Impressive List of Writers Take Stand Against Genocide
24.01.2024
LALIT has pleasure in publishing below the list of all 31 Mauritian writers who have signed up to the “Writers’ Common Declaration Against Genocide”.
The support amongst the Mauritian people for the Palestinian people can be measured by the breadth of support this Common Declaration shows amongst writers. Their voices, expressed in this well-crafted document, add to the voices calling on the Mauritian state to support the ICJ case entered by the South African State against the Israeli state for its genocide against the Palestinian people, a genocide accentuated during the siege and bombardment of Gaza. A preliminary ICJ "judgement" is expected within a few weeks, which we in LALIT hope will call for provisional measures on the part of the Israeli State so as to prevent further genocide against the Palestinian people.
Here is the list of signatories, followed by the Declaration, itself:
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.
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
Ariel Saramandi, writer
Jerome Valin, short-story writer
Michel Ducasse, poet and translator.
Jean-Claude de l'Estrac
Ameerah Arjanee
Angélique de la Hogue
"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."
