TRNUC resumes sessions with five commissioners |03 November 2021

Following a short recess, the Truth, Reconciliation and National Unity Commission (TRNUC) yesterday resumed its session with five members – chairperson Gabrielle Louise McIntyre, vice-chair Michael Green and commissioners Archbishop James Wong, Dr Marie-Therese Purvis and Jacques Gbilimou, following the approval by the National Assembly on October 27, 2021.

The approval follows a request by the commission to continue with five members instead of seven members after two commissioners – Eline Moses and Marie-May Léon – resigned on September 28, 2021. The Act that was drafted in 2018 required for seven members to lead the commission with five Seychellois commissioners and two non-Seychellois commissioners. Following the rejection by a Mauritian appointee to work on the commission, the law was amended by the National Assembly in December 2019, to allow for the appointment of a Seychellois to the vacant post.

The reason given by the commission to continue with the reconciliation process with the five commissioners was that it will take a long time in the limited time left, for the commission to complete its mandate if any new commissioners were to get acquainted and to keep themselves informed of the many cases passed and that are on still going.

Case 0261: Jimmy Rangasamy

After three closed sessions, Maryvonne Mangroo was the only person to appear before the commission in open session yesterday afternoon, as a witness in Case 0261: Jimmy Rangasamy. Jimmy Rangasamy had brought the case on behalf of his brother Alan Rangasamy, a soldier who died at the Seychelles Hospital following a mysterious shooting during the rebellion of August 17, 1982.

Speaking via SKYPE from Italy, Mrs Mangroo, who was the deceased’s twenty-year-old girl friend at the time, said that she learned of the rebellion on the radio and that it was two soldiers who informed Mr Rangasamy’s mother, who was residing at St Louis, that Alan, a rebel leader, had shot himself in the leg and he had been transported to the hospital for medical attention.

She added that following the removal of the curfew, she and her own mother and father went to the hospital to look for Alan but he was nowhere to be found among the other injured soldiers in the hospital wards.

She said that upon asking, they were told, to their surprise, that he was in the intensive care unit (ICU).

Mrs Mangroo said that Alan, who was semi-unconscious, was bandaged not from the leg where he was supposed to have been shot but from the left shoulder down to his waist. He had only a small minor scratch on the leg and not that of bullet wounds as has been told by the two soldiers to his mother where he had been shot.

She stated that the nurses on duty told her that he had to undergo surgery to remove a bullet in the left side of the stomach.

She said that on the night of August 20, 1982, after spending three days at his bedside, Alan who had only managed to move his hand from time to time as a sign of consciousness, opened his eyes. She added that upon calling the nurse, she was ordered to wait outside as the nurse tried to make him respond further. She added that she was in shock when she went inside again after a while, after the nurse had come out of the room in grief, to see that Alan’s body was covered, a sign to her that he was dead.

Mrs Mangroo noted that her mother had two days earlier managed to get into a conversation with Alan who had mumbled to her in his suffering the name of the person who shot him.

She said that she and her mother had kept the name of the military personnel that shot Alan a secret until today as at that time, it was impossible to speak out against or report any army personnel.

She said that she had met the perpetrator many times but she never made the mistake of confronting him.

She presumed that Alan was shot on location, while on the hospital ward and at close range with probably a silent revolver and that he did not shoot himself. She added that two months after Alan had died, she saw at her place of work at the Attorney General’s Office, a file with names of all the soldiers that were injured and the few that also died during the rebellion and Alan’s name was not on the list.

Mrs Mangroo said that she wrote to President Albert Rene asking to see him about what happened to Alan and also about his compensation as a soldier. She stated that after fifteen days the president answered back but she got to see the Minister for Defence, Ogilvy Berlouis. She said the minister informed her that there was no compensation for Alan, who had left behind a five-year-old boy, as he died as a rebel and not a soldier. She added that she wanted to seek the truth about what happened as everyone at that time had thought that he had shot himself.

Alan Rangasamy joined the army in 1977 after the coup of June 5, 1977.

Patrick Joubert