Mohamed Nasheed, former first Democratically elected president of the Maldives, was the victim of a military coup funded by international hospitality conglomerates like Marriott and Hilton because he attempted to turn their island dictatorship into a neolib vacation hotspot by allowing ordinary Maldivian people to open and run their own hotels to compete with the massive luxury chains.

Although Mohamed Nasheed is a neolib, he seems like an earnest one who was actually trying to make his island nation less of a hell on Earth to live in. Before he was elected, Maldivians were banned from doing almost anything. They couldn't own a cell phone, they couldn't open a bank account, they couldn't connect to the internet, they couldn't even travel between islands without express permission from the government, which was always denied to prevent any political organizing between the islands. If one island revolted against the military government, the military could focus their efforts there and the other islands would be none the wiser. In fact, when Nasheed """resigned""", Maldivians traveled in boats to the capital city-island of Malé to protest, only to be rounded up en-route by military boats and re-routed to a penal colony island where they were kept until the protests died down.

Since tourism accounts for 30% of the Maldives GDP, and the largest international companies enjoyed special privileges from the pre-Nasheed fundamentalist Sunni military government, such as prohibition of alcohol being lifted only on mega-hotel islands. When Mohamed Nasheed allowed citizens to start their own hotels and started the inter-island national ferry system, he empowered his own people in a way that hurt the profits of these mega chains. These locally owned and run hotels offer the same amenities as the big chains, but cost less than 10% per night. They also have an added cultural exchange element as many of these hotels are staffed by one family that will treat you like their house guest while you're there, sometimes having seafood BBQs together or going night fishing or just talking about what tsunamis are like.

This was hailed by the IMF as an example of an inspiring story where "the free market" improved everyone's, which is kind of true, but mostly due to getting rid of the dictatorship that mega-hotel companies were already cool with in the first place. However, you could tell the mega-hotel chains didn't like it. They began limiting how many people could visit their hotel islands per day, hoping to reduce tourists from local hotels showing up to use the pool and going, "whoa that's crazy, you pay $600 per night here? Yeah my room is like that, but it's just $40 for me and my GF back on Maafushi island." I don't have any internal revenue numbers from these big hotel chains to see if they felt an economic impact from the sudden increase in local competition, but I suspect there was some money lost and the threat was only growing as more Maldivians on more islands started opening more hotels.

This conspiracy theory is based on what a ton of local Maldivian people told me had happened when I was asking around on a few islands.

The official story is Mohammed Nasheed resigned from his job and was then swiftly arrested for "terrorism", but so many people in Male told me the same thing; Nasheed's Vice President, Mohammed Waheed Hassan Manik, arranged a meeting between the top generals in the Maldivian military and Nasheed, where Nasheed believed they were going to be discussing routine business. Instead, he found a resignation letter and pen in front of his seat. At some point, a general put his gun on the table and told Nasheed that he wasn't leaving the room as president of the Maldives, he can only choose the physical condition in which he leaves the room.

Nasheed ended up in a prison on Maafushi Island, ironically the first island where local Maldivians opened hotels under Nasheed's presidency.