OPEN MUVMAN LIBERASYON FAM CALL ON THE PRIME MINISTER TO SUPPORT SOUTH AFRICAN ICJ INITIATIVE TO STOP ISRAEL’s GENOCIDE
09.01.2024
Muvman Liberasyon Fam, manb Solidarite Morisyin ar Lepep Palestinyin finn avoy let uver swivan a Premye Minis avek kopi a Minis Zafer Etranzer. Sa let-la met lanfaz lor lefe zenosid dan Gaza lor fam e linportans ki muvman fam azut so lavwa pu fer guvernman sutenir ka Sidafrik finn met ICJ pu anpes zenosid kontinye.
Sa let-la finn pibliye dan Le Mauricien 9 Zanvye 2024.
OPEN MUVMAN LIBERASYON FAM CALL ON THE PRIME MINISTER
TO SUPPORT SOUTH AFRICAN ICJ INITIATIVE TO STOP ISRAEL’s GENOCIDE
8th January, 2024
Dear Sir,
Over these 3 months, we, as a women’s organization, have witnessed the horrific images of the Israeli military slaughtering the men, women and children of Gaza. This barbaric massacre has inflicted 23,000 deaths. Of these 70% are women and children. Palestinians living in Gaza were already before October 2023 mostly refugees barricaded by the Israeli State inside Gaza in concentration-camp-like conditions. Since October, the 2.4 million people of Gaza have been stripped by the Israeli State of the right to exist: their houses, hospitals, schools, refugee camps bombed, their access to water, food and fuel for cooking cut off, and being perpetually prodded into displacement by the Israeli army and then being bombed even so. The UN special rapporteur on the right to health, Tlaleng Mofokeng has a few days ago warned that the people of Gaza are now experiencing “deliberate starvation not famine”. The UN said last November there are more than 50,000 pregnant women and an average of 180 births a day in Gaza. New-borns and prematurely born children have been exposed to death for lack of electricity for incubators. Even the right of women to give birth is being attacked.
As you are aware, the Zionist Israeli State with US support has pointedly defied all United Nation attempts to prevent and halt this massacre. The UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has had to take the extraordinary step of invoking Article 99 of the UN Charter. The overwhelming vote for the ceasefire resolution in the UN General Assembly in December last year with 153 countries voting in favour (including Mauritius) reflects the popular world will for a ceasefire. But the US vetoes all resolutions to stop the genocide.
Israel has responded by escalating patriarchal revenge attacks against the people of Gaza, West Bank including East Jerusalem, and continues to manufacture and spread lies such the “beheading of babies” and inventions of “mass rape” to try and whip up support for its lynching of the people in Gaza.
We, the Muvman Liberasyon Fam, the national women’s organisation founded in 1977, therefore,
Known for our history of struggling, together with Chagossian women and other democratic organisations, for decolonisation and demilitarisation of the Chagos;
Having since 1978 stood publicly for the decolonisation of Palestine, and with one of our leading members going in person to Palestine three times to participate in women’s international peace actions against Israeli continued colonisation and coming back to Mauritius to testify on the reality of such colonial military occupation;
In the name of Mauritian women who, like women all over the planet, have a special role to play as peacekeepers;
Calls on the Mauritian government to support the South African case before the International Court of Justice against Israel for its violations, under the 1948 Treaty for the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, of international law. We note that the Treaty aims to prevent as well as punish the crime of genocide.
The Israeli State must be made accountable for its atrocities in Palestine. States that collude with, and incite Israel to, genocide must also be made accountable, including the USA which blatantly arms and funds the genocide.
Furthermore, the South African application also includes a request for the International Court of Justice to determine provisional or short-term measures ordering Israel to stop its military campaign in Gaza at once in order to protect against further harm to the rights of the Palestinian people under the Genocide Convention, and to ensure Israel’s compliance with its obligations under the Convention.
In the name of women, in the name of genocide prevention, in the name of peace, in the name of freedom, in the name of humanity, let our call be heard. Let our Government take a stand.
Yours Sincerely,
Rajni Lallah, MLF Secretary.
cc The Minister of Foreign Affairs
