Port-Louis, June 6, 2010. Mauritians who rely on independent journalism for civic information are facing a direct threat to that access, as the government has moved to cut off revenue and restrict distribution of L’Express, one of the country’s largest newspapers, published by the La Sentinelle media group.
The pressure began immediately after the new administration formed following legislative elections on May 5. Government ministries, state agencies, and public libraries received orders to cancel their subscriptions to L’Express. Administrative offices were instructed to refuse delivery of the paper and to remove it from municipal libraries. Journalists from the publication were barred from attending a ministerial press conference. Each of these steps, taken together, narrows the channels through which citizens receive independent reporting on public affairs.
Jean-Claude de l’Estrac, chairman of La Sentinelle’s board, told Reporters Without Borders that these actions represent an escalation of what the group has endured for four years. “We have been subject to a systematic boycott by the authorities,” he said. “This harm is now reaching alarming proportions.” The government has accused the newspaper of favoring the opposition, a charge the publication denies.
What is at stake, according to religious and human rights leaders, is not simply the fate of one media group but the public’s right to information as a condition of democratic life. Archbishop Maurice Piat of Port-Louis issued a statement warning that attacks on press freedom undermine the foundation of democratic governance. “To attack the freedom of information is to harm the proper functioning of democracy,” he declared. Citizens, he argued, depend on free information to understand their communities and evaluate competing policy proposals.
Piat grounded his concern in Mauritius’s own constitutional protections and its history of independence. “All freedoms are interconnected,” he said, listing freedom of expression, freedom of movement and assembly, freedom of religion, and freedom of conscience. “When one of these freedoms is threatened, all the others are in danger.”
The archbishop called on all Mauritians who value liberty to remain vigilant and to speak out at the first sign of such threats. He invoked the words attributed to Pastor Martin Niemöller, a warning about the cost of silence when freedoms erode one by one: “When they arrested the communists, I said nothing because I was not a communist. When they arrested the socialists, I said nothing because I was not a socialist. When they arrested the Jews, I said nothing because I was not a Jewish. When they came to arrest me, there was no one left to protest.”
Piat also stressed that the Gospel demands defense of human dignity and the freedoms necessary for people to flourish. Democratic societies, he argued, must create the legal conditions for information to flow freely and for genuine pluralism to exist in media and public discourse.
The government’s actions have drawn condemnation from Amnesty International and Reporters Without Borders, as well as from Mauritius’s opposition parties. Whether the country’s institutions will act to restore full press access, or allow political pressure to quietly reshape what information citizens can reach, remains an open question.