Melissa Parke (Fremantle, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Health) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mohamed Nasheed, the 'island president', the man who became the first democratically elected President of the Maldives in 2008 and resigned in 2012 at gunpoint, is serving a 13-year sentence on terrorism charges after a trial in March that the UN has described as 'vastly unfair', Amnesty International has described as politically motivated, and my friend and human rights lawyer Amal Clooney has called a 'mockery of justice'.

Nasheed as President introduced liberalising reforms and led the Maldives, one of the world's smallest nations, to become a driving force behind the response to climate change, pledging to make the country carbon neutral by 2020 and famously hosting the first—and, to my knowledge, the only—underwater cabinet meeting to sign a document demanding cuts to carbon emissions. The democratic framework Nasheed tirelessly campaigned for and helped create has all but disappeared under the authoritarian regime of President Abdulla Yameen. Many of Nasheed's former projects and commitments have been renegotiated or erased, and alarmingly, after 60 years, the Maldives is preparing to reintroduce capital punishment. This includes children under 18 who are found guilty being put on death row until they become of age.

Former President Nasheed has received considerable international support, with daily street protests in the Maldives calling for his release. I call on the international community to maintain this support and ask the Australian government to do what it can to ensure that justice occurs for Nasheed and that the democratic process is reinstated in our Indian Ocean neighbour.