We were in our thousands bearing solidarity to the people of Palestine’ – Report Back from the Global March to Gaza
12.07.2025
“We were three Mauritians amongst the four thousand people from all over the world converging towards Gaza to bring support from the people of our countries to the people of Palestine in their hour of need when the USA-Israel alliance subjects them to genocide. Governments have not acted, so we, people in organizations from 80 countries acted!” LALIT member Ragini Kistnasamy said this. She added that, when the world’s people act in concert, it works. She and Ally Hosenbokus and Alain Ah Vee, two other members of LALIT, gave the Report Back from the Global March to Gaza. LALIT is part of the “Common Front to Stop Genocide and Close the Diego Garcia Military Base” which organized the event. It was held in a packed Port Louis Municipal Chamber on Friday 11 July. The atmosphere was serene and intense. The three speakers were on their way to Gaza exactly a month ago, and that is what they told the audience about.
The event was chaired by President of the Confederation des Travailleurs des Secteurs Publique et Privé Reaz Chuttoo, who added to the international spirit of the event when he reported how the international confederations that the CTSPP is member of, stand in support of the people of Palestine, opposing the genocide. He also gave a history of how this Common Front evolved from Solidarite Morisyin avek Lepep Palestinn (SOMALP), which had previously emerged BDS-Mauritius, which evolved in turn from joint work on Palestine begun by the CTSPP, Lalit, and the Centre Goomany.
Present at the Report Back were the former President of the Republic, Mr. Cassam Uteem, a long-time supporter of both the Palestinian people and of the movement for military base closure, and the newly elected Lord Mayor of Port Louis, Mr. Aslam Adam Hossenally, who announced that he welcomes this kind of event in support of the people of Palestine at the Municipality of the capital city and committed to offering Municipal venues like this one in the future.
“There were three different international movements acting in concert, converging on Gaza,” Alain Ah Vee explained, “showing the world how the siege of Gaza is so total, and the Governments of the world collude so much, that we were stopped by military force before getting near to Gaza!” He explained that the Madleen boat with 12 activists on board including ecologist Greta Thunberg and EU Member of Parliament Rima Hassan had been stopped by the Israeli armed forces in international waters, prevented from getting to Gaza, which is on the Mediterranean coast.
“At the same time, a second international event was taking place. The Sumud caravan of buses.” There were some 1,500 people from North African countries on board about 150 buses and minibuses. They, too, were stopped on their way to Gaza, he said. [In fact, they were stopped by the UAE-supported and Egypt-supported East Libyan “authorities” not recognized by the UN, at the border in Libya between the two halves of the country of Libya that was ruined by NATO’s annihilating intervention over a decade ago.]
“And then the Egyptian Army stopped us, the Global March to Gaza, the third international action, at Ismalia in Egypt, near the [Western] bank of the Suez Canal,” Ally Hosenbokus added. “It is a militarized Zone,” he said. Although he said they had managed to get past one Egyptian army checkpoint on the way there, the Egyptian Army stopped hundreds of vehicles including their taxi at Ismalia. “The army confiscated our passports!” he said. He explained how this provoked a huge “assembly”, which started to emit cries of “Free Palestine”. He said he had learnt what it meant to live under military dictatorship while they were in Al Sisi’s Egypt. He specified that if they spoke to others they thought were in the Global March, in Cairo, they could be arrested. More than five people cannot meet. Many of those heading for the Global March, he said, were arrested and deported at the airport in Cairo! Others were arrested, some violently, in their hotels. [At their hotel, Canadian delegates who held a meeting at their hotel, were in fact arrested.] There were Government informers everywhere in central Cairo, he explained. And in Ismalia, it was plain clothes men, who just stood up on a wall out in the open, and called out the names on passports, to hand them back.
The speakers said how the very day the march was due to begin, Friday 13 June, the Israeli armed forces attacked Iran, inter alia, murdering scientists and their families, as well as military chiefs. The whole Middle East became a war zone.
The speakers called for the Mauritian Government to isolate Israel completely and suspend it from the United Nations, as well as to join into the South African case against Israel for genocide at the ICJ right now. Ragini Kistnasamy reminded the audience that three of the party leaders now in power, when they were in opposition signed a petition calling on previous Prime Minister Pravind Jugnauth to support this case. She named them. They are Prime Minister Navin Ramgoolam, Vice Prime Minister Paul Bérenger, and Minister of Tourism Richard Duval. Instead, what the Government has in fact done, is to withdraw Mauritius from the list of countries giving oral submissions, and already inscribed on the published UN ICJ agenda, in another ICJ case that accuses Israel of stopping UN and other humanitarian aid from reaching the starving Palestinians in Gaza.
The questions and comments from the public at the Report Back – people from towns and villages, the young and the old, women and men –were profound. The Students for Palestine representatives commended the participants in the Global March, and said how important it is to continue to pressure the Government to isolate Israel completely. They have called for automatic visas for Israelis to be stopped. Other comments put emphasis on boycotting, disinvestment and sanctions. One comment was on the importance of bearing in mind, though it is of little comfort to the people of Gaza and the West Bank and East Jerusalem, that Israel, itself, striving to be a regional hegemon, is in rapid decline and the USA’s whole empire is in free-fall. In this context, it is a hideous mistake for the Government to be heading for finalization of a Treaty tying the Republic of Mauritius to this collapsing empire. We have to prepare, she said, at the same time we support the people of Palestine, for broader struggles in Palestine and everywhere that will create a future beyond the Western supposed “civilization” now exposed for the genocidal project it was all along. Two other comments were on the dangers of the Diego Garcia military base in the context of war.
The list of organizations in the Common Front Against Genocide and For the Closure of the Military Base on Diego Garcia, which organized the Report Back, is impressive: the Mauritius Labour Congress, Federation of Parastatal Bodies and Other unions, Confederation des Travailleurs des Secteurs Publique et Privé, National Trade union Confederation, Federation of Civil Service and Other unions, General Workers Federation, Federation des Travailleurs Unis, Government Teachers' union, Rodrigues Private Industries & Allied Workers union, Rodrigues Government Employees Association, Rodrigues Workers Federation, Nursing Association, union of Private Secondary Education Employees, Ledikasyon pu Travayer, Dr Idrice Goomany Treatment Centre, Leve Fam!, Muvman Liberasyon Fam, ABAIM, Never Again-Olive Resistance, Lalit.
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