Country’s current rulers have produced on their own an even bigger display of their true colors.The regime’s control over the judiciary has provided a veneer of legitimacy by licensing arrests and incarcerations that are, of course, the handmaiden of repression. When this proceeds by one incremental action at a time, international observers often refrain from acting.
But now one of the modern period’s most charismatic democratic leaders is threatened again, in a country where journalists have been attacked and abducted, and, by the way, where ISIS successfully does recruiting. These are new conditions that require fresh action.
The Maldives are now, front and center, a metaphor for all civil societies that are hanging by a thread, in the face of shadowy forces that would take down by violence what nonviolent struggle has accomplished. What will the governments that profess faith in democracy do to help faithful people who struggle in faraway places to uphold that same cause?
