Foreign News
Maldives president visits India amid trouble in tourist paradise
Maldivian President Mohamed Muizzu is expected to seek a bailout during his visit to India this week as the archipelago nation stares at an economic crisis with fears of debt default.
It’s Muizzu’s first official bilateral visit after he was voted to power late last year following a campaign centred on an ‘India out’ policy, with a promise to reduce Delhi’s influence.
Since then, ties have been strained between the countries but experts say the visit indicates that the Maldives can’t afford to ignore its giant neighbour.
The foreign exchange reserves of the Maldives stood at about $440m (£334m) in September, just enough for one-and-a-half months of imports.
Last month, global agency Moody’s downgraded the Maldives’ credit rating, saying that “default risks have risen materially”.
An Indian bailout will bolster the country’s foreign currency reserves.
Before visiting India, Muizzu chose to travel to Turkey and China – his visit to the latter in January was seen as a high-profile diplomatic snub to Delhi as previous Maldivian leaders first visited Delhi after being elected. Around the same time, a controversy erupted in India after three Maldivian officials made derogatory comments about Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
“President Muizzu’s visit is a turnaround in several ways,” says Azim Zahir, a Maldives analyst and lecturer at the University of Western Australia.
“Most notably, the visit is a realisation of how dependent the Maldives is on India, a dependency that no other country will find easy to fill,” he says.
The Maldives consists of about 1,200 coral islands and atolls located in the middle of the Indian Ocean. The archipelago has a population of about 520,000 compared to India’s 1.4 billion.
As a small island nation, the Maldives depends on its giant neighbour India for most of its food, infrastructure building and healthcare.
Delhi and Male have not officially confirmed that a financial package for the Maldives is on the agenda during the visit. But experts believe it will be part of the discussion.
“The key priority of Muizzu’s visit is to secure a financial helpline in the form of grant-in-aid and restructuring debt repayments,” a senior Maldivian editor, who did not want to be identified, told the BBC.
Muizzu also wants a “$400m currency swap deal sought by the Maldives central bank to shore up depleted foreign exchange reserves”, he added.
The ratings agency Moody’s further expressed serious concerns over Male’s financial situation, saying that “(foreign) reserves remain significantly below the government’s external debt service of around $600m in 2025 and over $1bn in 2026”.
The public debt of the Maldives is about $8bn, including about $1.4bn it owes each to China and India.
“Despite Muizzu stating on several occasions that China has given a green signal for deferring debt payments for five years, financial assistance from Beijing has not been forthcoming,” the Maldivian editor said.
With no other country coming to the rescue, it appears that Muizzu is now reaching out to India to mend strained ties.
“It’s about resetting the tone and negative rhetoric from senior officials of Muizzu’s government that has considerably impacted Indian tourist arrivals,” says Zahir.
India has long wielded influence over the Maldives, whose strategic position in its backyard allowed it to monitor a crucial part of the Indian Ocean. But Muizzu wanted to change that by moving closer to China.
In January, Muizzu’s administration gave an ultimatum to India to withdraw about 80 troops based in the country. Delhi said they were stationed there to man and operate two rescue and reconnaissance helicopters and a Dornier aircraft it had donated years ago.
In the end, both countries agreed to replace troops with Indian civilian technical staff to operate the aircraft.
A month after assuming charge, Muizzu’s administration also announced that it would not renew a hydrographic survey agreement with India that was signed by the previous government to map the seabed in the Maldivian territorial waters.
Then a row broke out after three of his deputy ministers made controversial comments about Modi, calling him a “clown”, “terrorist” and a “puppet of Israel”.
The remarks set off an uproar and calls to boycott the Maldives on Indian social media. Male said the comments were personal and did not represent the views of the government. The three ministers were suspended from the cabinet.
In what was seen as a thinly-veiled criticism of the reaction on Indian social media, Muizzu said at the time: “We may be small, but that doesn’t give you the licence to bully us.”
Muizzu’s administration also allowed the port call of a Chinese research ship, Xiang Yang Hong 3, much to Delhi’s displeasure. Some saw it as a mission to collect data which could – at a later date – be used by the Chinese military in submarine operations.
Nevertheless, there was a thaw in bilateral ties after Muizzu attended the swearing-in ceremony of Modi after he was elected for a third consecutive term in June this year.
In August, Indian Foreign Minister S Jaishankar’s visit also gave a reboot to bilateral ties. “The Maldives is one of the cornerstones of our ‘Neighbourhood First’ policy,” Jaishankar said in Male. “To put it succinctly in the words of my Prime Minister Narendra Modi – for India, neighbourhood is a priority and, in the neighbourhood, Maldives is a priority,” he added.
For Delhi, it’s a welcome change as it recently witnessed the ouster of the India-friendly government of former prime minister Sheikh Hasina in Bangladesh and the return of KP Sharma Oli, who used to criticise India’s policies, as the prime minister of Nepal.
Muizzu has realised that antagonising India is not an option and his pragmatism is not without reason. The number of Indian tourists visiting the Maldives dropped by 50,000 in the past year, resulting in an estimated loss of about $150m.
He is aware if he doesn’t get financial support from India, the Maldives could become a paradise lost. That’s why his India visit is crucial.
[BBC]
Foreign News
Zambia ex-president’s family wins latest legal battle over what should happen to his body
More than a year after the death of Zambia’s former President Edgar Lungu, his family have won their appeal to have his body buried in South Africa where he died – overturning a high court ruling that allowed the Zambian government to repatriate the corpse.
Tuesday’s Supreme Court of Appeal judgement finally puts to rest the legal battle over what should happen to his remains following a long-standing feud between Lungu and his successor, President Hakainde Hichilema.
The Zambian government has said while it disagrees with the ruling it will “not be taking the matter any further”.
It had long argued that, as a former head of state, Lungu should be honoured in the country.
The Zambian government wished to see him laid to rest alongside his predecessors in the special presidential burial ground in the capital, Lusaka.
But Lungu’s family wanted a private burial after negotiations with the government over the funeral arrangements broke down.
“The very ritual intended to bring closure has, instead, pitted family against the state in a hard-fought legal dispute far from the protagonists’ home,” said Justice Raylene May Keightley in Tuesday’s judgement.
Last August, the South African high court in Pretoria ruled that Zambia’s govrnment could repatrite the body and give him a state funeral – an outcome that left Lungu’s relatives visibly distraught in the courtroom.
The family appealed against the decision but, in a surprise announcement in April Zambia’s government said Lungu’s remains had been “formally transferred” to the state by the South African court.
But just a few hours later, the same South African court ordered the Zambian government to return the body until the matter went to court again.
The former president died of an undisclosed illness aged 68 at a clinic in Pretoria. Chaos ensued following his death, with mourners receiving conflicting information from the government and Lungu’s political party, the Patriotic Front (PF).
Two separate mourning periods were announced and at one point there were competing condolence books.
Lungu, who led Zambia from 2015 until 2021, had numerous rows with Hichilema, who was the opposition leader for many years before finally unseating his bitter rival.
After Lungu’s death, his family said the ex-president did not want Hichilema to be at his funeral or “anywhere near” his body.
In this latest ruling at the Supreme Court of Appeal, the judges said it was clear that the former president “viewed himself to be persona non grata in his own country” of Zambia and “felt that he would not be afforded a dignified send-off” if his successor was present.
[BBC]
More than 5,300 people remain trapped in online scam centres in Myanmar near the Thai border, despite a multinational crackdown in the region last year, a human rights group says.
The Thai-based Civil Society Network for Human Trafficking Victim Assistance (CSNHTV) sent a letter to Thai police urging them to take action. It said many of those trapped were foreign nationals held at four locations inside areas controlled by the Myanmar Democratic Karen Buddhist Army militia.
According to the CSNHTV, an estimated 1,600 people trapped are Chinese nationals, and about 200 are people of Myanmar, along with people from the Philippines, Taiwan, Malaysia, Brazil, Russia, Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda, and Zimbabwe.
“Many of these compounds have yet to be dismantled or subjected to rescue operations to free all remaining victims,” it said.
“As a result, these syndicates continue to engage in online fraud and human trafficking, causing harm to victims around the world, particularly in the United States and Europe.”
Scam centres in Southeast Asia, including those in Myanmar and Cambodia, run illegal online schemes that are designed to defraud people worldwide.
The centres grew significantly during the COVID-19 pandemic in the region, and were initially tied to poorly run casinos and online gambling. They have now become a multibillion-dollar industry, according to the United Nations.
A UN report in February said the facilities are mostly staffed by foreign nationals who have been trafficked by criminal gangs and subjected to abuse.
It found instances of “torture and other ill-treatment, sexual abuse and exploitation, forced abortions, food deprivation, solitary confinement, among other grave human rights abuses”.
“The litany of abuse is staggering and at the same time heart-breaking,” UN Human Rights chief Volker Turk said.
“Yet, rather than receiving protection, care and rehabilitation as well as the pathways to justice and redress to which they are entitled, victims too often face disbelief, stigmatisation and even further punishment.”
[Aljazeera]
Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian has landed in Pakistan for a state visit – his first overseas trip since the United States and Israel launched strikes on Iran on February 28.
His Pakistani counterpart Asif Ali Zardari, Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, and Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Ishaq Dar received the Iranian leader at a military base near capital Islamabad on Tuesday.
During his day long visit, Pezeshkian, who is accompanied by a high-level delegation that includes ministers and senior officials, will hold talks with Sharif, and is also expected to meet with Zardari.
Pezeshkian arrived aboard a special aircraft named Minab 168, a tribute to the 168 people killed in an attack on an Iranian girls’ school by US and Israeli forces in the Iranian city of Minab on the first day of the war in February.
Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, who had arrived separately earlier in the day from Oman, was also part of the delegation.
The Iranians are due to hold bilateral talks with premier Sharif, followed by a delegation-level meeting between the two sides.
According to Pakistan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Senate Chairman Yousaf Raza Gilani, National Assembly Speaker Ayaz Sadiq, and Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Ishaq Dar will also call on the Iranian leader.
“During the visit, the two sides will review the full spectrum of bilateral relations and explore new avenues to further deepen cooperation across diverse sectors, including trade, energy, border security, people-to-people exchanges, and regional connectivity,” the ministry said in a statement on Monday.
Pezeshkian’s visit follows the crucial first round of talks between the United States and Iran, mediated by Pakistan and Qatar, in the Swiss city of Bürgenstock to end the war on Iran.
As part of the agreement, the US will release $12bn in frozen Iranian funds. The US has also announced a temporary easing of international sanctions on Iran, allowing it to sell its oil and petrochemicals until August 21. The talks concluded with a 60-day roadmap towards a final deal.
[Aljazeera]
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