Category Archives: Mauritius

‘Life was lovely’: Chagossian women head home 50 years after forced exile

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Women on Mauritian-chartered vessel bound for Chagos Islands recall how life there was ‘paradise’

Rosemonde Bertin was only 17 when British officials arrived on Salomon Atoll in 1972. Everyone was ordered to gather at the manager’s office on the coconut plantation. She does not remember any advance warning.

The commissioner of the British Indian Ocean territory (BIOT) told them they had to leave their homes because Americans were coming to the Chagos archipelago to set up a military base.

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Mauritius government suspends funding over MFA’s handling of voyeurism claims

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  • Clubs also banned from using government-owned stadiums
    Claims that recording device was placed in women’s toilets

The Mauritius government has suspended financial support to local clubs and given the country’s Football Assocation until November to resolve its “governance issues” over the handling of voyeurism allegations at its headquarters.

Administrative secretary, Mila Sinnasamy, has claimed that a mobile phone in recording mode was discovered on 30 July was concealed in a blue basket placed in the water tank of the women’s toilet at the MFA’s headquarters in Trianon, 15 km from the capital, Port Louis. Police have confirmed that a file on the allegations of voyeurism will be submitted to the office of the director of public prosecutions, with Bindou Kistnairain, who works as a cleaner at the MFA, claiming that she also saw a phone in the toilets during her shift in May and did not report it due to fears of “being fired and any retaliation”.

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Mauritius FA looks into claim recording device seen in women’s toilets in May

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  • Cleaner Bindou Kistnairain wrote letter to human resources
  • Police to submit file on voyeurism to public prosecutors

A cleaner who works at the Mauritius Football Association has claimed she found a mobile phone in recording mode in the women’s toilets at its headquarters three months before a complaint was lodged with police by another employee.

Two board members have stepped down over the MFA’s handling of accusations made this month by the administrative secretary, Mila Sinnasamy, that the mobile phone discovered on 30 July was concealed in a blue basket placed in the water tank of the women’s toilet at the MFA’s headquarters in Trianon, 15 km from the capital, Port Louis.

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UN champions Mauritian control of Chagos Islands by rejecting UK stamps

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Refusal to recognise British Indian Ocean Territory stamps is latest move to assert Mauritian sovereignty

Stamps issued by the British Indian Ocean Territory could soon be rendered invalid after the United Nations’ Universal Postal Union (UPU) council recommended they no longer be recognised, in the latest step rejecting the UK’s claim to the Chagos Islands.

The move by the UPU, the second oldest international organisation, is in recognition of Mauritian sovereignty over the strategically important islands in the Indian Ocean and is the first of what is likely to be many by UN specialised agencies, such as the International Civil Aviation Organization and International Monetary Fund.

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Just £12,000 of £40m fund for displaced Chagos islanders has been spent

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MP representing most of UK’s Chagossians says failure to use compensation money to help those facing hardship is outrageous

Less than £12,000 of a £40m fund set up to compensate Chagos islanders who were forcibly evicted from their homeland by the British government has reached those living in the UK.

Four years after it was announced, the Foreign Office fund has distributed less than 1% of its budget in direct support to islanders forced from their homes in the Indian Ocean.

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‘What about justice?’: Chagos Islanders pin their hopes on Biden

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Decades after the US took over the territory for a military base, families separated and forced to leave their homes are still waiting for compensation

When Laurenza Piron was forced from her home in the Chagos Islands in 1970, she was sent on a boat to the Seychelles. Her parents and siblings were sent to Mauritius. It was two decades before they located one another again, and even then none of them could afford a reunion. So Piron, now 76, never saw her family again.

“I wanted to go, but I didn’t have the money,” says Piron. “Compensation should have been paid. If it had, there wouldn’t be such hardship.”

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Crews prepare to sink Mauritius spill ship despite opposition

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MV Wakashio has split in two and leaked 1,000 tonnes of oil into the water since it ran aground

Salvage crews were preparing to sink a Japanese-owned ship that ran aground off Mauritius, despite opposition from environmental campaigners.

The MV Wakashio broke into two on Saturday, almost three weeks after hitting a reef and spilling 1,000 tonnes of oil into idyllic waters full of marine life.

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Experts and volunteers scramble to save Mauritius’s wildlife after oil spill

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Grounded carrier has split in half and poor conditions make removal of ship’s remaining oil risky

International experts and thousands of local volunteers were making frantic efforts on Sunday to protect Mauritius’s pristine beaches and rich marine wildlife after hundreds of tonnes of oil was dumped into the sea by a Japanese tanker in what some scientists called the country’s worst ecological disaster.

Related: Grounded carrier off Mauritius breaks apart risking ecological disaster

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Island nations have the edge in keeping Covid away – or most do

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Nations from New Zealand to Cuba closed borders promptly with strict quarantine rules, but the UK won’t admit its ‘serious mistake’

Island nations have an advantage when it comes to stopping travellers importing disease, be it Covid or other infections.

Seas are usually harder to cross than land, and beaches are easier to police. There are no cross-border towns, and fewer ways to sneak over frontiers.

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Grounded carrier off Mauritius breaks apart risking ecological disaster

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Battle is on to remove fuel oil from Japanese vessel the MV Wakashio as weather worsens

A Japanese bulk carrier that ran aground on a reef in Mauritius last month threatening a marine ecological disaster around the Indian Ocean island has broken apart, authorities said on Saturday.

The condition of the MV Wakashio was worsening early on Saturday and by early afternoon, it had it split, the Mauritius National Crisis Committee said.

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Mauritius calls for urgent help to prevent oil spill disaster

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Stranded oil tanker is breaking up, threatening even greater ecological devastation

People living in Mauritius have described the devastation caused by an oil spill from a stranded tanker and called for urgent international help to stop the ecological and economic damage overwhelming the island nation.

More than 1,000 tonnes of fuel has already seeped from the bulk carrier MV Wakashio into the sea off south-east Mauritius, polluting the coral reefs, white-sand beaches and pristine lagoons that attract tourists from around the world.

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Mauritius facing environmental crisis as shipwreck leaks oil

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MV Wakashio breaking up after running aground at Pointe d’Esny near marine park

The Indian Ocean island of Mauritius is facing an environmental crisis after oil began leaking from a bulk carrier that ran aground in March and started to break up in rough seas.

“We are in an environmental crisis situation,” said the environment minister, Kavy Ramano, while the fishing minister, Sudheer Maudhoo, said: “This is the first time that we are faced with a catastrophe of this kind and we are insufficiently equipped to handle this problem.”

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Domino’s Pizza UK finance boss drowns on holiday in Mauritius

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David Bauernfeind, 51, died in snorkelling accident on Boxing Day, company says

The UK finance director of Domino’s Pizza has drowned while on holiday with his family in Mauritius.

The company said David Bauernfeind, 51, died in a snorkelling accident on the Indian Ocean island on Boxing Day.

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Labour would return Chagos Islands, says Jeremy Corbyn

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UK criticised for defying UN deadline to hand over control of Indian Ocean territory

Jeremy Corbyn has pledged to renounce British sovereignty of the remote Chagos Islands and respect a UN vote calling for the archipelago to be handed back to Mauritius.

In comments that appear to commit Labour to return the Indian Ocean islands, the party’s leader said on Friday he intended to “right one of the wrongs of history”.

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Bob Geldof’s firm’s use of tax haven is legal, but the system hurts African nations

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Private equity company 8 Miles channels funds through Mauritius in a ‘depressingly routine’ arrangement

At their closest point, Europe and Africa are just eight miles apart. That’s the inspiration for the name of Sir Bob Geldof’s private equity firm, 8 Miles, set up to channel investment into successful businesses in Africa.

But we learned last week that 8 Miles’ cash travels considerably further than this on its way from one continent to the other. It has established a cluster of companies in Mauritius, in the Indian Ocean, which funds pass through.

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‘I want to die on my native soil’: exiled Chagos Islanders dream of return

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People evicted from former British colony hope new documentary Another Paradise will reinforce UN calls for withdrawal

The Chagos Islanders have had few victories in their long battle to return from British-enforced exile to their archipelago homeland in the Indian Ocean.

But small steps keep their campaign alive and it is hoped a documentary that will premiere on Saturday will exert pressure on the UK government to change its stance.

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