ON THE OCCASSION OF THE UN ASSEMBLY LALIT's APPEAL TO THE MINISTER ON THE ISSUES OF CHAGOS AND PALESTINE
13.09.2022
IN THE CONTEXT OF UN ASSEMBLY: LALIT CALLS ON PRIME MINISTER TO CHANGE POSITION ON MILITARY OCCUPATION OF CHAGOS AND TO SUPPORT UN CALL TO INVESTIGATE THE STATE OF ISRAEL'S AGAINST HUMANITY OF 'APARTHEID'
Hon. Pravind Jugnauth
Prime Minister
New Treasury Building
Intendance Street
Port Louis
12 September 2022
Dear Sir,
Calling on Prime Minister to
1. Change position on military occupation of Chagos,
2. Support UN General Assembly call to investigate the State of Israel’s crime against humanity of “Apartheid”.
We are writing to you on the above two issues in the context of your participation at the coming United National General Assembly (UNGA) this month in New York.
1. Concerning your “offer” to lease part of Mauritian sovereign territory for 99 years for a US military base on Diego Garcia, we once again call on you to rescind this offer, and instead to call for base closure and ecological clean-up. Our demand on this issue is more poignant today than ever before. The world, as we write this letter, is beginning to break into two conflicting “halves”, reminiscent of the Cold War, and already engaged in one “hot war”. The war we refer to is the Russian invasion of Ukraine. As you are aware, NATO countries, in particular the USA, provide Ukraine with arms and funds, then use the Ukranian people to fight NATO’s enemy, Russia, which it aims to isolate and weaken by encirclement. Despite the constant pressure from Western States (which is at present an alliance of essentially former colonizers and some settler colonies), and despite the ceaseless propaganda of Western media embedded in the Ukranian army, the fact is that more than half the world’s population live in countries that refused to vote “yes” to the USA-sponsored resolutions against Russia at the United Nations General Assembly, and this includes important allies of Mauritius like India, China and South Africa. We call for Mauritius to prepare, in this international context, for a more non-aligned position.
2. We urge you to consider the call of Palestinian civil society in the BDS (Boycott, Disinvestment, Sanctions) movement and to include in your speech to the UNGA the demand that the UN establish an investigation into the Israeli State’s crime against humanity of “apartheid”.
The recent massacre of Palestinians in Gaza makes it more urgent than ever to act globally to pressure and isolate the Israeli State. The on-going systematic oppression and murder of Palestinians in Gaza, West Bank and Jerusalem is a tragic genocide in slow motion. Since 2008 Israel has made 5 military incursions into Palestinian territories, resulting, in all, in some 4,000 killed. Last August Israeli attacks on Gaza caused 49 deaths, 17 of whom were children, many murdered in their own homes. In besieged Gaza, there is no safe haven to protect Palestinians from Israel’s violent acts of aggression and collective punishment.
Already in its 15th year, the Gaza siege is older than most of the children murdered in its repeated massacres there since 2008. This cruel imprisonment of a whole people is totally unthinkable. The siege deprives over two million Palestinians, the majority of them children, of basic necessities, including clean water, jobs, reliable electric power, as well as adequate housing, healthcare, and education. As a result, morbidity, mortality (especially infant mortality), stunted growth of young children, and poverty rates have risen sharply, reducing the everyday lives of people living there to martyrdom and constitutes the form of collective punishment we mentioned. People are imprisoned and then bombed. Israel’s siege of Gaza is condemned by the UN as illegal and described by human rights experts as a crime against humanity. Ilan Pappe, a prominent Israeli historian, has described it as “incremental genocide.”
The repeated massacres in Gaza and the continued criminal siege there are one especially deadly aspect of Israel’s settler-colonialism, which has been imposing a regime of apartheid against Palestinians since 1948. This year has seen an international consensus of human rights organizations and experts has emerged, confirming what Palestinians have been saying for decades: Israel is, in fact, an apartheid state. This consensus, which includes the world’s most prominent international human rights organizations such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, United Nations Special Rapporteur, as well as Israeli human rights organizations, highlights the urgent need for the UN to take concrete action to dismantle Israel’s apartheid. As it is, in 2008, the UN Special Rapporteur Prof. John Dugard, himself an anti-apartheid academic in the field of Constitutional Law in South Africa, already refers to the Israeli State as an apartheid State. When Palestine was accepted as a member of the International Criminal Court in 2015 , he said, “I’m a South African who lived through apartheid, [and] I have no hesitation in saying that Israel’s crimes are infinitely worse than those committed by the apartheid regime of South Africa.”
South Africa and Namibia, whose populations have a first-hand experience of apartheid and the struggle that ultimately dismantled it, have been spearheading the growing recognition also among governments that a paradigm shift coupled with bold international action to investigate Israel for the crime of apartheid are essential for peace and justice in the region. Mauritius should join other states during the upcoming UNGA to re-establish the same mechanisms that helped dismantle apartheid in South Africa.
Palestinians have been suffering for over 70 years because of the silence and inaction of the international community, which is responsible for creating their plight in the first place. Mauritius has a moral and legal obligation to stop crimes against humanity wherever they take place. Silence is complicity, so we must stand on the right side of history. We urge you to take the righteous and courageous step at the upcoming UNGA and help the Palestinian people end the systematic oppression they have endured for so long. This way, Mauritius will give the same kind of solidarity to the Palestinians that we, Mauritians benefitted from over the Chagos, including Diego Garcia, issue.
Alain Ah Vee
for LALIT
Main Rd, GRNW
Tel 208 5551
