Free Gaza demonstration organized by LALIT in Port Louis

04.06.2010

There was a demonstration in Port Louis yesterday in front of the US Embassy in protest against US collusion with Israel in maintaining the tight siege of Gaza and in attacking the Freedom Flotilla.

LALIT organized a demonstration that involved over 50 people in a "rolling" action, where at any one time only eleven were actually holding pancartes. This gets around the repressive Public Gathering Act which makes all gatherings of 12 or more people illegal unless the police are notified 8 days in advance. The first slogan, whereby each demonstrator held just one black letter two-foot high on a yellow pancarte with two people holding blank spaces in the middle
" L I B E R G A Z A "
the phrase meaning "Free Gaza". Every three or four minutes, two new protesters replace two of those holding a letter or a space in the eleven-person line-up, causing a lively rolling event. Then after about ten minutes, all the demonstrators, at a signal from one of the leaders across the road, turn their pancartes around, so that together the message then reads
"I Z O L I S R A E L "
which means "Isolate Israel", thus explaining why we were in front of the US Embassy. Those not in the line-up opposite the Embassy in John Kennedy Rd, stood in front of the Embassy Building, where some of them distributed a leaflet telling about the action, and explaining that LALIT had on four occasions had members go to Palestine and to the Gaza Freedom March in the world-wide movement to force States to stop Israel's occupation of Palestine.

Amongst those present in the midday rush-hour demonstration as well as LALIT members who had taken a day off work, were internationalists, trade union leaders from different federations, women's movement leaders, consumer group leaders and leaders of other social movements. There were men and women present from all over Mauritius.