Maldives says it saved Lanka from CMAG trauma For a country that has gone through the experience of being on the CMAG agenda, we know that it is unfair to put Sri Lanka through the same experience.”
The Maldives was among countries that thwarted moves for a venue shift of the Commonwealth summit on the grounds that the Sri Lankan Government violated the 54-nation grouping’s principles.
“Some other countries tried to raise this issue,” Maldives Foreign Minister Abdul Samad Abdulla told the Sunday Times.
Dr. Abdulla who was in Sri Lanka on a brief visit said that the Maldives was totally against any move to change the venue of the next Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM) scheduled to be held in Sri Lanka in November.
The Maldivian Foreign Minister who attended last month’s Commonwealth Ministerial Action Group Meeting (CMAG) in London said his country at this meeting strongly resisted the move by some Commonwealth nations to put Sri Lankan on the formal CMAG agenda.
The CMAG comprises Australia, Bangladesh, Canada, Jamaica, the Maldives, Sierra Leone, Tanzania, Trinidad and Tobago and Vanuatu.
“I have seen and experienced what Sri Lankans went through for so many years due to the scourge of terrorism. So it is unfair to bring punitive action of any sort against a country that has been through such a traumatic experience,” Dr. Abdulla said.
The minister who was educated at Zahira College and served for nine years at the World Health Organisation in Colombo, recalled the fear psychosis that had gripped Sri Lanka when he was working at the WHO office here. “Whenever I left for my office in the morning, I was prepared not to return” because of terrorist attacks, he said.
Dr. Abdulla said that there might have been excesses during the war but the in- ternal mechanism that had been put in place by the Sri Lanka Government could address those concerns.
The Minister said his country also had been unfairly subjected to ‘punitive ac- tion’ by being put on the CMAG agenda after last February’s transfer of power in the country following the resignation of the then President Mohamed Nasheed.
The Maldives was placed on the formal agenda of the CMAG and suspended from the ministerial group due to questions about the circumstances that led to the transfer of power but was reinstated and taken off the agenda after an inquiry found that the change of government was legitimate. The Maldivian Government also announced the next Presidential election would be held this September and Mr. Nasheed could contest the polls despite legal actions pending against him.
Dr. Abdulla said the Maldivian Government never accepted it qualified for such action and felt it was due to some misunderstandings or the agenda of some countries with vested interests. “For a country that has gone through the experience of being on the CMAG agenda, we know that it is unfair to put Sri Lanka through the same experience,” he said.
The visiting minister said he could not say for certain if there would be no further attempts to act against Sri Lanka prior to the CHOGM in November but said these moves were unlikely to succeed.