Foreign Desk Report
Malé city: The “India Out” campaign in the Maldives is gaining momentum with every passing day with the protestors demanding the expulsion of the Indian military from the country, fearing the compromise of sovereignty.
Thousands of people have marched on the streets of capital Malé city calling for the removal of Indian military personnel from the Maldives. The protest demonstrations intensified about a fortnight since Maldives’s ex-President Abdulla Yameen walked free, after the Supreme Court overturned his conviction in a money-laundering case. The protesters have been calling for the removal of Indian troops from the Maldives and the cancellation of military agreements with India. The soldiers in question are being stationed under various military agreements made under the current administration.
The participants of the rally carried the national flags and clad in red shirts called for the immediate removal of Indian soldiers stationed in the Maldives. The protestors accused the current administration and the New Delhi friendly President Solih of colluding with India to influence the 2018 Presidential Election and the 2019 Parliamentary Election.
“We are just protesting military presence in the country. We are not calling for a violent clash against India or Indians in Maldives,” Shifxan Ahmed, co-founder of Dhiyares, who has been active in the campaign, told Indian media. The anti-India sentiment didn’t just sprout overnight last year, but is nearly a decade old and can be traced back to when Abdulla Yameen Abdul Gayoom of the Progressive Party (PPM) became president in 2013.
India-Maldives relations deteriorated during the PPM’s five-year rule and the anti-India sentiment was apparent even back then, researchers say.
“A lot of anti-India rhetoric was used during that time because the Maldivian government was pro-China,” said Dr. Gulbin Sultana, a research analyst at the Manohar Parrikar Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses.
Sultanas said the first long-standing controversy was over the two Dhruv Advanced Light Helicopters (ALF) that were given by India to the Maldives in 2010 and in 2015, both of which were used for ocean search-and-rescue operations.
“These helicopters were for humanitarian purposes only, but some in the anti-India constituency, particularly Yameen’s party PPM, were trying to portray that by gifting these helicopters, India was creating military presence in the country because they were military choppers,” Sultana told IndianExpress.com.
