Demonstrations in Mauritius: after further violence, the curfew is renewed on Wednesday and Thursday evening

The government of Mauritius on Wednesday extended to the nights of Wednesday and Thursday a curfew on around a third of the island due to a protest accompanied by violence for which 94 people have been arrested in recent days.

Mauritius, where demonstrations against water shortages and the rising cost of living had been taking place for days, was set ablaze after a police officer seriously injured a woman by gunfire on Saturday. “No one has the right to take justice into their own hands or to take the law into their own hands,” Prime Minister Navin Ramgoolam said Tuesday evening in a televised speech, who also said he would be “intransigent towards drug traffickers who add fuel to the fire.”

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94 arrests in total

According to police sources interviewed by AFP, traffickers finance drug addicts to attack police stations. Some 84 people were arrested on Tuesday in Mauritius, bringing to 94 the number of arrests since the start of the violence, we can read in a press release published at the end of an exceptional Council of Ministers. Facts of “looting, possession of explosive substances, non-compliance with curfew” or even “fire or damage caused to police stations” were recorded, from the same source. The police officer who, according to witnesses, shot a woman in the neck on Saturday evening without warning, was arrested and brought to justice. She, seriously injured, is currently hospitalized.

Ten administrative regions - especially on the outskirts of cities and which correspond to approximately a third of the territory of Mauritius - already affected by the curfew on Tuesday evening will have to obey the same restrictions on the nights of Wednesday and Thursday (between 8:30 p.m. and 5:00 a.m. the next day), the Council of Ministers ruled. “Given the number of minors involved in the riots, amendments to the Children's Act will be considered in order to lower the age from 14 to 12 years for the detention and prosecution of minors,” we can also read in this text. The Mauritian Ministry of Education, for its part, announced the suspension of classes on Thursday and Friday in all nurseries and primary and secondary establishments in the country.

Mauritius, an archipelago in the Indian Ocean seen as a model of stability and prosperity on the African continent, and whose GDP per capita is one of the highest in Africa, had already experienced riots in 1999, after the death of a singer in cell. The country has experienced remarkable growth since its independence from the United Kingdom in 1968. Its economy, once mainly agricultural and centered on sugar production, has diversified and is today driven by tourism - the islands have pristine beaches and coral reefs -, textiles and the financial sector.