Muvman Liberasyon Fam calls for opposing new repressive law
09.09.2022
New Immigration Act expands Jugnauth Repressive Arsenal
After Independence, the Labour-PMSD regime ruled the country in draconian fashion by means of the 1971 State of Emergency, with all its imprisonment without trial, press censorship, trade union bannings, with control over opposition politics increased through passing the Public Order Act and control over unions increased by passing the Industrial Relations Act. Then came the Immigration Act of 1977 that controlled who Mauritian women marry and where they can reside with their husbands afterwards. This law meant the State had gone beyond its new controls on political parties, trade unions and the press – all in the public domain – and on to new ways to control the private domain of the family.
Marriage and Residence
So, the first common front that the newly formed Muvman Liberasyon Fam set up in 1977, even before Solidarite Fam held the big women’s public meetings in Jardin de la Compagnie, was the Fron Komin Organizasyon Fam that challenged the 1977 Immigration Act on the grounds of sex discrimination. The 1977 Immigration Act meant that in order to live as a family in Mauritius, non-Mauritian husbands had to apply for a discretionary “residence permit” that the Minister of the Interior could refuse to give or could afterwards terminate at any time without the husband having any right of appeal to the Courts. Residence as a right was thus replaced by residence by “permit”.
There were petitions and meetings, public forums and protests. Then we took the matter to the U.N. Committee on Civil and Political Rights in Geneva. The case was submitted in the names of Shirin Aumeeruddy-Cziffra and 19 other women, including present MLF members like Ragini Kistnasamy. Together, we won the case. The findings, being binding on the Mauritian State, once the MMM-PSM was elected, were consolidated into Mauritian law in 1983. Women, like men, if they married a non-Mauritian, could live together in Mauritius. The question of residence was thus settled.
But victories are not long-lived. Now, 45 years later, the MSM regime, after its draconian clamp-down on drug-use, its repressive changes to the ICTA and Independent Broadcasting Authority, after outlawing strikes in the port, airport and health sector in the Quarantine Act, now, in August 2022, imposes a new Immigration Act. This new law violates the freedom of all Mauritian women and men to marry someone who is not Mauritian and be assured that residence for the couple is of right. The MSM-led government has made the situation worse than it was before the women’s movement challenged the 1977 Seewoosagur Ramgoolam and Gaetan Duval law. It is a case of nivellement par le bas.
And, as we will see, it has done worse.
Marriage and Citizenship
Hidden in the tail of the new Immigration Act of 2022, at Section 39 (4) (f), there is sting. The Citizenship Act is amended.
As everyone knows, what defines a “country” is its territory and its people.
Mauritius’ territory is still not re-unified yet, what with Chagos including Diego Garcia and Tromelin still being colonized. And now, the MSM brings in new, draconian controls on potentially the total population of the country, by granting any Interior Minister, usually the Prime Minister, new powers to cancel the Mauritian citizenship of the spouse of a Mauritian. It is important to quote the new law, so that the extent of the dictatorial powers can be understood:
“the Minister may, in his absolute discretion and without giving any reason, deprive any person of his citizenship of Mauritius, if he has reliable information and is satisfied that it is in the interest of defence, public safety or public order.”
These are the powers of a tin-pot dictator. No Courts involved. No appeal of any kind. No need for a reason to be given. Nothing.
To make matters worse, this is a Government that sends its top students abroad at marriage age, that encourages young people to go to Canada in “circular emigration”, and that, in general, actively sends young Mauritians abroad to work. So much has emigration been encouraged, often as the only solution of a politically-bankrupt Government to the real problem of unemployment that it is hard to find an extended family in Mauritius without a member married to a non-Mauritian. So, now the Prime Minister, any Prime Minister, has this kind of draconian power to inflict banishment on members of well-nigh any family in Mauritius. This kind of generalized granting of a sword of Damocles to one man is the hallmark of dictatorship.
In addition, and this is murky indeed, and something the MLF is totally against: The MSM-led Government has, again through political-bankruptcy, attempted to solve the debt problem of the sugar estate bosses by dishing out permits for them to parcel out and sell off agricultural land to millionaires from abroad for villas, literally “selling” permanent residence and even selling citizenship for money. We call this “murky” because this new Immigration Act exudes the distinct smell of future, constant bribery opportunities. This would include for shrewd operators, who might be in a position to slip “reliable information” to the Minister of the Interior that gets someone’s citizenship removed. Unless they pay up. To end this problem, the MLF calls for an immediate HALT to the permits for new villas that the MSM-led government continues to dish out to big land-owners allowing them to sell their land to oligarchs from abroad in exchange for “bought” residence and citizenship. This must stop.
And importantly, the MLF calls for the immediate change in the Immigration law to guarantee the judiciary-protected right of spouses of Mauritians to residence, and for the judiciary-protected citizenship rights of spouses granted citizenship, to their citizenship.
For this, we intend to set up a Fron Komin Organizasyon Fam II. And we intend to aim at political victory like that we won after Fron Komin Organizasyon Fam I. Victory will mean the right of everyone to choose who they wish to marry, and to live with them, and found a family with them, without the fear of banishment by a dictator.
Rajni Lallah
Secretary, Muvman Liberasyon Fam.
