Mauritian Writers Common Declaration Against Genocide against Palestinians
10.01.2024
Three well-known novelists, Ananda Devi, Shenaz Patel and Lalit member Lindsey Collen, have together organized a Writers’ Common Declaration against Genocide, still being signed up to, as we go to Press. The initiative is in the context of the South African Case at the ICJ to be heard tomorrow about the genocide that the state of Israel is inflicting upon the Palestinian people. We have pleasure in LALIT in publishing the Common Declaration in full, with the list of signatories to date i.e 10 January at 8:30 pm.
As Ananda Devi introduced the Common Declaration to the Mauritian media as follows, “Révoltées par les atrocités qui ont lieu en ce moment-même sous les yeux du monde entier, les écrivaines Shenaz Patel, Lindsey Collen et moi-même avons rédigé et proposé aux écrivains mauriciens une déclaration commune contre le génocide palestinien.
“Rédigée en anglais, cette déclaration a obtenu, en l'espace de deux jours, la signature de près de vingt écrivains et écrivaines. La possibilité de signer est encore ouverte.
“Au vu de l'urgence de la situation, nous vous serions reconnaissantes, Shenaz, Lindsey et moi, de bien vouloir la publier avant l'examen de l'appel de l'Afrique du Sud auprès de la Cour de Justice Internationale.
“Nous vous remercions d'accueillir ce texte qui exprime notre solidarité envers le peuple palestinien.”
Here is the Declaration:
Writers’ Common Declaration Against Genocide
Words are the tools of writers’ trade. Words that are thought out, felt deeply, pondered over, weighed and weighted before they are committed to paper. It is with the heaviest of hearts that we feel the need to commit to paper this word that embodies the greatest crime in the history of humanity: genocide.
There can be no other word to describe what the State of Israel is, at this very moment, even as we write, perpetrating against the people of Palestine. This is a State that knows the full meaning of this word, its people having suffered from unconscionable atrocities within living memory. There can therefore be no historical, political or military excuse for the atrocities it is now in turn committing by killing, maiming, starving, and forcibly removing an entire people from their land, thereby denying their very humanity and this most basic of rights: to live.
All this has played out live through the media for three months, ever since the events of 7 October. War crimes committed during this Hamas incursion must and will be prosecuted. But they ought not to be used by the Israeli state as a reason for intensifying its on-going genocide against the people of Palestine. Yet this is what the Israeli State has done.
The total siege of Gaza has cut off food, water, electricity and medical supplies. Meanwhile, the Israeli bombs keep on blasting this small piece of land, achieving such a level of destruction that it is clear that its wholesale dismantlement is intended, with no hope of rebuilding. The bombs destroy, indiscriminately, children, new-born babies, grandparents, medical workers and the sick and injured alike, along with housing, hospitals, ambulances, bakeries, roads, water services, sewerage systems, UN refugee shelters, even cemeteries. The population is being forced to move ever nearer the Sinai desert, towards which it is inexorably being corralled, unless we can act collectively to stop this mass expulsion.
The West Bank and East Jerusalem are not being spared either: military occupation, apartheid-like laws, extra-judicial killing, illegal arrests, constant evictions, and ransacking, pillaging and even exploding family homes are the means of coercion that have been used for years. For Palestinian refugees, genocide also means their continued banishment from their homes, turning them into a stateless people – a banishment begun in 1948 and never let up since.
If we read the title of the UN’s “Treaty for the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide”, we know exactly where our collective responsibility lies: to prevent genocide. This means we do not have the moral luxury of waiting until international judges define the term “genocide” for us. We have a duty to prevent genocide on the basis of the facts and the ordinary meaning of the word.
As writers who also read, we have read the detailed case prepared by South Africa, and also calling for immediate “provisional measures” – which the International Court of Justice has set for a preliminary hearing on 11 January – so as, even before the case goes ahead, to “protect against further, severe and irreparable harm to the rights of the Palestinian people under the Genocide Convention” and “to ensure Israel’s compliance with its obligations under the Genocide Convention not to engage in genocide, and to prevent and to punish genocide”.
We call on all States in the UN to support the South African case and in this way help end the genocide.
Ananda Devi, writer.
Shenaz Patel, writer.
Lindsey Collen, writer.
Sedley Richard Assonne, poet and novelist.
Umar Timol, artiste mauricien.
Saradha Soobrayen, poet, Recipient of The Society of Authors Eric Gregory Award for Poetry
Yusuf Kadel, poet and playwright
Tania Haberland, poet , winner of the Ingrid Jonker Prize (2010)
Natasha Soobramanien, winner (with Luke Williams) of The Goldsmiths Prize 2022
Alain Muneean, poet and traditional folklorist
Jean Lindsay Dhookit, Prix Jean-Fanchette 2015, Prix de Poésie Edouard Maunick 2023
Aanas Ruhomaully, writer
Dini Lallah, published short story writer
Alain Fanchon, Description: poet and novelist.
Davina Ittoo, Écrivaine
Aqiil M. Gopee, écrivain, doctorant en archéologie
Carl de Souza, novelist, essayist and playwright.
Eileen Lohka, professeure, écrivaine.
Lisa Ducasse, poet and singer.
Plus, after initial release:
Priya Hein, Author, Prix Jean-Fanchette, Prix Athena.
Ramesh Ramdoyal, short-story writer
Bettina Cadinouche, short-story writer
Mansa Daby Tan Yan, short-story writer
Yves Giraud, short-story writer
Flavia Doherty Bigara, short-story writer
Jerome Valin, short-story writer
Open for Signature until Tuesday 16 Jan at 10.30 am
