How to End Torture by Plain Clothes Policemen
21.06.2022
The testimony of torture-survivors Mr. Christopher Pierre-Louis and Mr. Krishna Seetal stand out like beacons of truth in the dark, murky world of Mauritian plain clothes police officers’ exactions. These brave young men have shone light on the impunity, sadism, torture and extortion in the Mauritian police, in particular in the CID and ADSU. The existence of this dark world of impunity is mostly tolerated by the Government and by the country’s elites. But, so thoroughly exposed, it must now end. And it must end now.
Some of the disgraced officers of the Terre Rouge CID have been arrested and are being held in police cells.[They have been released on bail on Thursday 16 June 2022].
Let this moment be the one that marks the beginning of the end of the impunity for violence by officers of the state. The long and painstaking analysing, organizing and making political demands, that both JUSTICE in the years 2003 to 2010 did, with contributions from many currents of opinion in addition to LALIT’s (Yvan Martial, the late former Chief Justice Rajsoomer Lallah, Barristers Jean-Claude Bibi and Michel Ahnee, Lindsay Morvan and MPRB, the Muvman Liberasyon Fam) and LALIT has done consistently from 1979 onwards until now, can now perhaps move another step forward with these new testimonies.
Before the testimony of Christopher Pierre-Louis and Krishna Seetal, and after the mass uprising against the violence that Kaya suffered at the hands of the police, there were already people who gave evidence, over the years since the uprising, of this kind of torture. Their past testimony was often ignored by the elites. But now, what is different in the present case, is that at the same time, alongside what Mr. Pierre-Louis testifies, is a video clip of the torture he, himself, suffered at the time (it was in 2019) and which has been made public on the internet recently. The second witness, Mr. Seetal, had incriminated the same men for the same kind of torture, and picked them out in an identity parade before the video clip was on the web. The systemic cruelty coupled with intentional, brutal humiliation of young men in custody, now circulating in public, has aroused outrage. But outrage is, of course, not good enough.
The video clip has two parallel sources: Barrister RamaValayden, now a leading member of the Linyon Pep Morisien (LPM), had formally handed the police a copy of the video clip two years ago. It is as though that fell into a bottomless pit of oblivion. Then, more recently, someone dropped another copy into the letterbox of the man known as “Daren Aktivist”, who gave it to Bruneau Laurette, also an LPM leader, who uploaded it on to the internet. Since then, the woman who gave Valayden the video clip recognizes the one on-line as one and the same. She has said in an interview on Tele Plus that her ex-husband, one of the CID officers now under arrest on charges of torture, had left the file on her laptop. All this to say that Mr. Pierre-Louis’ testimony is backed up by video evidence as additional, irrefutable proof. And Mr. Seetal’s evidence, given previously, adds further proof against the seven officers concerned.
The country’s elites have thus had to concede that the torture that they had, in the main, either denied or justified, and often vacillated between denying and justifying, actually exists. They have to admit it is worse than not “justifiable”. It is abhorrent. Using Tasers, electro-shock weapons, as instruments of sexual assault can hardly be accepted by the elites of the country as something they employ civil servants, with their tax Rupees, to do. And what if it happened to them and theirs? Thus the outrage.
So, the time for reckoning has perhaps, at long last, come. But, there is work to be done.
The time has come for proper investigations, trials, judgments and sentencing. Not just to continue the old cover-up process. Until this case, cover-up is what we have seen from the Interior Minister, through the Police Commissioner, through the National Human Rights Commission, and even the trade unions of police officers, right down to the hands-on white-washers-in-chief at the Independent Police Complaints Commission. The time has come for outright dismissal from the police service. Not just suspension on full pay.
And the time has come for us to agree on a PROGRAM as to how to end this abhorrent behavior by public officers. At once. And to establish what “our” role, all of us, in all this. This will help us mobilize, as we must, behind such a program.
What needs to be done? By whom?
PRIME MINISTER and POLICE COMMISSIONER
First, Prime Minister Pravind Jugnauth, as Minister of the Interior, must make a formal address to the nation about what he intends to do to stop the torture and violence being perpetrated against the people by police officers. He cannot continue with the one or two “black sheep” thesis, as he did in the National Assembly this week.
Second, the Police Commissioner must publicly warn all police officers working under him that they will be thrown out of the police force for this kind of action. Anyone colluding or covering-up will also be dismissed. And they will be arrested and charged.
Third, officers involved in the torture in the video clip must all be arrested and charged, and meanwhile dismissed from the Police Force on the grounds of public interest. It is not their “right” to work as police officers. Their continued presence on the pay-roll represents a menace.
Fourth, as Prime Minister, Mr. Jugnauth, must immediately apologize, in the name of the Mauritian State, to the victims of police violence.
Fifth, as Prime Minister, he must introduce a fast-track compensation law – which can be on a fairly flat rate basis of, say, Rs 1 million to Rs 2 million. For these claims the two year cut-off time for suing police officers must be rescinded.
Sixth, the Prime Minister must introduce a law to enable a “Protector of Detainees” office to be set up. This office will have highly qualified staff given authority to visit any and all police station cells and prison cells without notice, and to prepare cases for dismissal, and for later prosecution by the DPP. The existence of such an office will also perhaps put a halt to the hideous practice whereby the plain clothes police systematically move the detainee from place to place all over Mauritius, making contact with his family and legal representative well-nigh impossible. The person detained will also, this way, be checked for constantly remaining within judicial purview. This office must establish a “Register of State Employees accused up till now of violence, torture and torture-related extortion”. This way a pattern will emerge, and the officers repeatedly accused can be dismissed from office, on the basis of a balance of probability that they are a danger to the police force and to society. This office will also be able to get to the bottom of the tools of torture, and establish who exactly sews the notorious hoods, and in what filing cabinets the illegal Tasers are stored.
Seventh, that the Prime Minister act so as to ensure that legislation makes confessions valid as evidence only if they are made before the Courts. If the police cannot prove that the confession that is at the heart of their enquiry was obtained perfectly legally, then the prosecution case is flawed and thus struck out. (This would be the equivalent of introducing legislation to implement the Miranda US Supreme Court judgment, which in practice put a stop in 1966 to the torture that was rife in the USA.)
Eighth, that the Prime Minister ensure that the Provisional Charges system that allows police to arbitrarily arrest anyone they want to, torture them and trump up charges later, is done away with. This demand has time and time again been re-iterated not only by LALIT and Justice, but by consecutive Presidents of the Bar Council, lawyers, even the DPP himself.
POLICE OFFICERS’ TRADE unionS
Police Officers’ trade unions, a relatively new institution, have failed dismally in their first duty: to protect the reputation of their corps de métier. We, in LALIT, when we called over the decades for the right for police and prison officers to unionize we always did this in order to open the possibility for such unions to undercut the hierarchy that upholds the violence, torture and extortion rackets that have so long been tolerated. The unions must thus make a point of not defending members accused of violence, torture and extortion. At the same time, they must defend and protect their members who denounce these practices. Simple as that. Join the union that offers that.
PARLIAMENT and POLITICAL PARTIES
Parliament, including the Opposition, and all political parties, inside and outside Parliament, must give an important place on their political program and on their political agenda, to ways to prevent police violence, torture and extortion. This includes refraining from creating hysteria about “law and order”, but instead remaining rational. And it includes a proper political program to curb violence by any officers of the state, on lines similar to those in this article.
MAGISTRATES
Magistrates have too long turned a blind eye to the torture reported to them in Court by victims. For this collusion to come to an end, the Chief Justice must organize the following changes:
- Magistrates at their Friday meetings must discuss and come up with a plan to ensure that they, as a corps de métier, assure safety for anyone who the police arrest. Magistrates must remind the police that pre-trial prisoners are under judicial supervision. This is the definition of “Mauritius is not a police state”. And it is this that makes the Magistrates morally and legally responsible for the well-being and safety of detainees. This corps de métier has to ensure that Mauritius does not become a police state. Every time a magistrate calls for “an investigation” when a detainee complains of police violence in Court, the Magistrate must have the total onus for protecting the detainee and also for following up from Day One on how the investigation into the complaint is proceeding. Cases like the notorious one when a Magistrate was asked for a Court Order to disinter the body of a man killed by the police in 1979 for the purposes of a new autopsy, and he took 17 whole days to grant the Court Order, by which time the corpse had conveniently deteriorated enough to make impossible findings on the beatings and torture he suffered: the Magistrate, in such a case, would know that his own peers would disapprove such a blatant cover-up of State violence because they discuss this kind of case in their Friday meetings.
- That anyone wishing to be considered for appointment as a magistrate or judge later in his career, must have served for at least 6 MONTHS as pro-bono defender of people charged with criminal offenses. This would involve setting up free legal defense for all, and making service in it become part of the training necessary to become a magistrate or judge. This would then contribute to banishing the prosecution mind-set for which the judiciary is notorious, while also providing legal aid at the time for those accused of a criminal offense. They could thus give their statements to the Police in the presence of a lawyer, and not otherwise.
BAR COUNCIL
The Bar Council, as a corps de métier, must adopt a whole PROGRAM to improve the conditions of practice of criminal lawyers – a program similar to this one, for example. The Bar Council must put ongoing effort into making such a program come true. Put the program on the agenda for the next general elections: work towards getting all the parties to adopt it.
CASUALTY DOCTORS
Doctors in casualty must ensure that they are respecting basic medical, and human, ethics. Their patient, when a detainee, is their patient. The doctor’s loyalty is to his or her patient. That is the end of it. Doctors must thus, for a start, take the patient’s medical history from the patient. They must certainly not take it from a potential torturer who is covering up his crime. They must make the officers in charge of the patient stand outside the door – out of sight and out of hearing. They must not believe the police officers’ stories about the patient’s injuries, but must listen carefully instead to the patient and the conversation must be in confidence. The doctor must examine the patient with a mind open to the possibility that the patient is suffering from hidden violence and torture that is so severe that the he or she is afraid to mention it. Doctors must get any help they need – in the rare case they might feel threatened by a patient – from other hospital staff.
THE FAMILY
When anyone denounces or exposes police violence, we must all expect to come up against family members who either are, themselves, police officers or who defend the police blindly. So, when taking a stand against torture, each person doing so has to prepare to confront friends and family, for a start.
THE PRESS
The Press and the social media have a vital role both in exposing police violence, torture and extortion, and also sometimes in provoking it, and/or covering it up afterwards. The positive role is well known, and lauded. The negative role is rarely exposed. Police violence can be provoked by campaigns in the Press on the lines of “the police have not yet arrested a single person in the heinous crime committed last week” or “how is it that people smoked gandya right in front of the police and no arrests were made?” Kaya, for example, who was subsequently killed in police custody, was arrested following this kind of outcry in the Press. Read Jean-Claude Bibi’s booklet, Kaya’s Death: Lawkeepers and Hypocrites. We put on record that L’Express has, to its credit, since published a mea culpa in an editorial.
But the main problem for the Press is elsewhere: after the exposure of police torture and even murder, the Press tends to fall prey to manipulation by individual police officers. Even when there is a video clip backing Christopher Pierre-Louis’ clearly credible evidence, the Press soon revert to articles and whole editions, which could be summarized under an SC-type essay title: “Advantages and Disadvantages of Torture.” This supposed “re-establishing the balance” is probably a result of the heavy reliance of some journalists on “leaks” from police officers for their breaking news on crime. Then, when the police force is defending the indefensible, the Press “owes” the police officers something in return. For example, when Serge Victorine was killed by the police in 1979, the press published the calculated leak that he was supposedly being held on charges for a hideous rape. It was not true. We, who defended Victorine after his death, did so whatever the charges. And it was only some 35 years later that we found out that he had been wanted for an ordinary “bracage”. In the case of Mr. Marcelin Azie in 2003, the Press published all manner of false statements from police sources to incriminate the poor man. And had it not been for DNA making it 100% “not him”, he might well have been locked up not just for 14 months, as he was, but for life. He had been tortured into making a false confession.
The Press can end this collusion with the Police in two ways: Insist on formal statements from the Police Commissioner on all high profile cases and refrain from publishing uncorroborated “leaks” at all.
In any case, the Press and Radio must come to understand that some “debates” are just not “debates” but questions on which only one side has value: we cannot, for example, re-debate whether slavery had advantages as well as disadvantages. And the same goes for torture. It is just wrong. We must expose it as such. And we must end it.
While it will take a change in the whole of society to do away with the need for a big police service – once society is much more equal, police will not be needed to keep a protect a tiny percentage of the people and their ill-gotten wealth, from the hungry hundreds of thousands of people deprived of power, wealth and often even of a living wage.
Lindsey Collen for LALIT
15 June, 2022.
