The ‘India Out’ campaign in the Maldives is known to be driven politically by former President Abdulla Yameen. Much before Yameen took the driver’s seat, a section of the Maldivian media led by the news portal Dhiyares, had begun a concerted campaign against India. It is, therefore, necessary to trace the roots of this campaign and understand the motives behind the campaign.

Two things stand out about Ahmed Azaan, founder of Dhiyares.

First, he has consistently been calling for greater Chinese presence in the Maldives and second, he has used the social media to the hilt to attack India and its alleged military presence in the country. The Chinese angle to this entire sordid episode can only be adduced based on the context of Azaan’s anti-India campaign.

Ahmed Azaan’s first public foray was in May 2020. At that time, he had targeted the Maldivian Ambassador to the Organization of Islamic Countries, (OIC), who had defended India against allegations of Islamophobia at a virtual OIC meeting held by Pakistan. Azaan tweeted: “Maldivian Ambassador…thinks accusing India of Islamophobia is ‘factually incorrect’. Why don’t you ask the millions of Muslims in India who are suffering from the Islamophobic policies of the Indian government?”

The founder of Dhiyares also chose to share his views on Indian and Chinese foreign policy towards his country. According to him, China has “never interfered” in the internal affairs of the Maldives, obviously inferring that India had done so!

Interestingly, the website of The Maldives Journal states that Ahmed Azaan is a journalist and writer with a BA in International Relations and describes him as one of the co-founders of “Dhiyares” and “The Maldives Journal”. His BA is apparently from ADA University in Azerbaijan. His areas of interest are said to be politics and economics.

CHINA BACKED AZAAN VENTURE?

The anti-Indian stance has been evident in many tweets by Azaan. In December 2019, he attacked the government of the Maldives for not allowing a Chinese research vessel to enter Maldivian waters and accused India of having pressurised the Maldives in this regard. More recently, he argued in favour of seeking greater financial assistance from China despite the Maldives’ bad experience with Chinese funding.

During the presidency of Abdulla Yameen, the Maldives had borrowed heavily from China, leading to a debt trap situation. The Maldives today owes China around US$ 1.5 billion, which is huge for a country with a GDP of US$ 4.9 billion. Despite knowing these facts, Azaan chose to raise the issue on twitter in May 2020 and asked, “Our neighbours (he meant Sri Lanka) are getting funds from China, but we aren’t getting any. Why?”

He took up China’s case again in June 2020 and asked why the Maldives wasn’t taking loans from the “China-led” Asian Infrastructure Development Bank when many countries had used the option due to the pandemic. He mockingly asked, “We don’t have permission from India to borrow? “

Ahmed Azaan has on several occasions in the past accused India of blocking efforts by the Maldivian government to secure funds from China. For a Maldivian media person to actually argue that Chinese aid to Sri Lanka has ‘helped’ Colombo and therefore, the Maldives should also obtain aid from China, can only mean that Azaan’s business venture is being backed by the Chinese!

CHINA PENETRATED MEDIA SPACE

Chinese penetration of communication and media space in the Maldives had begun much earlier but must have reached fruition with Dhiryares.. Last year, Dhiyares took up the political baton and accused the Maldivian Democratic Party (MDP) of demonising China. This was necessitated because the Ibrahim Solih government had restored ties with India, which had been significantly damaged under President Yameen.

Further, Azaan obviously took inspiration from Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan’s remarks against Prime Minister Modi, as the former labelled the current Indian government as a “Hindu extremist” establishment and accused it of “trying to change the demographics of Kashmir”.

This then was the foundation that Azaan and Dhiyares laid for the “India Out” campaign. The social media campaign was intensified in early 2021 with the involvement of former President Yameen and his followers. The campaign was thus expanded to the entire gamut of relations between India and the Maldives, Indian investments, Indian projects and most importantly the alleged supply of military equipment to the Maldives with the objective of turning the island nation into an Indian military base.

Sadly, the political fall-out of this campaign was an ‘attack’ on Indian diplomats serving in Male. Thus, it is seen that the campaign against India is multi-pronged, but the main stance of the India Out campaign is against the alleged Indian military presence in the Maldives.

REALTY CHECK - DISINFORMATION

The reality is that China is displeased with the grant of several infrastructure projects to India in recent days, and would like to take these over. This is the reason why Azaan’s portal and its sister publication The Maldives Journal, have published multiple misleading reports on Indian projects, including the construction of a Police Training Academy in Addu City (where Azaan lives) and the dockyard and harbour at Uthuru Thilafalhu. The allegation is that the objective of these projects is to increase India’s military presence in the region, when in fact, these projects are purely in the form of technical assistance to the Maldives.

The pursuit of this so-called myth of an Indian military presence in the Maldives led Azaan to file a request with the Defence Ministry under the Right to Information asking for data on the number of Indian military personnel stationed in the Maldives. When the Ministry refused to share this information, Azaan went to the court, where the matter is still pending.

CHINA AIDED POLITICAL CAMPAIGN

In mid-2021, Azaan appealed to the police in the Maldives seeking protection for his personal safety after the MDP issued a statement expressing concern regarding an article that appeared in the Dhiyares and accused the news portal and its founders of conducting a “well-funded, well-orchestrated and pre-meditated political campaign” with the purpose of whipping up hatred towards India.

Consequently, Azaan has used this as a peg for his India Out campaign, with loads of disinformation being peddled to fuel the anti-Indian campaign in the Maldives. A report in The Maldives Journal claims: “India has already established their military presence in three important regions of the Maldives…They justify their presence…by using the excuse of operating the Dornier aircraft “gifted” to the Maldives by India, while maintaining their presence in Addu and Laamu atoll under the guise of operating similarly “gifted” helicopters.”

The Islamist portal has also been targeting Indian diplomats in the Maldives. For example, last year Dhiyares published an article with allegations of paedophilia against the Indian Deputy High Commissioner Rohit Ratish. The article referred to a foreign publication which had alleged that Rohit Ratish was accused of paedophilia while he was stationed at his previous posting. When the Indian High Commission registered a protest with the Maldivian government on the portal’s campaign against Indian diplomats, Dhiyares and The Maldives Journal responded with more misinformation.

That Azaan has been toeing former President Yameen’s line on India in the name of protecting the interests of the Maldives is no secret. He recently stated that “In 2023, we need to elect a nationalistic leader who can stand up to bullies like India. Someone who will not compromise our sovereignty. Reversing these agreements will be tough, but not impossible.”

“President Yameen, (is) the only leader capable of defending the country’s position in the turbulent Indian Ocean,” reads a headline of an article in The Maldives Journal in December 2020.

BIG INFO WAR AGAINST INDIA

In October 2021, the Colombo Information Agency unearthed a big information war being waged by certain parties in Maldives against India. The online platform carried out an extensive analysis on the hashtag #IndiaOut which became a big sensation in Maldives from 2019 onwards.

The report reveals that the hashtag #IndiaOut which took the twitter by storm in Maldives was in fact, an orchestrated info-war launched by the Maldivian journalist, Ahmed Azaan and his supporters.  

The report analyzes the hashtag #IndiaOut which turns out to be only a handful of handles, most of them deemed as fake/bot accounts were running this cyber-warfare in the name of Maldivian sentiments. The hashtag has been in trend since 2017 but gained momentum in 2019 when diplomatic ties between India and Maldives upsurged.

According to Colombo Information Agency, this hashtag has been put to use by Twitteratis sixty thousand times which was only a work of mere two thousand handles out of which approximate thirteen hundred handles were found to be Azaan’s followers.

By flooding Twitter space in Maldives with #IndiaOut content, Azaan has been able to create a mirage that a large number of Maldivians are rooting for #IndiaOut. This is not the case in reality as Azaan footprint for the #IndiaOut campaign has been exceedingly high and all the major supporters of the hashtag are also Azaan’s close associates.

Notably, around 210 handles had contributed a gigantic amount of 80 per cent in the hashtag. This basically means that the entire #IndiaOut hashtag can be traced to Azaan and his followers, working with a special agenda in mind.

It has been brought to light that the strategically planned info-war was started to extend support to the ex-president Abdulla Yameen Abdul Gayoom of the Progressive Party of Maldives in retaliation for his defeat in the Presidential elections of 2018. The pro-China stance of its main proponents have also found traces in the report. The report details the contours of an info-war perpetuated by Ahmed Azaan by using his links to Yameen and his news publications to generate anti-India sentiment in Maldives.

The Colombo Information Agency report tellingly concludes thus:

             “Azaan has served as an amplifier for Yameen; his tweets and articles highlight his clear bias towards China. Regarding his vocal anti-India stance along with his unyielding pro-China bias, it is evident that he might be on the funding list of a superpower. Unlike the internal influence of India that Azaan is fighting against, he is exceptionally silent against the influence exerted by China or its projects. This needs more attention from the Maldivian police establishment”.

A far more important issue here is to trace the Chinese connections of Azaan and his publications. These platforms of disinformation need to be monitored for they have shown a marked capability to create a rift in India-Maldives ties.

It is time to identify and expose the dangerous inroads made by the Chinese in Maldivian media and social media.

—--By James Crickton, London