“Nasheed’s ouster Maldives’ historical equivalent of Tiananmen Square”: US Professor of Peace and Conflict Studies
27 Jun 2012, 7:05 PM
Daniel Bosley
One of the world’s leading scholars on non-violent conflict, Dr Mary King, has compared the resignation of former President Mohamed Nasheed with the ruthless crushing of democratic movements in Communist China and Soviet Russia.
“For 300,000 Maldivians, President Nasheed’s ouster was the historical equivalent of Tiananmen Square in 1989 or the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968: the sensation of new freedom one day, its threatened disappearance the next,” said Dr King.
Dr King’s comments were included in a statement from the International Centre on Nonviolent Conflict (ICNC), which will today award Nasheed with the James Lawson Award for Achievement in the Practice of Nonviolent Action. The ceremony will take place at Tufts University in Massachusetts.
The press release stated that the award is in recognition of Nasheed’s “leadership during many years of the nonviolent opposition to dictatorship in his country, his courage in the face of an armed coup earlier this year which forced him from power, and his renewed nonviolent action on behalf of restoring genuine democracy in his country.”
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