Burmese Writers Offered Asylum in Maldives

http://www.irrawaddy.org/article.php?art_id=15251

By MIN LWIN Friday, March 6, 2009

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The president of the Republic of Maldives, Mohamed Nasheed, has offered asylum for Burmese writers and opposition journalists from other countries, in an effort to promote freedom of expression.

A press release from the President’s Office of the Republic of Maldives issued on Thursday said the offer was made during a meeting with Frank La Rue, the UN Special Rapporteur on Opinion and Freedom of Expression.

President Nasheed said that he is promoting freedom of expression in the Maldives and wants to support freedom of expression in all countries.



The exiled-based Burmese Media Association (BMA) welcomed the move.

“It seems that as he is a writer. He has sympathy for the plight of the Burmese media,” said Zin Linn, a vice chairman of the BMA. “I believe he wants to encourage Burmese writers.”

Nasheed also called for the release of Burma’s opposition leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, and an estimated 2,000 other Burmese political prisoners.

Nasheed sent a letter to UN special Burma envoy Ibrahim Gambari last month in which he expressed concern for the political situation in Burma.

“As a former political prisoner myself, it is especially distressing to see so many political prisoners languishing in Burma’s jails without hope of freedom,” Nasheed said in the letter.

Nasheed was named an Amnesty International Prisoner of Conscience in 1991, when he was being held in prison for writing articles calling for political change in his country.

He left the Maldives in 2003 and co-founded the Maldivian Democratic Party (MDP). In exile, he stayed in Sri Lanka and Britain. He returned to the Maldives in 2005 and was elected president in 2008.