22/08/2026
๐๐๐ฆ๐ 0๏ธโฃ0๏ธโฃ1๏ธโฃ ๐๐ฆ ๐ก๐ข๐ง ๐ฌ๐ข๐จ๐ฅ ๐ฃ๐ข๐๐๐ง๐๐๐๐ ๐๐ข๐ฉ๐๐ฅ: ๐๐น๐ผ๐๐๐ฟ๐ฒ ๐๐ฎ๐ ๐ก๐ผ๐ ๐๐ฟ๐ฟ๐ถ๐๐ฒ๐ฑ ๐ฃ๐ธ๐จโ ๏ธ
By Dorothy Chang-Him (๐ซ๐ช๐ฏ) ๐ช๐๐๐๐ ๐ฝ๐๐๐๐ & ๐ณ๐๐๐
๐๐ ๐ฆ
๐ฃ๐ข
๐ ๐ฅ๐ถ๐ด๐ต๐ ๐ผ๐ณ ๐ฅ๐ฒ๐ฝ๐น๐
I am Dorothy Chang-Him, daughter of Davidson โSonโ Chang-Him, who was unlawfully killed at Central Police Station on 5 June 1977 (the day of the coup dโรฉtat).
I filed the first complaint received by the Truth, Reconciliation and National Unity Commission on 9 August 2019. On 31 July 2022, after receiving evidence from 34 witnesses, the TRNUC delivered its final determination in my fatherโs case and mine: Case 001.
The Commission found that my father was unarmed, complying with instructions and had his hands raised when Philip DโOffay shot him in the back at close range. It found that the shooting was unprovoked and the killing unlawful. The Commission did not find sufficient evidence that Albert Renรฉ specifically ordered the shooting. It did find that Renรฉ ordered my father to be located because he was perceived as a threat to the coup, and that Renรฉ bore some responsibility for his death as the leader and mastermind of that coup.
The Commission also found the State responsible. My father was killed at the police station, as a civilian, in the presence of police officers. No evidence was found of a proper police investigation. Nobody was held accountable and the determination expressly states that the State owes reparations to me and my family. These are not merely political allegations. They are the official findings of Case 001.
Barry Laineโs press release of 20 August 2026 is right about one thing: victims have waited far too long. But its headline, โClosure Has Finally Arrivedโ, is false in my case! No case-specific compensation amount has ever been calculated or paid to my family. And the public record confirms it.
Earlier in 2026, before writing this right of reply, I spoke privately with Barry Laine by telephone. I explained that I was living alone, struggling financially and surviving with help from my children despite assurances that circumstances would improve. He told me, in substance, that if I died, my children would receive any compensation eventually payable in my case.
I record this as my recollection of that conversation. His answer made me feel as though my life and present survival were no longer part of the process.
That conversation came after a long pattern of assurances ending in silence. After the TRNUC Final Report had been handed to then-President Wavel Ramkalawan, my letter to the President went unanswered. During that period, I was hospitalised while living under severe stress and became dependent upon others for support.
Former TRNUC Vice-Chairperson Michael Green, who had been named as part of a proposed successor team, initially answered my calls and told me that victims would be called in. I remained patient and waited respectfully even through my discomfort. Later, my calls, text messages and emails went unanswered, without any explanation of what had changed, whether the work had stopped, when victims would be contacted or what was happening to Case 001.
I have always approached these institutions with patience, respect and a willingness to cooperate. That respect has not been reciprocated. These are not minor communication failures. For a Seychellois who has waited since 1977, every broken assurance and unexplained period of silence deepens the harm and uncertainty. A file can sit on a desk without feeling the passing years. A victim cannot.
I cannot and do not claim to know every decision made behind closed doors or precisely why communication stopped. Whether it resulted from political interference, administrative paralysis or neglect has never been explained to me.
What I can say and will say is that the process has repeatedly been interrupted, fragmented and passed between presidents, officials, commissions and proposed mechanisms. Nobody appears to have stopped and considered who was being affected or what this prolonged uncertainty was doing to our lives as Seychellois.
Even if the reparations framework permits certain awards to pass to heirs, that was not the issue I raised with Barry Laine. I was asking what this process was doing for me as a living victim struggling now. To answer my present hardship as though it were merely a matter of protocol, by referring to what my children might receive after my death, was deeply dismissive. It was not respect, support, implementation or closure.
There has been no full accounting for the Liberation Memorial Fund created by Presidential Decree under Albert Renรฉ. The political handling of this Fund and my confirmed TRNUC case has a clear, documented timeline. On 1 June 2021, while my case was being investigated, Gervais Henrie asked the Government whether the Liberation Memorial Fund still existed.
The records had not been fully located, the accounts had not been disclosed and the TRNUC had not even completed its determination. Yet a senior member of the governing party was already calling for the repeal of the Decree at the centre of my fatherโs case and mine. The Agency for Social Protection confirmed openly in the National Assembly that the Fund remained active, that it was still managing its payroll and that the money came through the Ministry of Finance.
Henrie then stated, on behalf of LDS, that the Decree should โdisappear once and for allโ.
There is still no case-specific State apology, no memorial where my father was killed, no proper explanation for the absence of an investigation, and no completed programme of guarantees that this can never happen again.
On 31 July 2022, the TRNUC delivered its determination in Case 001. It found that my fatherโs dependants possessed a specific legal right to benefit from that Fund. The Commission specifically found no documentary evidence that my family received its lawful entitlement and concluded that we were denied that entitlement through abuse of office by government officials. It also found that James Michel and the wider Board of Trustees more likely than not bore responsibility for that abuse.
Those findings should have triggered an immediate accounting, preservation of every record and settlement of the Fundโs outstanding obligations to my family.
Instead, on 23 July 2025, Gervais Henrie introduced the Liberation Memorial Fund Decree (Repeal) Bill as a Private Memberโs Bill. On 30 July, he carried it through the National Assembly and it was approved. I was never informed, approached or consulted as the principal complainant in Case 001, despite the Fund being an integral part of my confirmed case.
An Act, a budget announcement and a newly sworn Commission represent the beginning of another process. Why? All of this definitely does not constitute closure.
The Act states that it came into operation on 1 August 2025. It dissolved the Board and transferred all assets and liabilities of the Liberation Memorial Fund to the Government, while directing the Agency for Social Protection to administer any benefits still payable under the Decree. The repeal did not and could not overturn Case 001.
President Wavel Ramkalawan subsequently assented to the Repeal Act on 7 August 2025, although the Act states that it came into operation on 1 August 2025.
In fact, the transfer of the Fundโs liabilities to Government confirms that outstanding obligations did not simply disappear with the Decree. Government inherited those outstanding liabilities and remains responsible for discharging them. That obligation belongs to the State and continues regardless of which political party forms the Government.
That transfer cannot be used to bury the debt or erase the records. Surely our newly elected Government understands that. Yet changing the legal structure at the centre of a confirmed TRNUC case, before accounting for its assets, settling its liabilities or consulting its principal complainant, is more than an unfortunate administrative decision.
I regard it as political interference with the legal framework surrounding my case and another act of institutional erasure. The stated intention to make the Decree โdisappear once and for allโ was made openly. What remained hidden was the money, the records and the truth about why my family was denied its legal entitlement or why my father was targeted and killed.
This history cannot be reduced to a contest over whether Danny Faure, Wavel Ramkalawan or Patrick Herminie deserves political credit. Every administration must answer for its own actions and failures. Or is this how we do politics in Seychelles now? The political organisation descended from the system, created after the coup, cannot use the first procedural steps towards paying a long-overdue State debt as an act of generosity. This is not charity or political generosity. It is a long-overdue obligation of the State.
Is this sudden performance of โclosureโ genuinely about victims, or is it also being used to settle scores with LDS after United Seychelles spent five years out of power? So what? In a multiparty State, political parties lose elections and governments change. That is democracy. Losing office through an election is not a coup, and returning to office is not another liberation. Who are they kidding by treating ordinary democratic alternation as a political injury requiring revenge?
Why do the political heirs of the 1977 coup behave as though losing an election was another coup against them from which they now require protection? Does this point to a continuing pattern in which one party expects complete control over Seychelles, its institutions, its records and even the histories and voices of Seychellois, preferably behind closed doors?
I put these forward as necessary questions. I do not claim to have proved anyoneโs private motive. But the timing, political rhetoric, secrecy, lack of consultation and continuing absence of an accounting make these questions legitimate and unavoidable. If no such intention exists, the answer is simple: open the records, consult the victims, account for every liability and implement the findings transparently.
Democracy should not require secrecy to defend itself...
If this could happen openly to Case 001, the first complaint heard by the TRNUC and one of its clearest determinations, how many other victims have had their entitlements, funds, records or remedies altered, transferred or quietly closed without their knowledge? This cannot honestly be blamed upon only one administration. Albert Renรฉ created the Fund, but officials operating under the system he established failed to administer it lawfully.
Generations of Seychellois, myself included, have grown up in Seychelles and lived with the political, institutional and social inheritance of the system Renรฉ installed in 1977. Renรฉ left office more than two decades ago, yet too many of its habits have remained. My daughter calls these surviving political and institutional habits Renรฉism. Why have successive governments failed to dismantle them?
James Michel chaired the Board implicated in the abuse of office found by the TRNUC, yet there has been no publicly demonstrated accountability for that finding. This was not a criminal conviction, but it remains an official determination that the State cannot simply ignore.
Former leaders retain the right to participate in public life, and victims possess that same right. When former officeholders are given public platforms to speak about Seychelles, those whose lives were damaged by the system should also be given equal space to speak about its consequences. I am not asking for special treatment. I am demanding equal civic standing, accountability and an answer to Case 001.
The previous administration cannot escape responsibility for leaving the TRNUC Final Report without an operational implementation mechanism. But my family will not serve as political cover for either side. I want full transparency and truth. The present Government has inherited the Fundโs assets, liabilities and the Stateโs continuing responsibility, yet my family has still received no complete accounting or remedy to this day.
I have never reserved my criticism for only one political party. My political independence was followed by threats to my safety and forced exile many years ago, experiences recorded in my case. My public posts during the last election challenged LDS, because its administration had left TRNUC victims trapped without implementation or an enforceable remedy. The legal framework surrounding my confirmed case was altered without consulting me and before my familyโs entitlement had been accounted for or resolved.
I now address United Seychelles directly with the same honesty. Changing the party in office has produced announcements, appointments and structures, but also continued official silence and unanswered requests for engagement, while harmful delay and uncertainty continue to rule my life. My voice is not party property, and my fatherโs case will not be used to protect either side anymore.
Since the TRNUC process began, the mechanism that promised reconciliation has instead deepened divisions within my own family, long before the 2025 elections, and kept us separated across Mahรฉ and other countries.
I left the United Kingdom and the life I had built there believing that I could return home and allow my children a better life as a result, participate in this process to create security for that life and rebuild a secure livelihood in the process. Instead, I have experienced delay, exclusion and bureaucracy as continuing barriers to stability and to the opportunity to live and work with dignity.
These are the lived consequences of repeatedly telling victims to โtrust the processโ when that process has still not delivered what it officially confirmed is owed. Each time we are told to trust it, another announcement arrives without a result.
The political class across successive governments has mishandled this process. Each administration has inherited the opportunity to correct the injustice, and each has instead added another layer of delay, secrecy, legislation, committees or political blame. Now victims are again being made to pass through more commissions, more newly appointed officials and yet another trust, while the action already owed to us remains undone.
The structures multiply and the announcements continue, yet no payment, accounting, apology or complete remedy has reached me, even though mine was Case 001.
The SCR20 million placed in the national budget is not an award to Case 001, much less a funded settlement for hundreds of cases. Reparations are not gifts from a president or political party. My family and I will continue explaining publicly why they are obligations arising from violations officially determined by the TRNUC.
I therefore demand a complete accounting of the Liberation Memorial Fund: its bank accounts, investments, trustees, beneficiaries, payments, audits, assets, liabilities, Government funding and the destination of everything transferred after its repeal. I also demand a written explanation of how the Government intends to discharge the outstanding liabilities that it inherited.
We will not permit compensation to be treated as the purchase of my silence or the surrender of my truth. I have sat and watched long enough. Money cannot and will not replace the truth, acknowledgement, accountability, Fund entitlements, rehabilitation, memorialisation, institutional reform or guarantees of non-repetition.
I am ready to engage with the new Commission lawfully and constructively. I expect it to treat the findings of Case 001 as settled. I formally request that it publish its assessment framework, explain every calculation, establish a properly constituted and audited Trust Fund, consult victims directly and provide an enforceable timetable with deadlines. After claiming more than forty years of governmental experience, the present administration should understand what a deadline means.
I will not sign away my history or rights in return for an unexplained payment.
No government or political party can continue glorifying Albert Renรฉ, the coup or 5 June as โliberationโ while asking its victims to remain silent and move on.
I understand clearly that the Golden Jubilee marked independence on 29 June 1976, not the coup of 5 June 1977. My objection is that Seychelles celebrated fifty years of statehood while Case 001, concerning my father, who lived to celebrate independence and was murdered less than a year later, remained unanswered. My requests for meaningful engagement have received no meaningful response since August 2025.
Independence belongs to my fatherโs history too. He was alive when Seychelles became a sovereign country. He possessed skills, enterprise and a demonstrated commitment to his family and community. The coup denied him the opportunity to continue contributing to the nation that had only just been born. His good intentions and efforts were already a part of the nationโs story.
A truthful national celebration, genuinely intended to support national healing, should have made room for that history. It should not have presented fifty years of statehood as a complete national story while leaving the victims created during those years outside it. Too often, victims appear to exist in the national story only when they are useful for another press release.
I was eleven when the coup took my father. Forty-nine years later, the State has still not delivered the accountability and reparations confirmed by its own Commission. That is almost fifty years of failure to secure justice for my father and my family, and fifty years of statehood without properly securing our people and our home after everything our families endured to gain independence together.
Instead, the forty-nine years since the coup have again swallowed the brief period in which my father lived as a citizen of an independent Seychelles. I've seen and heard all I need to in my lifetime, done my best to be fair regardless of how people chose to treat me, and I have not even begun saying enough. I can see it all as plainly as any one of us can.
A country that cannot tell the truth about a political killing committed during its own coup dโรฉtat, account for a fund created for the murdered manโs dependants, or implement the findings of its own completed Commission requires a brand-new standard of leadership. For too long, the old leadership class has remained consumed by revenge, defensiveness and political point-scoring.
We have not yet seen the standard of leadership this moment requires. That renewal must be lawful, democratic and free from the old political games, because those games have made it almost impossible for me to rebuild a secure life.
My family is not political cover for any of you, and it never has been. I say this to the political class across every party that has held power. My fatherโs name and legacy are not yours to use as a political weapon or to reduce to another name inside a commission that has filed him away. We all own our history and are entitled to defend it. I should not have to fight continually to defend mine.
Since I was eleven, there is nothing I have wanted more than to have my father returned to me, but nothing can make that possible. I can only pray that he rests in peace knowing that we are safe. I have asked for peace, truth and a life free from political actors attaching themselves to his name while failing to honour what the State owes. My daughter has continued this work, and I have supported her throughout.
I have survived attempts to silence, frighten, divide my family and destabilise me. I have survived intimidation, displacement and attempts to block employment and life opportunities for me and my children in Seychelles, experiences that have followed my fatherโs killing into the present.
I now intend to preserve my fatherโs legacy through work for children and young people who have lost parental protection and support. That purpose has survived every year in which victims were told to โtrust the processโ while our own national history was pushed aside. This work is not a charitable substitute that the Government may offer in place of its obligations. It will complement, never replace, the reparations and full accountability owed by the State.
What failed to break me has strengthened me.
Closure will arrive when the truth is honoured, the records are opened, the debt is paid, the State acknowledges what it did and the country guarantees that it will never happen to any of us again.
Until then, I am not backing down.
