Open Letter to the Ambassador of the People’s Republic of China in the Maldives

Pen for Rights
Maldivians for Chagos – An Indian Ocean Decolonisation Initiative
Republic of Maldives

Ref: PFR/M4C/OL/CHN/2025/01
Date: September 2025

His Excellency Mr. Kong Xianhua
Embassy of the People’s Republic of China
Malé, Republic of Maldives

Your Excellency,

Decolonisation is not a bilateral gift

True decolonisation is not negotiated behind closed doors or concluded through bilateral accommodation. It is a process supervised by the United Nations, grounded in international law, and inclusive of all affected rights and histories. The question of the Chagos Archipelago tests whether the Global South will accept a colonial defect as a finished solution, or insist on returning to the lawful UN process that decolonisation requires.

The silence engineered: the Maldives outside UN supervision (1887–1965)

From 1887 until independence in 1965, the Maldives existed under British protectorate arrangements that restricted its sovereignty in matters of defence and foreign affairs. During this period, Britain was obligated under Article 73(e) of the UN Charter to transmit information on Non-Self-Governing Territories. It did so for numerous protectorates and dependencies across Africa and Asia. The Maldives, however, was never listed.

This omission excluded the Maldives from the UN decolonisation system, including the Special Committee on Decolonisation (C-24) and the Fourth Committee. When the British Indian Ocean Territory was carved out in 1965, it too was excluded from UN supervision. The result was systematic erasure: the Maldives was deprived of its forum at the United Nations while others advanced competing claims.

Maldivian presence before empire, recorded beyond Europe

Long before European colonial intervention, the Maldives existed as a recognised maritime polity. This reality is preserved not only in Maldivian historical memory but also in external records. Chinese dynastic sources from the Tang through the Ming periods refer to the Maldives under names such as Mo-lai, Mo-li, and later Liu Shan Guo, describing a sovereign island kingdom engaged in navigation, diplomacy, and Indian Ocean trade. These records place the Maldives firmly within the pre-colonial political geography of the region.

Arabic navigational texts, European accounts such as Pyrard de Laval, Maldivian folklore recalling centuries of slave-raiding, Dhivehi gravestones in Diego Garcia, and British references describing Diego Garcia as “one of the Maldive Islands” together reveal a dense and continuous fabric of Maldivian presence. Chagos did not emerge from administrative imagination; it existed within a lived maritime sphere.

Distortion in the UN record

United Nations General Assembly Resolution 2066 condemned detachment from Mauritius, while the Maldives – already excluded from the decolonisation system – was absent from the process. Resolution 71/272 later referred the matter to the International Court of Justice within a UK–Mauritius frame, followed by Resolution 73/295. The structural defect persisted: the Maldives was not recognised as a party whose rights were affected.

That defect has since enabled a dangerous reframing, in which non-contiguous territorial reach over more than two thousand kilometres is presented as decolonisation. This is not South–South justice. It is colonial inheritance repackaged through distance.

Human rights cannot substitute decolonisation

We observe with concern recent efforts to redirect the Chagos question through alternative pathways, including selective reliance on racial or ethnic protection mechanisms and the promotion of parallel political constructs operating outside the UN decolonisation framework. While the rights, dignity, and welfare of displaced Chagossians – including the right of return – must be fully respected and remedied, such mechanisms cannot determine territorial status or extinguish pre-existing sovereign, cultural, and historical rights.

Decolonisation is not resolved through identity classification or ad hoc political arrangements. It is a legal process governed by the UN Charter and General Assembly resolutions. Fragmenting that process risks weakening the international order that China has consistently defended.

Law is the corrective

Article 34 of the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties affirms that no treaty binds a third State without its consent. The Maldives is that third State. No bilateral arrangement, advisory opinion framed by exclusion, or parallel construct can lawfully erase its rights.

A respectful request to China

China’s historical record preserves Maldivian sovereignty centuries before colonial intervention. China’s modern diplomacy consistently affirms decolonisation, multilateralism, and South–South integrity. We respectfully ask China to help correct the defect created by exclusion: to support the proper listing, under Article 73(e) of the UN Charter, of both the Maldives (historically) and the British Indian Ocean Territory/Chagos; to affirm the primacy of the UN Special Committee on Decolonisation (C-24) and the Fourth Committee; and to ensure that decolonisation proceeds through the United Nations pathway – not around it.

This is fidelity to principle, not antagonism.

Chagos is Maldives. It is written in navigation, in parchment, in memory, and in record. Let it now be written in law – with China’s voice for justice.

Respectfully,

Abdulla Rasheed
Administrative Custodian
Pen for Rights – Maldivians for Chagos
Republic of Maldives

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