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Anba Langar, Mahé, Victoria (2026)

16/04/2026

The tension in your relationships is rarely about what just happened. It's about what you were never taught to expect and the poor management of staying connected with your loved ones.

Nobody in Seychelles seems to want to say this out loud, so here it is: a lot of us were raised in survival mode. Chaos that was made to be seen as normal. Silence passed off as strength and speaking up as cowardly. Adults who had no business raising children, raising children. And now here we are, either repeating it or refusing to.

That's the fork in the road...

"What happened to you?" is a more honest question than "why are you like this?" -- and the answer almost always traces back to a house, a neighbourhood and a generation that never got the tools to change their lives.

Understanding the root doesn't mean staying at rock bottom. At some point, you have to choose so your children don't inherit your unfinished business. They didn't sign up for that. Nobody can make that decision, you have to make it.

Not your therapist, your pastor or your partner of many years (who has watched you fight yourself) can make that choice for you. The choice to break the cycle is yours alone -- and it is, genuinely, the most powerful thing a human being can do.

Seychelles is small and the population reflects that. The trauma cycles are loud. Defy the odds and choose differently.

🎥🎙️ Credit:

14/04/2026

𝗗𝗮𝗻 𝗟𝗲𝗺𝗼𝗻𝗱, 𝗟𝗼 𝗟𝗲𝗺𝗼𝗻𝗱 🌍 𝗔𝗹𝗶𝘇𝗲𝗲 𝗟𝗼𝘄 𝗞𝗲𝗻 𝗕𝗿𝗼𝘂𝗴𝗵𝘁 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗦𝗲𝘆𝗰𝗵𝗲𝗹𝗹𝗲𝘀 𝗙𝗹𝗮𝗴 𝘁𝗼 𝗪𝗮𝗿𝘀𝗮𝘄 𝗔𝗻𝗱 𝗟𝗲𝗳𝘁 𝗪𝗶𝘁𝗵 𝗘𝘃𝗲𝗿𝘆𝘁𝗵𝗶𝗻𝗴 🏆💃🏽🇸🇨

By 𝓙𝓒𝓗 | 𝑻𝒉𝒆 𝑽𝒐𝒊𝒄𝒆 𝑩𝒆𝒕𝒘𝒆𝒆𝒏 𝑰𝒔𝒍𝒂𝒏𝒅𝒔 🏝🇸🇨, 𝑺𝒂 𝑲𝒂𝒓𝒕𝒐𝒈𝒓𝒂𝒇 𝑬𝒏𝒗𝒊𝒛𝒊𝒃 🗺🇸🇨

This little star is only 9 years old! She trains at Artistic Dance Factory in Seychelles under the direction of Dr Lucia Banane and head coach Mpho Kgatla. She started dancing at the tender young age of 4, and last weekend, Alizée Low Ken walked into the WADF Warsaw Championship at the Warsaw Dance Festival in Poland - competing against dancers from 14 different countries across 79 studios - and walked out with 10 Gold, 5 Silver, and 3 Bronze medals! Every category she entered, she secured a place in the top 3 without a single exception.

If you have loved dance in your life before, then you know what it takes to hold a floor. You also know what it costs - in hours, discipline, and the quiet private heartbreak of getting something wrong a 100 times before you get it right once. So when I say that watching a 9-year-old command a competition stage the way Alizée does is genuinely hair raising and breathtaking, I mean it the way only someone who has felt music in their body would.

This was the second time Artistic Dance Factory Seychelles competed at the Warsaw Championship. In 2025, the team finished second overall in trophies won - placing Seychelles firmly on the international dance map. Alizée was part of that team and she clearly does not come to these floors to participate. She participates as a winner.

On day 1 alone the results were: Bachata Solo 1st place, Merengue Solo 2nd place and her Salsa Solo 3rd. The trophies just keep piling up and the medals accumulated. The Seychelles flag stretched wide across podium after podium, year after year 🇸🇨. If you needed proof that the smallness of an island has absolutely nothing to do with the size of its people, here it is, draped across the shoulders of a nine-year-old girl.

And beyond that there is a really upsetting part of this story that is not about medals at all. Alizée's Aunty Noella passed away on 11 April 2026, just hours before Day 2. To lose someone close right before stepping onto a competition floor - under lights, with music and judges watching every line of your body - is something most adults would not withstand. Alizée did.

She went out there and she danced passionately through that pain, at 9 years old you can only imagine how she was truly feeling and probably holding back tears. Our deepest condolences to Alizée, her parents, and her entire family in this time of loss. That kind of strength does not come from talent alone. It comes from something much deeper. The kind of courage that belongs to a different category entirely.

Looking back on Alizée's recorded successes. At the WADF World Championship in Athens in 2023, then aged just 7, Alizée stole the show by winning 6 Gold medals and 1 Silver in the mini kids category. Already, at that age, operating at a level that would embarrass many of her seniors. In 2024 she had been named Best Dancer in the Juvenile 2 category. By 2025 she had collected Gold in Poland, Gold in China, Gold at the All Africa Championships, and recognition at the SeyArts Award. The shelf at home - and there is a video of it on her socials, she has a five tier shelf full of trophies glittering like a small private museum - Looks like it's run out of space. With no exaggeration, the shelf is genuinely full.

Artistic Dance Factory Seychelles continues to lead the artistic dance movement in the country with a vision to empower youth, preserve cultural heritage, and elevate Seychelles to global recognition through dance and it's clearly working. Alizée is not just benefiting from that vision, she is thriving from it. At 9, she is arguably its most visible ambassador - the one the world outside Seychelles is beginning to recognise by name, face, and the unmistakable confidence of someone who has been told her whole life that she belongs on any stage she chooses.

Her social media following has been built the honest way: video by video, competition by competition, flag by flag. Attracting 117,000 likes on a single Facebook reel. With an audience that nobody on the island can match, for a girl who comes from such a tiny nation. That's speaking volumes on what is genuinely possible for the people of Seychelles young and old, managed my mumager Ange Low Ken.

This is what is possible when a Seychellois child is not made smaller by the islands suffering, expectations and the stressful politics of where they come from. Have parents who invest, travel, support their dreams. Fight for the space they deserve, and then watch their child fill it completely. That child's success becomes the whole family's success. We cannot say enough about families like this (proud parents like Ange & Brian Low Ken), the ones doing the invisible, expensive, exhausting work behind every champion you see in the spotlight.

Congratulations, Alizée. The whole of Anba Langar is very proud of you 👏🏽🇸🇨.

We will be watching every single step of what comes next from our world class dancers 💃🏽. Keep inspiring us all ❤️.

14/04/2026

A Dispatch worth waiting for. Four decades of making Seychelles visible 🇸🇨👀...

𝗧𝗛𝗘 𝗕𝗘𝗟 𝗔𝗜𝗥 𝗗𝗜𝗦𝗣𝗔𝗧𝗖𝗛 𝗦𝗨𝗡𝗗𝗔𝗬 𝗘𝗗𝗜𝗧𝗜𝗢𝗡

𝗕𝘆 𝗚𝗶𝗹𝗯𝗲𝗿𝘁 𝗣𝗼𝗼𝗹 - 𝗚𝗣𝗦 𝗦𝗲𝘆𝗰𝗵𝗲𝗹𝗹𝗲𝘀

At 73 years old, few people impress me. When they do they're usually people who after years of blood, sweat and tears, after challenges, failures and successes, they remain humble, keep their humanity and have a sense of humour.

Here's one of those.

𝙁𝙤𝙧𝙩𝙮 𝙔𝙚𝙖𝙧𝙨 𝙤𝙛 𝙢𝙖𝙠𝙞𝙣𝙜 𝙎𝙚𝙮𝙘𝙝𝙚𝙡𝙡𝙚𝙨 𝙗𝙚𝙖𝙪𝙩𝙞𝙛𝙪𝙡: 𝘼 𝙩𝙧𝙞𝙗𝙪𝙩𝙚 𝙩𝙤 𝙩𝙝𝙚 𝙞𝙣𝙞𝙢𝙞𝙩𝙖𝙗𝙡𝙚 𝙂𝙚𝙤𝙧𝙜𝙚 𝘾𝙖𝙢𝙞𝙡𝙡𝙚

The island's most celebrated artist marks four decades in the art and still has more to say.

𝙏𝙝𝙚 𝙢𝙖𝙜𝙞𝙘𝙖𝙡 𝙑𝙚𝙣𝙞𝙘𝙚 𝙂𝙧𝙖𝙣𝙙 𝘾𝙖𝙣𝙖𝙡, 𝙫𝙞𝙖 𝙇𝙖 𝘿𝙞𝙜𝙪𝙚

In 2015, a Seychellois stood in Venice and showed the world what we discard.

George Camille had fashioned an installation from salvaged electric wire - refuse, in the most literal sense - and transformed it into a meditation on the unchecked destruction of Seychelles' fragile environment. The material was rubbish. The statement was not.

For the first time in history, Seychelles had a presence at the Venice Biennale, the oldest and most prestigious contemporary art event on earth.

It is worth pausing on that fact. A small island nation of roughly 100,000 souls, anchored in the middle of the Indian Ocean, represented for the first time at Venice. Not by accident, not by diplomatic favour, but because one young man from La Digue had spent thirty years earning the right to stand there.

Thirty years that began, improbably, at his mother's kitchen table.

𝙏𝙝𝙚 𝘽𝙤𝙮 𝙬𝙝𝙤 𝙙𝙧𝙚𝙬 𝙤𝙣 𝙚𝙫𝙚𝙧𝙮𝙩𝙝𝙞𝙣𝙜

There is a particular kind of Seychellois parent who, confronted with a child bent on drawing rather than doing something more serious, reaches for the word "drol" and leaves it there.

George Camille's family reached for something better: encouragement. From La Digue, that small, unhurried island where the giant tortoises move faster than most decisions, a boy grew up sketching with the concentrated intensity of someone who already knew exactly what he was for.

It helped that the family ran a bakery. You learn a great deal about persistence, and about the distance between raw ingredients and a finished thing, when you spend school holidays kneading dough alongside your brothers.

George Camille would later knead canvas and wire and salvaged cable with the same discipline. The bakery instilled the businessman. The drawing instilled the artist. La Digue instilled everything else.

𝘼 𝙎𝙘𝙝𝙤𝙡𝙖𝙧𝙨𝙝𝙞𝙥, 𝙖 𝙙𝙚𝙩𝙤𝙪𝙧, 𝙖𝙣𝙙 𝙖 𝙙𝙚𝙨𝙞𝙜𝙣𝙚𝙧 𝙣𝙖𝙢𝙚𝙙 𝙅𝙖𝙮𝙣𝙚

The year is 1983. Young George wants to study Fine Art. The scholarship committee, in their infinite wisdom, offers him Textile Design instead, on the grounds that Fine Art is not strictly a career. One can only imagine how that conversation aged.

He took the scholarship (pragmatism). Then he proceeded to prove the committee entirely wrong (character).

In 1984, a British designer named Jayne arrived in Seychelles and found herself assigned a young collaborator to help establish a fashion and textile workshop.

George then went to London. He studied at Blackheath School of Art, earned a further scholarship to Goldsmiths, and returned in 1986 to set up a studio on his mother's kitchen table.

They called it Sunstroke Studio. They printed t-shirts and beach sarongs. They got a stall in Victoria Market. All great Seychellois enterprises begin somewhere unremarkable. What matters is what comes next.

𝙁𝙧𝙤𝙢 𝙩𝙝𝙚 𝙠𝙞𝙩𝙘𝙝𝙚𝙣 𝙩𝙖𝙗𝙡𝙚 𝙩𝙤 𝙩𝙝𝙚 𝙜𝙖𝙡𝙡𝙚𝙧𝙮 𝙬𝙖𝙡𝙡

What came next were forty rather extraordinary years. Sunstroke grew. The stall became a boutique, the boutique demanded more space, and that space eventually became Camille's Art Gallery in Victoria, housed in a restored Creole house originally intended as George's private home, until fate redirected the renovation budget toward Seychelles' first proper Art gallery.

It opened in 1996 and it is still there. It has outlasted governments, fashions, and the people who once said Fine Art was not a career.

A second gallery followed on La Digue in 2001, a full circle moment so neat it would seem contrived if it were not true.

𝘽𝙖𝙘𝙠 𝙩𝙤 𝙑𝙚𝙣𝙞𝙘𝙚, 𝙖𝙣𝙙 𝙗𝙖𝙘𝙠 𝙖𝙜𝙖𝙞𝙣

Which brings us back to the Grand Canal. When George and fellow Digwa artist Leon Radegonde stepped into Venice in 2015, they carried an entire nation's debut on that stage.

The wire installation, constructed from what others had thrown away, was precisely the kind of work that only an artist with something real to say could have made. He went back.

Selected for Venice a third time in 2019, he had by then also claimed the top prize at the relaunched Seychelles Biennale in 2017, with an installation that confronted the drug crisis tearing through Seychellois communities with unflinching directness.

George Camille has never been an artist who paints pretty sunsets for hotel lobbies and calls it a day. He wields beauty as a vehicle for the things that need saying.

𝙏𝙝𝙚 𝙇𝙚𝙙𝙜𝙚𝙧

The years have not passed without recognition. Asked about it, George mentions the accolades almost as an afterthought, twice over, as it happens.

In 2020, the Seychelles Chamber of Commerce awarded him both a Lifetime Achievement Award and Best Creative Establishment for Camille's Art Gallery.

In 2023, he received a Trophy as Ambassador to the African Culture Fund. In 2019, he was named Visual Artist of the Year at the Seychelles Arts Awards.

And in 2025, the government of Seychelles returned to the same well twice: Lifetime Achievement Award, and Creative Establishment of the Year.

That is not a bad return on a scholarship to study textiles.

𝙏𝙝𝙚 𝙋𝙧𝙞𝙣𝙩𝙢𝙖𝙠𝙚𝙧

Here is something George will tell you if you ask him directly, and which does not appear often enough in accounts of his work: he considers himself a printmaker first and a fine artist second.

For thirty-four years, he has been the only Seychellois artist practising etching. Not dabbling in it, but practising it with the rigour the medium demands.

Etching is not forgiving. The acid does not wait, does not negotiate, and does not care how distinguished your other work is. It demands precision of draughtsmanship before the plate ever touches the bath, and it demands technical mastery in equal measure.

To do it well for three decades, largely alone in this part of the world, is a quiet kind of heroism the prize committees do not always reach for.

Acid bite etchings have become the vehicle for George's most detailed and figurative work. Running an etching studio has given him the freedom to experiment across the full range of intaglio print techniques, combining materials and processes in ways that have quietly shaped the development of his personal style, even as the paintings and sculptures drew most of the public attention.

He did not arrive here alone.

He is generous about that. The French artist Mikel Chausspieds taught him the art of etching. The Tongan sculptor known as Tonga Bill Fehoko, and the Martinique artist Habdaphaï, each left their mark on his practice.

George Camille has always understood that no serious artist becomes one without the company of other serious artists.

𝙏𝙝𝙚 𝙘𝙤𝙢𝙢𝙞𝙨𝙨𝙞𝙤𝙣𝙨, 𝙩𝙝𝙚 𝙘𝙤𝙡𝙡𝙚𝙘𝙩𝙞𝙤𝙣𝙨, 𝙖𝙣𝙙 𝙩𝙝𝙚 𝙘𝙤𝙣𝙩𝙞𝙣𝙚𝙣𝙩

Forty years leaves a considerable footprint.

Original Camille pieces sit in private collections across the UK, France, China, Germany, Russia, Belgium, the United States, Martinique, Italy, and throughout Africa, including a moment of inspiration on Gilbert Pool's waistcoat.

He has exhibited from Mauritius to Mali, Ivory Coast to Senegal.

The commissions tell their own story. The two most significant to date say much about the range of the man. A shoal of wire-sculpted tuna hangs suspended in the atrium of the Quadrant Building in Victoria - a work that stops people mid-stride every day. Which is exactly what public art is supposed to do.

The other is a collection of paintings on linen, depicting scenes of everyday Seychellois life, commissioned for the reception area of the Hilton Canopy Hotel at Anse à La Mouche. They are intimate, warm, and rooted in the islands in a way that no generic hospitality art ever manages to be.

𝙈𝙤𝙫𝙞𝙣𝙜 𝙛𝙤𝙧𝙬𝙖𝙧𝙙: 𝙒𝙝𝙖𝙩'𝙨 𝙣𝙚𝙭𝙩 𝙛𝙤𝙧 𝙂𝙚𝙤𝙧𝙜𝙚?

At sixty-three, George Camille is not slowing down. He is, if anything, recalibrating.

The next chapter, as he describes it, is less about consolidating what has been built and more about pushing what comes next.

He wants to bring greater international visibility to Seychelles arts and culture, not as a representative function, but as an act of creative ambition. There is more the world needs to see, and he intends to show it.

He speaks of reorienting his practice toward something more cutting edge - a deliberate sharpening rather than a softening.

After four decades, George Camille is not interested in coasting on a reputation. He wants to represent the evolving cultural landscape of Seychelles with a contemporary edge, bringing to bear technical skills accumulated over a career that most artists would consider complete and using them to say something new.

The boy from the La Digue bakery is not finished kneading.

𝙎𝙞𝙭𝙩𝙮-𝙩𝙝𝙧𝙚𝙚 𝙮𝙚𝙖𝙧𝙨 𝙮𝙤𝙪𝙣𝙜, 𝙁𝙤𝙧𝙩𝙮 𝙮𝙚𝙖𝙧𝙨 𝙨𝙩𝙧𝙤𝙣𝙜

George Camille turns 63 this year. He has spent two thirds of his life in service to the conviction that Seychelles deserves a serious, internationally recognised artistic voice. Quietly and consistently, he has been that voice.

The boy from the La Digue bakery, told that Fine Art was not a career, has exhibited in Venice, won national prizes, built two galleries, and placed Seychelles on the cultural map of the world. Not bad for someone who started on his mother's kitchen table.

Here's to forty years, George. The islands are more beautiful for your having looked at them so carefully, and more honest for your having told the truth about what you saw.

George Camille marks the 40th anniversary of Sunstroke Studio this week.

𝗚𝗲𝗼𝗿𝗴𝗲 𝗖𝗮𝗺𝗶𝗹𝗹𝗲 𝗺𝗮𝗿𝗸𝘀 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝟰𝟬𝘁𝗵 𝗮𝗻𝗻𝗶𝘃𝗲𝗿𝘀𝗮𝗿𝘆 𝗼𝗳 𝗦𝘂𝗻𝘀𝘁𝗿𝗼𝗸𝗲 𝗦𝘁𝘂𝗱𝗶𝗼 𝘁𝗵𝗶𝘀 𝘄𝗲𝗲𝗸.

13/04/2026

The loudest rooms are often the emptiest ones. What you profess means nothing without what you practice, and the world has always been better at watching than listening.

Stop performing faith. Start living it.

✝️Matthew 7:21 "Not everyone who says to me, 'Lord, Lord,' will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father."

✝️Matthew 15:8 "These people honour me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me."

🎥 Credit: Instagram of Pastor Philip Anthony Mitchell

12/04/2026

The first of the titled Gilbert Pool Dispatch opens with grace… and asks for honesty.

𝗧𝗛𝗘 𝗚𝗜𝗟𝗕𝗘𝗥𝗧 𝗣𝗢𝗢𝗟 𝗗𝗜𝗦𝗣𝗔𝗧𝗖𝗛
𝗦𝘂𝗻𝗱𝗮𝘆 𝗘𝗱𝗶𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻

𝗕𝘆 𝗚𝗶𝗹𝗯𝗲𝗿𝘁 𝗣𝗼𝗼𝗹 - 𝗚𝗣𝗦 𝗦𝗲𝘆𝗰𝗵𝗲𝗹𝗹𝗲𝘀

Until we bring you our main Dispatch later today I couldn't miss some reverent reflections on the consecration of the new Bishop of Port Victoria.

𝙊𝙪𝙧 𝙎𝙝𝙚𝙥𝙝𝙚𝙧𝙙 𝙢𝙪𝙨𝙩 𝙘𝙤𝙢𝙚 𝙛𝙧𝙤𝙢 𝙖𝙛𝙖𝙧

Today Sunday, the Diocese of Port Victoria has a new bishop. His name is Landry Philippe Rasamison. He is a Capuchin priest of considerable learning, ordained in Madagascar, formed in Rome, and until recently serving as parish priest of Saint Michel in Anse-aux- Pins.

He is, in other words, a man who has served this country faithfully and knows it well. He is also, and this is the point, not originally Seychellois but from Madagascar.

This makes him the eleventh bishop of this diocese since its formal establishment in 1892 and brings our church closer to that of Madagascar.

Of those eleven, precisely only one has ever been a local son. One. In over 130 years of an overwhelmingly Catholic nation. A country where roughly seven in ten citizens will describe themselves as Catholic with the sincerity of people who genuinely mean it, at least on Sundays and at funerals and baptisms.

That one Seychellois bishop was Felix Paul, ordained on 17 March 1975, the first and, it turns out, the last of his kind. He resigned in May 1994 and passed away in November 2001.

𝙏𝙝𝙚 𝙦𝙪𝙚𝙨𝙩𝙞𝙤𝙣 𝙬𝙤𝙧𝙩𝙝 𝙖𝙨𝙠𝙞𝙣𝙜 𝙤𝙣 𝙩𝙝𝙚 𝙤𝙘𝙘𝙖𝙨𝙞𝙤𝙣 𝙤𝙛 𝙮𝙚𝙩 𝙖𝙣𝙤𝙩𝙝𝙚𝙧 𝙛𝙤𝙧𝙚𝙞𝙜𝙣 𝙖𝙥𝙥𝙤𝙞𝙣𝙩𝙢𝙚𝙣𝙩 𝙞𝙨: 𝙬𝙝𝙮?

Why, in a nation that produces lawyers, diplomats, cabinet ministers, and no small number of people with very strong opinions about how things should be run, can we not produce a bishop?

The straightforward answer is one of numbers and formation. The diocese currently counts some 26 priests, 7 diocesan, 19 religious, serving a Catholic population of modest numbers.

To put that in perspective: Seychelles has more government ministries than it has locally-formed diocesan clergy. The pipeline, to put it charitably, is not really gushing.

But numbers alone do not explain the drought. Something more is at work, and it would be impolite, though hardly unprecedented in this column, to pretend otherwise.

The honest answer is that the Catholic Church in Seychelles has, over the decades, accumulated a particular kind of local baggage that does not encourage the Vatican to look fondly on homegrown episcopal candidates.

We are a small island where everyone knows everything. The clergy are no exception to the general Seychellois principle that private life is a theoretical concept.

Pastoral indiscretions that might pass unnoticed in a diocese of three million faithful do not enjoy the same invisibility in an archipelago of 98,000, many of whom are personally acquainted with the indiscreet party in question and will absolutely mention it at the next family gathering.

There have been, over the years, episodes within the local Church that the institutional memory has filed carefully under "best not revisited."

The kind of episodes that Rome, with its long view and longer patience, has noted, catalogued, and factored into its calculations when it comes to trusting local men with mitre and crozier.

The Vatican did not get to be the world's oldest continuous institution by being naive.

One could argue, and many quietly do, that this is unfair. That the sins of some should not disqualify the worthy many, or few.

That a Church which preaches mercy ought to extend some portion of it to an entire nation's episcopal ambitions. These are reasonable points.

But Rome operates on a different timeline from the rest of us, and its institutional trust, once dented, tends to heal at the pace of a slow tide.

Bishop Rasamison takes over from Bishop Alain Harel, who stepped down upon reaching canonical retirement age.

He arrives with a Roman licentiate, a record of genuine service to this community, and, crucially, no local complications. From the Vatican's perspective, he is the sensible choice.

From a Seychellois perspective, he is the eleventh sensible choice, which at some point stops feeling sensible and starts feeling like a verdict.

Perhaps the question is not when Rome will trust us with a bishop. Perhaps the real question is whether we have done enough, as a local Church, to deserve that trust, in the confessional and outside of it, in the rectory and in the parish, in the way we have treated the institution and in the way the institution has treated us.

A nation that cannot produce its own religious leader is not a catastrophe. Many fine dioceses are led by men from elsewhere.

But a nation that has gone 130 years producing only one, and even he ended his tenure early, after allegedly growing some questionable plants outside his window and watching some explicit recordings of pleasurable human activity, by his own confession, might do well to look inward before looking upward.

𝙄𝙣 𝙩𝙝𝙚 𝙢𝙚𝙖𝙣𝙩𝙞𝙢𝙚: 𝙬𝙚𝙡𝙘𝙤𝙢𝙚, 𝘽𝙞𝙨𝙝𝙤𝙥 𝙍𝙖𝙨𝙖𝙢𝙞𝙨𝙤𝙣. 𝙏𝙝𝙚 𝙘𝙖𝙩𝙝𝙚𝙙𝙧𝙖𝙡 𝙞𝙨 𝙗𝙚𝙖𝙪𝙩𝙞𝙛𝙪𝙡. 𝙏𝙝𝙚 𝙘𝙤𝙣𝙜𝙧𝙚𝙜𝙖𝙩𝙞𝙤𝙣 𝙞𝙨 𝙬𝙖𝙧𝙢. 𝙏𝙝𝙚 𝙥𝙖𝙧𝙞𝙨𝙝 𝙥𝙤𝙡𝙞𝙩𝙞𝙘𝙨, 𝙬𝙚 𝙖𝙧𝙚 𝙩𝙤𝙡𝙙, 𝙖𝙧𝙚 𝙘𝙝𝙖𝙧𝙖𝙘𝙩𝙚𝙧-𝙗𝙪𝙞𝙡𝙙𝙞𝙣𝙜.

𝙏𝙝𝙚 𝘿𝙞𝙨𝙥𝙖𝙩𝙘𝙝 𝙬𝙞𝙨𝙝𝙚𝙨 𝙝𝙞𝙢 𝙚𝙫𝙚𝙧𝙮 𝙨𝙪𝙘𝙘𝙚𝙨𝙨, 𝙖𝙡𝙩𝙝𝙤𝙪𝙜𝙝 𝙩𝙝𝙚 𝙬𝙧𝙞𝙩𝙚𝙧 𝙢𝙞𝙜𝙝𝙩 𝙝𝙖𝙫𝙚 𝙬𝙚𝙡𝙡 𝙗𝙚𝙚𝙣 𝙞𝙣 𝙩𝙝𝙖𝙩 𝙧𝙤𝙡𝙚 𝙝𝙖𝙙 𝙝𝙚 𝙣𝙤𝙩 𝙗𝙚𝙚𝙣 𝙚𝙭𝙥𝙚𝙡𝙡𝙚𝙙 𝙛𝙧𝙤𝙢 𝙩𝙝𝙚 𝘾𝙖𝙩𝙝𝙤𝙡𝙞𝙘 𝙨𝙚𝙢𝙞𝙣𝙖𝙧𝙮 𝙗𝙮 𝘽𝙞𝙨𝙝𝙤𝙥 𝙊𝙡𝙞𝙫𝙞𝙚𝙧 𝙈𝙖𝙧𝙖𝙙𝙖𝙣 𝙖𝙩 𝙩𝙝𝙚 𝙖𝙜𝙚 𝙤𝙛 10!!

12/04/2026

𝗚𝗿𝗮𝘁𝗶𝘁𝘂𝗱𝗲 𝗕𝗲𝗳𝗼𝗿𝗲 𝗝𝘂𝘀𝘁𝗶𝗰𝗲 𝗜𝘀 𝗡𝗼𝘁 𝗥𝗲𝗰𝗼𝗻𝗰𝗶𝗹𝗶𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻. 𝗜𝘁 𝗜𝘀 𝗘𝗿𝗮𝘀𝘂𝗿𝗲...

By 𝓙𝓒𝓗 | 𝑻𝒉𝒆 𝑽𝒐𝒊𝒄𝒆 𝑩𝒆𝒕𝒘𝒆𝒆𝒏 𝑰𝒔𝒍𝒂𝒏𝒅𝒔 🏝🇸🇨, 𝑺𝒂 𝑲𝒂𝒓𝒕𝒐𝒈𝒓𝒂𝒇 𝑬𝒏𝒗𝒊𝒛𝒊𝒃 🗺🇸🇨

ᴀɴʙᴀ ʟᴀɴɢᴀʀ | ᴏᴘɪɴɪᴏɴ & ᴄɪᴠɪᴄ ᴄᴏᴍᴍᴇɴᴛᴀʀʏ | ᴀᴘʀɪʟ 2026

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📝 𝙰 𝚗𝚘𝚝𝚎 𝚏𝚛𝚘𝚖 𝚝𝚑𝚎 𝚘𝚠𝚗𝚎𝚛/𝙴𝚍𝚒𝚝𝚘𝚛 𝚘𝚏 𝙰𝚗𝚋𝚊 𝙻𝚊𝚗𝚐𝚊𝚛 𝚋𝚎𝚏𝚘𝚛𝚎 𝚠𝚎 𝚋𝚎𝚐𝚒𝚗...

"ᴹʸ ⁿᵃᵐᵉ ⁱˢ ᴶᵒˢᶜᵉˡʸⁿ ᶜʰᵃⁿᵍ⁻ᴴⁱᵐ. ᴵ ʷʳⁱᵗᵉ ᵘⁿᵈᵉʳ ⁱⁿⁱᵗⁱᵃˡˢ ᵇᵉᶜᵃᵘˢᵉ ⁱᵗ'ˢ ˢʰᵒʳᵗᵉʳ ᵗʰᵃⁿ ᵐʸ ᶠᵘˡˡ ⁿᵃᵐᵉ. ᵀʰᵉ ˢᵗᵒʳʸ ᴵ ᵃᵐ ᵃᵇᵒᵘᵗ ᵗᵒ ᵗᵉˡˡ ⁱˢ ᶜˡᵒˢᵉ ᵗᵒ ᵐᵉ ⁱⁿ ʷᵃʸˢ ᵗʰᵃᵗ ᶜᵃⁿⁿᵒᵗ ᵇᵉ ˢᵉᵖᵃʳᵃᵗᵉᵈ ᶠʳᵒᵐ ᵗʰᵉ ᵃʳᵍᵘᵐᵉⁿᵗ ᵇᵉⁱⁿᵍ ᵐᵃᵈᵉ, ᵃⁿᵈ ᴵ ʰᵃᵛᵉ ˡᵉᵃʳⁿᵉᵈ ᵗʰᵃᵗ ᵗʰᵉ ᶜˡᵉᵃʳᵉˢᵗ ᵗʰⁱⁿᵏⁱⁿᵍ ʰᵃᵖᵖᵉⁿˢ ʷʰᵉⁿ ᵉᵍᵒ ˢᵗᵉᵖˢ ᵃˢⁱᵈᵉ ᵃⁿᵈ ᵗʳᵘᵗʰ ˢᵗᵉᵖˢ ᶠᵒʳʷᵃʳᵈ. ᴵ ᵃᵐ ᵗʰᵉ ᵍʳᵃⁿᵈᵈᵃᵘᵍʰᵗᵉʳ ᵒᶠ ᴰᵃᵛⁱᵈˢᵒⁿ "ˢᵒⁿ" ᶜʰᵃⁿᵍ⁻ᴴⁱᵐ, ᵏⁱˡˡᵉᵈ ᵒⁿ ⁵ ᴶᵘⁿᵉ ¹⁹⁷⁷. ᴵ ᵃᵐ ᵗʰᵉ ᵈᵃᵘᵍʰᵗᵉʳ ᵒᶠ ᴰᵒʳᵒᵗʰʸ ᶜʰᵃⁿᵍ⁻ᴴⁱᵐ, ᵃ ˢᵘʳᵛⁱᵛᵒʳ ʷʰᵒ ʳᵃⁱˢᵉᵈ ᵐᵉ ᵒⁿ ᵗʰᵉ ᵗʳᵘᵗʰ ᵒᶠ ʷʰᵃᵗ ᵗʰⁱˢ ᶜᵒᵘⁿᵗʳʸ ᵈⁱᵈ ᵗᵒ ᵒᵘʳ ᶠᵃᵐⁱˡʸ, ᵃ ʷᵒᵐᵃⁿ ʷʰᵒˢᵉ ʳᵉˢⁱˡⁱᵉⁿᶜᵉ ⁱˢ ᵗʰᵉ ʳᵉᵃˢᵒⁿ ᴵ ᵉˣⁱˢᵗ ʷⁱᵗʰ ᵃⁿʸ ᶜˡᵃʳⁱᵗʸ ᵃᵗ ᵃˡˡ.

ᴵ ᵈⁱᵈ ⁿᵒᵗ ᵍʳᵒʷ ᵘᵖ ᵒⁿ ᵗʰᵒˢᵉ ⁱˢˡᵃⁿᵈˢ. ᵀʰᵃᵗ ᶜʰᵒⁱᶜᵉ ʷᵃˢ ⁿᵉᵛᵉʳ ᵐⁱⁿᵉ. ᴵ ʰᵃᵛᵉ ˢᵖᵉⁿᵗ ʸᵉᵃʳˢ ᵇᵉⁱⁿᵍ ᵗᵒˡᵈ, ⁱᵐᵖˡⁱᶜⁱᵗˡʸ ᵃⁿᵈ ᵉˣᵖˡⁱᶜⁱᵗˡʸ, ᵗʰᵃᵗ ⁿᵒᵗ ʰᵃᵛⁱⁿᵍ ˡⁱᵛᵉᵈ ᵗʰᵃᵗ ˡⁱᶠᵉ ᵐᵃᵏᵉˢ ᵐᵉ ˡᵉˢˢ ˢᵉˢᵉˡʷᵃ. ᵀʰᵃᵗ ᶜᵒⁿᵛᵉʳˢᵃᵗⁱᵒⁿ ⁱˢ ᶠᵒʳ ᵃⁿᵒᵗʰᵉʳ ᵈᵃʸ, ᵃⁿᵈ ᴵ ʰᵃᵛᵉ ᵖˡᵉⁿᵗʸ ᵗᵒ ˢᵃʸ ᵃᵇᵒᵘᵗ ⁱᵗ. ᵂʰᵃᵗ ᵐᵃᵗᵗᵉʳˢ ʰᵉʳᵉ ⁱˢ ᴵ ᵇᵉᵍᵃⁿ ˢᵖᵉᵃᵏⁱⁿᵍ ᵖᵘᵇˡⁱᶜˡʸ ᵗʰʳᵒᵘᵍʰ ᵗʰᵉ ²⁰²⁵ ᵉˡᵉᶜᵗⁱᵒⁿ ᶜʸᶜˡᵉ ᵇᵉᶜᵃᵘˢᵉ ᴵ ᶜᵒᵘˡᵈ ⁿᵒ ˡᵒⁿᵍᵉʳ ʷᵃᵗᶜʰ ⁱⁿ ˢⁱˡᵉⁿᶜᵉ.

ᴵ ᵇᵘⁱˡᵗ ᴬⁿᵇᵃ ᴸᵃⁿᵍᵃʳ ᵃˢ ᵃ ᵖˡᵃᵗᶠᵒʳᵐ ᶠᵒʳ ᵗʳᵘᵗʰ, ᵒᵘʳ ᶜᵘˡᵗᵘʳᵉ ᵃⁿᵈ ᵖᵉᵒᵖˡᵉ, ʷⁱᵗʰ ⁿᵒ ᵖᵃʳᵗʸ ᵃˡˡᵉᵍⁱᵃⁿᶜᵉ ᵒʳ ᵍᵒᵛᵉʳⁿᵐᵉⁿᵗ ᶠᵃᵛᵒᵘʳⁱᵗᵉˢ. ᴹʸ ᵍʳᵃⁿᵈᶠᵃᵗʰᵉʳ ʷᵃˢ ᵃⁿ ᵉⁿᵗʳᵉᵖʳᵉⁿᵉᵘʳ ᵃⁿᵈ ᵃ ᵗʳᵘᵉ ˢᵉʸᶜʰᵉˡˡᵒⁱˢ ᵃᶜᵗⁱᵛⁱˢᵗ ᶠᵒʳ ᵗʰᵉ ᴰᵉᵐᵒᶜʳᵃᵗⁱᶜ ᴾᵃʳᵗʸ ᵒᶠ ᵗʰᵉ ᶠⁱʳˢᵗ ᴾʳᵉˢⁱᵈᵉⁿᵗ, ⁱⁿ ʰⁱˢ ᵈᵃʸ. ᴵ ᶠᵒˡˡᵒʷᵉᵈ ⁱⁿ ʰⁱˢ ᶠᵒᵒᵗˢᵗᵉᵖˢ ʷⁱᵗʰᵒᵘᵗ ᵗʰᵉ ᵖᵒˡⁱᵗⁱᶜᵃˡ ᶜᵒⁿⁿᵉᶜᵗⁱᵒⁿˢ. ᵀʰⁱˢ ᵖˡᵃᵗᶠᵒʳᵐ ᶜᵃʳʳⁱᵉˢ ʰⁱˢ ˢᵖⁱʳⁱᵗ ʷʰᵉᵗʰᵉʳ ⁱᵗ ᶜᵃʳʳⁱᵉˢ ʰⁱˢ ⁿᵃᵐᵉ ᵒʳ ⁿᵒᵗ. ᴵ ᵃᵐ ᵗʰᵉ ᵉⁿᵈ ᵒᶠ ᵃ ˡᵒⁿᵍ ˡⁱⁿᵉ ᵒᶠ ᵉʳᵃˢᵘʳᵉ, ᵃⁿᵈ ᴵ ᵃᵐ ⁿᵒᵗ ⁱⁿᵗᵉʳᵉˢᵗᵉᵈ ⁱⁿ ᶜᵒⁿᵗⁱⁿᵘⁱⁿᵍ ⁱᵗ. ᴵ ˡⁱᵛᵉ ⁱⁿ ᵐʸ ᵗʳᵘᵗʰ ʷⁱᵗʰᵒᵘᵗ ᵖᵉʳᵐⁱˢˢⁱᵒⁿ. ᵀʰⁱˢ ᵃʳᵗⁱᶜˡᵉ ⁱˢ ⁿᵒᵗ ᵖᵉʳˢᵒⁿᵃˡ ᵍʳⁱᵉᵛᵃⁿᶜᵉ ᵈʳᵉˢˢᵉᵈ ᵃˢ ʲᵒᵘʳⁿᵃˡⁱˢᵐ. ᴵᵗ ⁱˢ ᵃ ᵐᵃᵗᵗᵉʳ ᵒᶠ ᵖᵘᵇˡⁱᶜ ʳᵉᶜᵒʳᵈ, ˡᵉᵍᵃˡ ᵃⁿᵈ ʰⁱˢᵗᵒʳⁱᶜᵃˡ ᶠᵃᶜᵗ, ᵃⁿᵈ ᵗʰᵉ ᵏⁱⁿᵈ ᵒᶠ ᵐᵒʳᵃˡ ᶜˡᵃʳⁱᵗʸ ᵗʰⁱˢ ᶜᵒᵘⁿᵗʳʸ ʰᵃˢ ᵇᵉᵉⁿ ᵃᵛᵒⁱᵈⁱⁿᵍ ᶠᵒʳ ⁴⁸ ʸᵉᵃʳˢ. ˢᵒ ˡᵉᵗ ᵐᵉ ᵐᵃᵏᵉ ⁱᵗ ᵖˡᵃⁱⁿ ᶠᵒʳ ᵉᵛᵉʳʸᵒⁿᵉ.

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A letter to the editor published this week in The Nation, under the name of Barry Laine, Chairman of the TRNUC Victims Association (TRNUC-AOV), thanks President Patrick Herminie, Fourth President Danny Faure, the TRNUC commissioners, the successor team, and the National Unity Commission for their "courage and tenacity." It speaks of a "final settlement" becoming "a reality" and calls for "final closure of this horrible chapter."

It is the position of one association, one chairman, published without the written consent of the broader victim community it presumes to speak for. If your therapist declared publicly that you had healed without asking you, you would have every right to be furious. The declaration does not create the healing. It creates the appearance of it, which is far more convenient for everyone except the person still hurting. That is assumption wearing the costume of leadership, and we are not prepared to let it pass without challenge.

𝙉𝙤 𝙈𝙖𝙣𝙙𝙖𝙩𝙚. 𝙉𝙤 𝘾𝙤𝙣𝙨𝙚𝙣𝙩. 𝙉𝙤 𝘼𝙪𝙩𝙝𝙤𝙧𝙞𝙩𝙮.

The TRNUC process was built on the principle that victims have individual rights. Case No. 001, the very first determination issued by the Commission, concerned the family of Davidson "Son" Chang-Him. The complainants were 5 people: Dorothy Chang-Him, Marylene Chang-Him, Wallen Adrienne, Harry Adrienne, and Judy Dingwall. The Commission found, on the balance of probabilities, that Son suffered an unlawful killing on 5 June 1977. Shot in the back at close range at the Central Police Station, hands raised, complying with instructions, unarmed.

It further found that the State bore responsibility, that the family were denied benefits legally owed to them, and that the suffering inflicted in the years following his murder was deliberate, sustained, and carried out with a deliberate intention on the part of Government authorities, agencies, and members of the ruling party to enhance the family's suffering.

Those are the words of the TRNUC Commissioners, signed on 31 July 2022.

So when Barry Laine writes that the "whole nation looks forward to final closure," we would like to see the written mandate authorising him to announce, on behalf of people whose fathers were shot in the back, that it is now time to be thankful. We have not seen it. We suspect it does not exist.

𝙔𝙤𝙪 𝘾𝙖𝙣𝙣𝙤𝙩 𝙏𝙝𝙖𝙣𝙠 𝙒𝙝𝙖𝙩 𝙃𝙖𝙨 𝙉𝙤𝙩 𝘼𝙧𝙧𝙞𝙫𝙚𝙙.

The letter praises politicians and commissioners for their "courage and tenacity." Courage is what the victims showed, walking into hearings and narrating the worst days of their lives into a public record, knowing full well that the people who ordered those atrocities had spent decades holding power in the same country.

Turning up to a commission with a salary and a mandate is called employment. There is a particular kind of moral cowardice that wears procedure as armour, asks no difficult questions, collects its wage, sits across the table from people telling devastating truths, thanks them for their bravery, and goes home at 4 o'clock. The victims who appeared before the TRNUC funded those salaries through their taxes and paid a second time with their dignity.

What they were owed was not a commission of listeners. They were owed a government willing to act on what it heard. The Liberation Memorial Fund, established by Presidential Decree in October 1977, was created specifically to compensate the families of those killed on 5 June. Son's family was named in that legislation, in the law itself, and yet the family received nothing. Dorothy, his youngest daughter, testified that when she asked ex-President Michel about the Fund, she was told there was no money in it.

The Fund was later found to have held balances in the region of SCR 10 to 20 million. It quietly redirected benefits toward others while the family it was legally mandated to support went without, and nobody was held to account. The Fund was repealed in August 2025 by Act 12 of 2025, its Board dissolved, its assets transferred to Government, with no acknowledgement of who was left behind or why...

Courage would look like a sitting government standing in the National Assembly and saying: the party that founded this nation committed crimes against its people. We are the inheritors of that party. We are sorry. Not "some regret was expressed." Not silence dressed as progress. After more than 48 years, that apology has not happened. And yet we are being asked to offer gratitude.

𝘼 𝙈𝙖𝙣. 𝙉𝙤𝙩 𝙖 𝙁𝙞𝙡𝙚.

Why did Davidson Chang-Him have to die? The Commission heard multiple versions. A personal feud. An order from the top to neutralise a perceived threat to the coup. An accident. It could not settle definitively on which was true. What it settled without ambiguity was that the killing was unprovoked, his hands were raised, he was shot in the back at close range, no investigation was ever conducted, no officer was ever charged.

After that shot, the consolidation of fear began immediately. His eldest son Harry was detained at gunpoint the same day. The family was ordered to paint over the Union Jack on their home in the colour of the party that had just killed their father. They were harassed by the army, arrested without charge, chased away from placing flowers at the spot where Son fell. Dorothy, his youngest, was expelled from school for her defiance against the regime. In 1996, she was handed 2 plane tickets by a President who told her he could no longer guarantee her safety because of politics, forced to choose which of her 2 children to take into exile. Harry fled to Canada. Judy emigrated. The cross on Davidson's grave was broken repeatedly. The victimisation was constant. That is their history, not a public-relations inconvenience for others to generalise and declare resolved.

This is what the consolidation of power looks like after a coup through the family of one of its very first victims. Not just the killing, but the slow, deliberate erasure of a man through fear, exclusion, and institutional neglect until a generation grows up not knowing his name. Thanks to his children, particularly his youngest, he was never left without a defender. Not for one moment did they stop praying or carrying the love and adoration that others tried, and failed, to extinguish.

Ex-President René established the Liberation Memorial Fund by decree, naming Davidson alongside the 2 others who died that day, making him by the State's own hand a figure of national consequence and hero. Of the 3 named, Davidson was the only civilian. One of the others died guarding the armoury, on duty. The third was an active coup participant killed by a ricochet from his own weapon. Their families received consistent payments from the Fund for years.

Son's family, the only civilian family in that decree, the only family on the wrong side of the coup's gun, received nothing. The Attorney-General confirmed to the Commission that they should have. Ex-President Michel said some people received support and some did not, and offered nothing further. This was discovered repeatedly, raised directly, and met each time with a shrug. A fund designed to appear inclusive, administered to exclude the one family with the clearest legal and moral claim to it.

Son was well-known and well-loved. Well-known enough that armed men spent an entire day hunting him across Mahe because they considered him a threat to a brand new dictatorship. A father who raised 6 children at home. A watchmaker. An entrepreneur of his community. He has been reduced in the public memory of his own country to a body in a 1977 file, his legacy eroded year by year by the silence of those who had every reason to ensure he was forgotten.

The unsettled lessons of history do not disappear. They compound. Every failure to reckon with 1977 honestly creates the conditions for the next failure, and the pattern has never been broken because the people with the power to break it have never found it sufficiently inconvenient to try.

𝙏𝙝𝙚 𝙀𝙡𝙚𝙥𝙝𝙖𝙣𝙩 𝙞𝙣 𝙩𝙝𝙚 𝙍𝙤𝙤𝙢 𝙃𝙖𝙨 2 𝘼𝙣𝙣𝙞𝙫𝙚𝙧𝙨𝙖𝙧𝙞𝙚𝙨.

This year, 2026, marks 50 years since Seychelles gained independence from Britain under James Mancham, the country's first President and the legitimate leader of a nation that had just found its footing. In 2027, it will be 50 years since the coup that removed him and handed the republic to France-Albert René by force. Two anniversaries. One of a vision. One of its destruction.

We owe it to the memory of Mancham's Seychelles to admit plainly that we failed his vision. The René era did not merely change the government. It dismantled the moral architecture of a young nation, replacing accountability with loyalty, justice with silence, and civic pride with the kind of fear that teaches children to paint over their own front door in the colour of the party that killed their father. The letter published in The Nation this weekend is a product of that legacy.

It is what 48 years of unresolved trauma and political self-protection looks like when it puts on a suit and writes to a newspaper. The misinformation and selective memory surrounding that historical period is not just a cultural problem. It is an active danger. History that is not studied is repeated. We are watching that repetition in real time, and letters like this one are part of the mechanism.

This is the elephant in the room that every politician, every party, and every association chairman has been walking carefully around for half a century. Seychelles cannot celebrate 50 years of independence with integrity while the injustices of the year that followed it remain unaddressed.

These 2 anniversaries sit side by side like a question and its unanswered reply. One asks what we could have been. The other explains why we are not there yet.

𝙏𝙝𝙚 𝘾𝙧𝙞𝙩𝙞𝙦𝙪𝙚 𝙤𝙛 𝙏𝙝𝙚𝙣-𝙋𝙧𝙚𝙨𝙞𝙙𝙚𝙣𝙩 𝙍𝙖𝙢𝙠𝙖𝙡𝙖𝙬𝙖𝙣 𝙄𝙨 𝙑𝙖𝙡𝙞𝙙. 𝙏𝙝𝙚 𝙎𝙞𝙡𝙚𝙣𝙘𝙚 𝙤𝙣 𝙀𝙫𝙚𝙧𝙮𝙩𝙝𝙞𝙣𝙜 𝙀𝙡𝙨𝙚 𝙄𝙨 𝙉𝙤𝙩.

Ex-President Ramkalawan, who in opposition was among those who fought loudest for the TRNUC to exist and whose personal commitment to the process was public and vocal, received the final TRNUC report on 31 March 2023 as sitting President and announced a successor team with no contract, no office, and no authority. That failure is legitimate, serious, and has always been called out as such on this platform.

But this is the oldest deflection in the political playbook: point loudly at the man who dropped the baton so nobody notices you were never running the race. The letter does not ask when the party whose founders committed these acts will take responsibility for them. Not credit for the commission. Responsibility for the original crime and everything that followed it.

It does not ask why victims are still administered rather than compensated, spoken for by associations rather than consulted directly. It does not ask those questions because the answers would be deeply embarrassing to the very people it has just finished thanking.

𝙊𝙣 𝙍𝙚𝙥𝙧𝙚𝙨𝙚𝙣𝙩𝙖𝙩𝙞𝙤𝙣, 𝙍𝙚𝙘𝙤𝙣𝙘𝙞𝙡𝙞𝙖𝙩𝙞𝙤𝙣, 𝙖𝙣𝙙 𝙩𝙝𝙚 𝙍𝙞𝙜𝙝𝙩 𝙩𝙤 𝙎𝙥𝙚𝙖𝙠.

No association can speak for all victims without explicit mandate. The TRNUC process involved hundreds of individual complaints, each filed by individuals with their own losses and their own timelines for what healing means. When an association chairman declares victims grateful and closure approaching, he is attempting to define the emotional and political position of people who did not authorise him to do so. Starting with the very first case.

There is a familiar psychological pattern in which others try to resolve pain on behalf of the person still carrying it, because it is more comfortable than sitting with the reality that the other person is still suffering. This letter performs surrogate closure, resolving on paper something unresolved in life. Placed into a national newspaper and dressed as a consensus it has not earned.

The real truth is that reconciliation requires the State to acknowledge wrongdoing, implement reparations, and allow victims to define their own healing. They have the report with approved cases.

Pain is not transferable. You would not walk into a hospital ward and declare all patients discharged regardless of their condition. Closure announced on someone else's behalf is not closure. It is convenience.

48 𝙔𝙚𝙖𝙧𝙨. 𝙎𝙩𝙞𝙡𝙡 𝙒𝙖𝙞𝙩𝙞𝙣𝙜. 𝙎𝙩𝙞𝙡𝙡 𝙐𝙣𝙝𝙚𝙖𝙧𝙙.

The list of epic failure is long: A commission without adequate resources. A Final Report that went nowhere. A Fund repealed without accountability. A successor team with no legal standing. A letter of thanks in the Saturday paper. These are only a few examples of what sits at the root of so much that is wrong in Seychelles. If this is what five decades of learning looks like, the curriculum has failed spectacularly.

There is a concept in trauma psychology called imposed resolution, the moment those around a survivor decide, for their own comfort, that it is time for the survivor to be done. It is rarely about the survivor. It is about everyone else's exhaustion with the inconvenience of unfinished pain. What is happening in Seychelles right now, complete moral decay, is exactly that.

Without the ruling class of this country admitting that what happened on 5 June 1977 was wrong, and that the years of harassment, exile, intimidation, and financial abandonment that followed were also seriously wrong, there can be no honest reconciliation. The tampering with official findings in a serious case such as 001, together with the misuse of the Liberation Memorial Fund and the deliberate exclusion of the family it was meant to protect, amounts to a serious maladministration that is both obvious and on record. It is relevant to our people and history.

All of this happened under the watch of the same party that now claims it has listened and learned, yet still governs this country in the same way it promised it had moved beyond. The evidence so far does not inspire confidence.

The appropriate response is simple: accountability, reparation, and a formal unambiguous apology. Not a thank-you letter to the same party whose founder created this mistake. That is what you call hypocrisy.

That moment has not materialised. Until it does, we are far from closure. We are at the beginning of a conversation born of an irreversible wound inflicted 49 years ago. You do not get to declare the chapter closed while the ink is still drying on the oldest wounds. And you certainly do not get to sign that declaration on behalf of someone else's pain without their permission.

Reconciliation does not begin with gratitude. It begins with truth, responsibility, and repair.
Everything else is performance.

📰 𝙰𝚗𝚋𝚊 𝙻𝚊𝚗𝚐𝚊𝚛: 𝚏𝚛𝚎𝚎𝚍𝚘𝚖, 𝚝𝚛𝚞𝚝𝚑, 𝚊𝚗𝚍 𝚘𝚞𝚛 𝚙𝚎𝚘𝚙𝚕𝚎. 𝙽𝚘 𝚙𝚊𝚛𝚝𝚢. 𝙽𝚘 𝚏𝚊𝚟𝚘𝚞𝚛𝚒𝚝𝚎𝚜. 𝚆𝚎 𝚠𝚛𝚒𝚝𝚎 𝚋𝚎𝚌𝚊𝚞𝚜𝚎 𝚜𝚒𝚕𝚎𝚗𝚌𝚎 𝚒𝚜 𝚊 𝚌𝚑𝚘𝚒𝚌𝚎, 𝚊𝚗𝚍 𝚠𝚎 𝚑𝚊𝚟𝚎 𝚖𝚊𝚍𝚎 𝚊 𝚍𝚒𝚏𝚏𝚎𝚛𝚎𝚗𝚝 𝚘𝚗𝚎. 𝙹𝚞𝚜𝚝 𝚘𝚟𝚎𝚛 𝚑𝚎𝚛𝚎 𝚑𝚊𝚟𝚒𝚗𝚐 𝚝𝚑𝚎 𝚌𝚘𝚗𝚟𝚎𝚛𝚜𝚊𝚝𝚒𝚘𝚗𝚜 𝚖𝚘𝚜𝚝 𝚊𝚛𝚎 𝚊𝚏𝚛𝚊𝚒𝚍 𝚝𝚘 𝚑𝚊𝚟𝚎.

Anba Langar

16/04/2026

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