China meddling in Maldives' internal affairs: ex-foreign minister

China is meddling in the internal affairs of the Maldives and engaged in massive land grabbing, posing a major security threat to India and the entire Indian Ocean region, a former Maldivian foreign minister and Opposition leader had said.

Ahmed Naseem, who is in the US to brief Trump administration officials on the political turmoil in the Maldives and China's alleged interference in the island nation, said his country is now a "full-blown dictatorship".

"China likes to tell the West not to meddle in the domestic affairs of Asian countries. But in the Maldives, China is only too happy to meddle in our domestic affairs, by corrupting the ruling elite and encouraging an authoritarian president to double down on repression," Naseem said yesterday addressing a gathering at top American think-tank South Asia Centre of Atlantic Council here.

The Maldives has been witnessing political crisis as President Abdulla Yameen declared an emergency in the island nation on February 5 after the Supreme Court ordered the release of a group of opposition leaders, who had been convicted in widely-criticised trials.

The emergency was extended for another 30 days on February 20. There has been international condemnation of the Maldivian government's moves.

"Almost all the democratic gains that we made in recent years have been lost since President Yameen assumed power in 2013. Every opposition leader is in jail, or exile. The military has stormed, and now occupies, the parliament," he said.

Asserting that the Maldives is now a "full-blown dictatorship", Naseem, who is also vice chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee of the Maldivian Democratic Party, said, "It's difficult to believe that President Yameen would have dared to do all this defying India and the West -- without the implicit support of his new best friend in Beijing."
He said that Beijing likes dictatorships because "dictators are easier to bribe, and dictatorships are easier to seduce into a Chinese debt trap."
Calling it a "classic case of debt trap", he said, "When countries can't pay back the debt, they ask for equity and we end up relinquishing sovereignty. Without firing a single shot, China has grabbed more land than the East India Company."