Lindsey Collen Challenges Law Concerning Marriage Rights
31.10.2022
Alongside the hosts of black-clad barristers and attorneys, the Supreme Court was full of brightly-coloured supporters of Lindsey Collen’s constitutional challenge to the new law that brings potential obstacles to marriage between Mauritians and others, and the threat of banishment to those already married.
It was on Thursday 27 October at the new court building in Edith Cavell Street in Port Louis, when this case, supported by LALIT, came up for the first time, and it was fixed for an early hearing for 8 December.
Ram Seegobin, Lindsey’s husband and a LALIT leader, was there alongside other members of their family like Pushpa Lallah and Vidu Nababsing, with friends, well-wishers and representatives of the women’s movement Muvman Liberasyon Fam, and LALIT members from different branches all over the country.
The case is being presented by lawyers working pro bono. They are the experienced barristers Antoine Domingue S.C. and Jean-Claude Bibi, former Attorney General, and Attorney-at-Law Ayesha Jeewa, who is conducting research on the Constitution. The case represents an important challenge to the drift towards a more authoritarian legal framework in the country, and it follows the successful struggle in 1977 that the women’s movement then spearheaded against a similar “drift”. In 1977, the “then” new “Immigration Act” infringed residence rights of spouses, while in 2022, the new law, hidden under the very same title, the “Immigration Act”, infringes both residence and citizenship rights of spouses not born here, causing the constant threat of banishment of one spouse and the destruction of a family.
(See Lindsey’s video clip declaration on our website and Facebook pages, as well as on Instagram.)
A copy of the full “Plaint with Summons” is in the Documents Section of our web-site. In it, you will be able to read the exact details of the legal challenge in simple language, and an outline of what “citizenship” means – in technical terms and in terms of a “lived life” – if you click on “Documents”.
Our Plaint challenges, in particular, the section of the law that reads: “the [Prime] 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 defense, public safety or public order.” The Plaint says that this is not consistent with the Constitution, nor with natural justice, and that the Judiciary should declare it “void” to the extent of its inconsistency.
LALIT is calling for the Government to repeal the sections that prove to be obstacles to the freedom for everyone to marry someone of their choice. These provisions actually affect the rights of every single Mauritian. The clauses include the section quoted above, as well as the conversion, by the new legislation, from a regime where spouses have the right of residence, to a draconian “permit” system. There are also a series of bureaucratic conditions attached to anyone marrying someone not born here. Meanwhile, at the same time, we are putting in this case for the judiciary to consider.
As well as this, LALIT also calls on Opposition Parties to maintain the pressure on Government and to put the repeal of these sections into their own programs for the coming general elections. The Labour Party has already said it will, while both the MMM and the PMSD opposed the law when it came up with its “certificate of urgency” in July this year.
The irony is lost on no-one that this government is one of successive governments that literally “sell” permanent residence and even citizenship in exchange for money invested, and that also send laureates of marrying age abroad and encourage circular migration and outright emigration of people of marrying age, while inviting young people from abroad to come and work and study here by the tens of thousands, they too being of marrying age – and then set up a repressive legal framework like this.
The new law gives power to the executive, as well as removing any right to appeal to the Judiciary. If concentrates arbitrary powers in the hands of one person, the present or any future Prime Minister. It is a sword of Damocles that hangs over the heads of everyone in whole families – so many of whom have children, siblings, cousins married to someone born abroad. While thousands of such couples live in Mauritius already, tens of thousands might wish or need, one day, to live here.
A common declaration signed by 12 women, including three former Ministers of Women’s Rights and a former MP, has been published, as well as communiqués by the Muvman Liberasyon Fam and LALIT.
