His Excellency Mohamed Nasheed, briefly Anni, president of the Republic of Maldives, stands at the beach and sweats, no cloud in the sky, it is hot on Feeali, circular palm island, 500 meters of diameter, 1056 inhabitants, 60 centimeters over sea, for the fall dedicated, completely surely, in all probability, perhaps, could be. Nearly everything came it to the port, in order to see the new presidents. Anni pulls its reflecting sun glasses of the face, sweat on the cheeks, sweat on the forehead, welding marks on his shirt, it wears a merry yellow tie with imprinted small whales, perfect shoes, perfect Bügelfalten. It blinzelt into the sun, adjusts the microphone, raises its strange, high, hoarse voice, which estimates itself again and again. “Citizen of Feeali, Malediverinnen, Malediver, it all, which me selected or did not select, today is a good day.”
Find however not all here. A group of villagers walk its presidents down, “Isthiufaa! Isthiufaa! ”, withdraws, unexpectedly unfriendly receipt for the people hero, the martyr, the rescuer withdraws. On transparency stands “we want a sewage system”, on another “repaired finally our port!”. They stand in Badelat before purging stone houses, inclined teeth in dark faces, some have themselves for courage angetrunken, third world people in the High end destination, average income 1,60 dollar per day, dearest remote destination of Swiss tourist. Later the president will say, these protest cries are been music in its ears to protest an indication that the democratic spirit seizes around itself that the people dared finally, to express their opinion “we have them during my election campaign taught against conditions to up-desire, and now does them it, that is well.”
Mohamed Nasheed, called Anni, 42, grew with 158 centimeters themselves for a Malediver rather small, but its will is enormous. Twelve times it its predecessor Maumoon Abdul Gayoom has into the prison put, twelve times on the prison island Maafushi, six years long was he altogether bars, seven months of it in solitary confinement, in a cell from corrugated sheet, a meter wide, a meter long. Amnesty International already explained it 1991 as the Prisoner OF Conscience, Anni, the hero, Anni, to the revolutionary in the Paradies, which was a dictatorship, until yesterday. Now is its hour. If correspondent of all continents, unimaginatively, inspired calls him the “new Nelson Mandela” or also the “Obama OF Asia”, last week was the BBC “New York Times”, the day after tomorrow comes there, today Al-Jazeera. In March Anni was the attraction at the world largest travel fair ITB in Berlin, in April it the Queen received, at the world climate summit of this year in Copenhagen it one of the most in demand guests will be, Anni, the Öko president, who promised recently to make the Maldives the first CO2-neutralen state of the world until 2020.
“Citizen of Feeali, today seems the sun! ”, as if it would not seem each day. It takes still another sip Kokoswasser from the native, cut back and with Trinkhalmen provided fruits done, a welding drop falls from its nose. In the prison the water was sometimes mixed with kerosene, and under the meal glass fragments were mixed. Around its waist it carries a stabilizing belt, because the back is broken, of the torture, “the past”, calls the president at the beach, “is finally, now must we for the future prepare”.
And does not look good possibly too. The expert committee of the UN to the climate change, also Intergovernmental panel on Climate CHANGE (IPCC), forecasts a rise of the sea level in the year 2100 over up to 70 centimeters. If the prognoses are correct only approximately, then the Maldives, which on the average only a limited meter rise up out of the water, up to the end of the century will be by the majority flooded, back-demanded from the sea, from which they came, away-rinsed, away-eroded, completely surely, say the science, in all probability, perhaps, could be. A local travel enterprise applies its offers already with the slogan “visits you the Maldives, so long it gives”.
But the citizens of Feeali, dissatisfied with the present, cry “Isthiufaa, Isthiufaa”, them want a waste water treatment unit and a new Hafenmauer.
Off to Australia
As a Mohamed Nasheed in last October with the first free elections of the Republic of Maldives its for thirty years governing enemy, whom Autokraten Gayoom defeated, it still gave and announced before its office installation to the British “Guardian” an interview its own political plan. A plan, which sounded to more after surrender than after renewal. “There we the climate change not to stop can”, said it, “must we new country somewhere buy”. Country, into which its people, can resettle 350,000 humans once, if its nation of the ground disappears. It gives already contacts with Sri Lanka, to Australia, India. “Also the Israeli in Palestine” Nasheed bought, said country. It intends to put on parts of the tourism incomes in funds to in a few decades, if the flood comes, be enough large is for the acquisition of a dry homeland.
A president start. And a new country searches as the first.
Leichtfüssig jumps Anni of the bar on the boat. Its yacht leaves the island and takes course on the next. In two days Anni wants to visit seven islands on three atolls, Feeali, Bilehdhoo, Magodhoo, Rinbudhoo, Kudahuvadhoo, Mulah and Dhiggaru. That makes it each week so, always on Wednesdays and Thursday travels it its citizens, in order to sound oneself their concerns, on always different islands of its scattered nation, between each for marks country lie many miles on lake. Its modest ship, which is 20 meters long Funama, rather overcrowded, it has a few Minister and a handful of parliamentarians thereby, in addition its secretaries and the boat personnel, and on the roof deck a local television crew travels also, in addition a reporter “New York Times” and a few photographers. Mister Azee, personal captain of the president, stands barefoot at wheel and steers the Funama in leisurely speed and in the Slalomkurs by the Faafu atoll, which view directed toward its GPS equipment, sometimes also of its iPhone, for which he checks the situation of the ship additionally via Google Earth. Everywhere sand banks, reefs, Untiefen in the flat water lie in wait. Mister Azee never puts itself, “a captain must stand”, says it. The boat pulls a white Gischtspur behind itself ago, which disappeared soon again, the only roads on the Maldives.
This country, 500 kilometers southwest from Sri Lanka, consists almost exclusively of water and beauty. 99.9 per cent of the national territory of 90,000 square kilometers, the size of Portugal, are Indian ocean. Only 300 square kilometers stand out smaller, a surface than Andorra. And that divided on twelve hundred islands, which distribute themselves in north south direction on 26 atolls, whose northernmost is southernmost more than 800 kilometers distant from, the distance Hamburg Munich. From the airplane looks, as if a moody God with the momentum of a Sämanns would have a hand fully grains in the sea geschmissen. In truth however, by the sea-bottom regarded, the Maldives the points of enormous submarine volcanic mountains, Maldivian back are mentioned, a scar from magma at the location of fracture of two tectonic plates, steep 5000 meters rising. Above, on the sunk craters of extinct volcanos, corral reefs to the surface, sand grew settled, palms grew, humans came, first before 4000 years. These islands, whose highest collection of only 2.3 meters lies over the sea level, are not only the flattest country of the planet, but also one, developed for the youngest only before 16,000 years. The Maldives are a most improbable geological coincidence. If they should disappear, they would not be generally speaking book of geologic history at the end of the time any more than one clip remark.
The president, a Benson & Hedges between the lips, use the trip to Bilehdhoo for a meeting with his familiar ones on the afterdeck. One sits on Campingstühlen and drinks tea, served from the ship cook, who already served predecessors and adversary Gayoom just like the captain in same function under Nasheeds, the president is not entering afterwards. Many in Annis Entourage are fellow combatants of many years, former political activists, some it at all only in the captivity became acquainted, the prison were most important meeting place for the opposition.
Shouting at against the wind, the round discusses one of the central promises, which the election campaigner Anni made for his compatriots the planned public ferry net. Today, without transport system, lives the Insulaner in large isolation from each other and in complete apartheid of the hundred tourist islands with its hotel Resorts, which can be attained only by water airplane. The new government wants to win investors from Europe, private companies, which are to align ferry traffic and look for their profit, the responsible Minister, Ali Shiyam, was straight for discussions in Berlin and Milan and reports to the party of successes.
Torture and romance
Then Anni, which got rid of for the duration of the passage of his shoes and socks, has time for questions.
Mr. Präsident, times honestly, you want to really leave the Maldives and buy a new country?
“I will be the latter, which goes. I will stand on the last island and will wait, until she goes down. They must understand, with this plan go it around a security for the future, a way out for the schlimmstmöglichen case. Nobody of us wants here away. They must understand, become the Maldives now the test case for the remainder of the world. If we cannot save the Maldives, then there is no hope for completely many humans. 60 per cent of the world population live near the coast, towns with millions of inhabitants are threatened.”
What makes you so safe that the oceans actually rise?
“It does not only concern the sea level, it is a matter also of the accumulated hurricanes, the more violent monsoon. The experts are extremely decided in this thing. There is no area for us to doubt their judgement. But that is not the crucial. Even the sceptics are now better advised to look for new solutions. It is as with Pascals bet: Also the disbelieving one will win, if it believes in God.”
They were tortured, spent months in solitary confinement. How does one stand through?
“I had a dream of the future of my country, to it I held on. I was chained, struck, bespuckt, insulted, when nothing treats. One must itself, believes I, in this situation a kind of romance to talk, one must say itself, ‹happened now only you and nobody other one and that has its purpose›. One must place the pain to inden service of a more ambitious goal, then one wins strength.”
From where does its nickname, Anni come?
Its Excellency laughs. “Betrayal I you, you do not find it out.”
It was like that: As a child could aharen Mohamed the Maldivian word for “I”, not express, the boy said in each case “anni”, the mother gefiels, it remained thereby. Each Malediver needs a nickname, because all Mohamed or Ibrahim or Ahmed are called. Its supporters call thus “I”, if them “Anni! Anni!” chant, and still these four letters are emblazoned into marks at all walls, ANNI, on Brettertüren sprayed, ANNI FOR PRESIDENT, at a Friedhofsmauer, to it always the logo of its party, two scale pans, for the justice. Into marks, the capital, where Anni was born, where it governs today, where everything happens.
Marks is stinking the back of the Paradieses, the supply tract garden of the Eden, loud, fast, closely and somehow despite everything in a good mood. 105,000 humans, a third of the people, live on this island on less than three square kilometers. One seal-settled capitals of the world, a megatown center in the pocket size, a zusammengeknülltes Manhattan. Tourists, from whom annually 600,000 comes into the country, are to be seen rare, them land on the close convenient airport island Hulhule and directly flown on into its hotels, everyone an island for itself. Marks, a wildly rampantly growing heap from stone and concrete, on sand built, like everything here. Through narrow roads, always clogged, lead it give hundreds of taxi, thousands private cars and more than 30,000 Scooter, everything strictly taken redundantly on the small isle, which one can run off to foot in twenty minutes full length.
On the Scootern the island youth, bored and unemployed, sits at wheel a boy, in the back a girl with veil, honking mostly turns it their rounds. Because of the end to the city an artificial beach, tiny, is the only possibility, swims to go into marks, the island is all around enclosed from a shoulder-high wall, before it lies stacked up Tetrapods, four-legged breakwaters from concrete. When rolled 2004 of the tsunami, they were useful. Sollendie water come nevertheless, at least marks, already rigged by Annis predecessor Gayoom to the Trutzburg on high lake, are so soon not away-rinsed.
On this island Anni comes to the world, 1967, as an secondaryoldest son of a businessman, who came with the enterprise from small island hotels to money and into the training of its four children put it, Ibrahim, Mohamed, Nashida, Nazim, everything sent it to the study to England. The oldest one, Ibrahim Nasheed, called Nash, lives today as an engineer in Zollikon, Switzerland. To John moorlands University in Liverpool, where Anni had written itself for naval sciences and fishery natures, it receives its Bachelor OF in the eighties-years kind for a thesis (diploma) with the topic “a public transport system for the Maldives - problems and solutions”. Anni prepares, Anni, a teenager, dreams about the revolution. Its brother Nash remembers: “We discussed for nights, we were six Maldivian students, our course. Anni came with all these beautiful large ideas, we others brought in each case thousand objections, it heard itself all on and remained nevertheless with its opinion.” Back on the Maldives Anni writes down as an author of the underground magazine “Sangu” against injustice, 1991 it for the first time arrested, later accuses of one it an attack on a conference center to have planned 1992 receives it three years because of “restraint of information”, Arrestierungen also 1995 and 1996, incitement of the masses, terrorism suspicion, 2001 it for two and a half years of the country referred, again and again returns it. Nash: “With 17 my brother, he already said will be once a president of the Maldives. We laughed all, it laughed also.”
In the government building, from bronze lions guarded, Annis Pressechef visitor leads gladly into the earlier office of the former president, which its successor will never refer. Glittering Lüster, heavy Brokat, an enormous desk, nothing thereby actually, which one would not grant to a head of state, but much too much splendor for Anni. Belonged to the office also a marmornes bath also gold-occupied toilet, never uses by Anni, which furnished itself a stick more deeply in the area of a typist. It wants to make everything differently than Gayoom, nothing is to remind of it. Gayooms former private residence is transformed into a public library, its 7,5-Millionen-Dollar-Jacht, too largely for Annis taste, stands on Ebay to the sale.
Maumoon Abdul Gayoom, which governed the island state with iron fist, in addition, from before-modern time into the present led. Gayoom, 72, that head of state, Minister of Finance and defense was simultaneous and important posts with family members occupied, in addition, invented the Touristenparadies Maldives, attracted hotel entrepreneur and an archipelago, which could not do anybody into the eighties-years in the world, a magic sound lent. The Maldives have today the highest pro head gross national product of south Asia, even if distributes radically in an unfair way, the economic growth correspond that India. From democracy and liberty of opinion Gayoom wanted not to be able to be braked, a despot, whose security forces flogged a prisoner in September 2003 to death and which left a marching-up of the reformists down clubs in August 2004. A Öko pioneer, who warned since the early 90s to innumerable conferences before the climate change and to which the copyright belongs on the sentence, which its successor Anni repeats today in some variations in each interview: “First the Maldives go down, then the remainder of the world”. Before marks a up-poured artificial island, Hulhumale, two meters lies over sea, place for 50,000 humans, probably the only safe concept for the further future of the Maldives, in order given of: Gayoom. A Scheusal, a visionary.
Allahs will
It evening on the ship of the president, magenta shines the sky, far away on the horizon to have the clouds met like a hostile army. Four islands are production, four times the president the shirt changed. On one there was a red carpet at the Quai, on further Spalier standing Koranschüler, on third a people dance to be vibrated on everyone was hundreds of hands hundreds of citizens to embrace, Anni wants a president for touching to be, very literally understood.
On Kudahuvadhoo, as inexpressibly as splendourful, the unit train stays overnight to an island. A boy at the port, Abdullah, 16, presents his bearded grandfather laughing as Saddam Hussein, possibly the truth, the private photographer of the president is called Muhammad Ali. Saddam Hussein and its grandchild do not have ever belonged from the idea that they should emigrate perhaps sometime to Australia, “I to immediately go”, say Abdullah inspired, because he was still never away from Kudahuvadhoo. Also the message of the rising sea is for the two, Saddam twitches again with the shoulders, “if it Allahs will is”, says it, “then is that evenly like that”.
The president appeared itself also a few men with a ramshackle small mosque, in order to pray. All take the shoes off, wash themselves the feet. Anni goes the three stone stages to the prayer area up, kneels down, lowers its head, somewhere straightforward is appropriate for Mekka. “Religion is healthy”, says it later on the question, how important the faith for it is. He sees the thing of the practical criterion. “It is condemned hot here! In the mosque I can wash a few marks on the day, to cooling, to the peace come myself.” In one of its many long speeches today Anni said its citizen, the run of nature is Allahs will, thus also the climate change, but around Allahs will to understand, one needs the natural science, the ecology. A quite adventurous theology. “One must fetch the people when its thinking”, says Nasheed later, “they believe in the unalterability of the fate, make them slow-acting. Thus I say to them, if it is God will that the earth and the weather change, then is it also its will that we change, our behavior, our handling the world. And as we best do, teach us the ecology.”
To 15. March announced the president in a Youtube Videobotschaft on the occasion of the world premiere of the English Öko propaganda film “Age OF Stupid”, it its archipelago the first CO2-neutralen country in the world will make. Until in ten years, Nasheed will thus import, its country no more oil, which would stop diesel-electric power stations the enterprise, is 150 Windturbinen and a half square kilometer solar cells the Malediver until then with the Greens energy to supply. It, Anni, will call the states of the earth to follow it in order to agree at the climate conference in Copenhagen in December on a successor for Kyoto minutes. “If humans on the moon to go can”, said Anni, “then can he also the energy problem solve.”
On the island Landaa Giravaaru lies the five-star hotel Four Seasons Resort, from the Luzerner Armando Kraenzlin led, according to opinion of many the most beautiful in the country. One attains entrance starting from approximately 1500 dollar per night, that is here scarcely three annual wages for the poorer two thirds of the Malediver. The Frenchwoman Stéphanie, wrapped in white like all personnel, led smiling to the room, which is called “Beach mansion”, noiseless floats the golf cart over the sand, past at further smiling personnel, everything is smile. Before the mansion a pool, before which pool the beach and before it the sea, and if one immerses only ten centimeters, is it like “Finding Nemo” look, red, yellow, blue, green fish in masses, Korallen in koketten forms. Aquariumkitsch, but especially reality.
In the Four Seasons the guests are asked to present their clocks one hour official Resort time, imported by the hotel industry, so that the sun does not go down so early. There are 400 employees for 200 guests. At the beach before the Blu, four smiling workers stand for one of three restaurants of the island and leave to barrows sand full by large filters rieseln, in order to free and more finely make it from Korallenstückchen to, then truck it the powder back to the sea.
The islands rise also
The Four Seasons, environmentaloriented, holds itself its own research station, where the two sea biologists Guy of Stevens and Cédric Guignard Mantas and whale sharks count, the sea turtles when breeding helps and new Korallen to breed. Cédric and Guy serve a Mangosaft at the long Teakholztisch and explain the thing with the erosion: “One must watch out”, says Cédric, “it gave here naturally always erosion, the monsoon drives the sand before itself ago, the islands walks nearly like dunes.” Sometimes also whole islands disappear and elsewhere develop new in the lagoons. Not possibly to say, Guy means, which erosion does not come from the climate change and which. And which concerns the swelling seas, the Koralleninseln of the Maldives is in a better situation than rigid volcanic formations like the Seychelles, “those drinks”, simply off thus Cédric. Corral reefs however grow also, if the sea level rises, in amazing speed, up to 1.25 centimeters per year. Of the IPCC 70 centimeters to 2100 prognosticated could it quite create - also still the temperature rise and the acidity of the water increased by washed CO2 would not be, both like the sensitive organisms not. “Those are very complex systems”, say Guy, somewhat helpless. Nobody can say today with security that the Maldives will disappear, “however we cannot it also exclude”.
A new morning on the president yacht, Anni yawns, he is tired, he had to do much in the last twenty years. Yesterday afternoon, in the parish meeting hall of Maghodoo, he is fallen asleep during the long singing of the island Muezzins on its blumenumrankten honour armchair. Today only still two islands stand on the program, nevertheless. On Mulah he commits the 25-Jahr-Jubiläum of the village school, on Dhiggavu assures he repair work at the lighthouse. Then the Funama makes itself on the way back, leaves the Untiefen of the Meemu Atolls, reaches the open sea. Mr. Azee stands rainless at wheel, never sets it, a captain must, it scolded itself its two 750-PS-Motoren on full trip, 40 miles the hour. Left of the nose, as if the view would be not long wonderful enough, jumps Delfine.
The president takes his tie off. Mission fulfills.
Anni, times honestly, the idea with the exodus, a people flees over the sea, how with Moses and the Israeliten, that was not above all a publicity Gag in own thing?
Anni smiles. “I want to propel the debate. Die Welt is to experience, the Maldives is the front line in the fight against the climate change. I hope that we will be a catalyst, so that the green turn comes. I am simple surely that mankind is not so stupid, to watch with its own fall. Soon the people will go on the roads and their governments to acting will request. It needs mass protests as in Europe of 1968. Now, before Copenhagen, would be a good time. We must do the correct now. Perhaps we will fail. Perhaps the Maldives will go down. But nobody is to be able to say, we would not have tried it.”
Still four hours to marks. Still ten minutes to Buffalo. Still 91 years up to the fall, completely surely, in all probability, perhaps, could be.
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