with China. He was addressing the Indian Ocean Conference in Male.

“Get hold of a government, buy up a parliament, change the laws, get unsolicited contracts then inflate the price of the contract to the level due to which business plans failed her.”

Nasheed, as quoted by ANI

Referring “specifically to China”, Nasheed further said “Give commercial loans and then, off course, they will not be able to pay it back. When you can't pay back, they ask for equity and with equity, you relinquish sovereignty, including the peace of the Indian Ocean.”

Nasheed, who also served as the fourth President of the Maldives from 2008 to 2012, was the first democratically elected president of the Maldives and one of the founders of the Maldivian Democratic Party.

Stating that there has been an “amazing rush” to land grab in recent times, Nasheed reportedly said they are common where “protection of human rights is poor”.

“It has a combination of practice, international and domestic drivers the Maldives up until the recent presidential election in 2018 was a flourishing land grab paradise," he added.

"If I were to take this contract to commercial arbitration it will be the same as somebody in Kolkata taking the East India Company for arbitration," ANI quoted Nasheed as saying.

In May, Nasheed was unanimously chosen to head the country's parliament by his Party after it won a near three-quarter majority in the 87-member Assembly in April, according to ANI.

Nasheed, who was in self-imposed exile in London for two years, returned to the atoll nation in November last year after the Supreme Court ordered a stay on his arrest and a 13-year prison sentence handed down to him in 2015.

In order to boost foreign investments, particularly in the case of China, Maldives must undergo transparent tendering processes, Nasheed stressed.

"It must have a democratic oversight and we must be able to benefit from these investments. It can't be vanity," he said, as per ANI.

(With inputs from ANI)