Friday
22nd Nov 2024
Dhivehi Edition
President Nasheed. Photo: Majlis
The Speaker of parliament and former President of the Maldives, Mohamed Nasheed claimed that there was no room to speculate that Chagos Islands did not belong to the Maldives.
President Nasheed said today, in a tweet, that Chagos currently belonged to no sovereign state. He said that while the islands are under British protection, there was no room to speculate that it does not belong within Maldivian territory either.
President Nasheed remarked that Chagos was once a prosperous, inhabited island. He said that Chagos Islands were depicted as a Maldivian atoll south of Seenu Atoll on maps of the Maldives drawn in the 16th Century.
Nasheed said that King Sultan Hassan IX wrote in a letter in 1560 that seven islands of Chagos belongs to the Maldives.
Additionally, Nasheed claimed that Maldivian seamen and navigators include Chagos Islands within Maldivian territory in their denotations. Furthermore, Nasheed said that the claim is supported by historical and cultural evidence.
However the government has agreed to support the claim of Mauritius, a country located much farther to Chagos than the Maldives, over the sovereignty of Chagos Islands. The government has come under heavy backlash by the general public.
Former Attorney General, Dr. Mohamed Munavvaru, who specialized in International Law, suspects that the government changed their long-standing stance under the influence of India or following possible bribery from another party.