Editorial
Customs and Immigration OFFICERS racially prejudiced?
Seychelles is not generally known to be a racist country. People who visit these islands have always commended the people of Seychelles for their friendliness, their welcoming smile and their “open arms” approach to our visitors. The government has drilled it into us time and time again that tourists are our bread basket and we should go out of our way to make them feel welcome and at home in our beautiful islands. However, recently a small group of people in our melting pot society, who it seems, power have gone to their thick skulls, have taken it upon themselves to tarnish the image of our country and give the Seychellois as a whole a bad name. What is peculiar about the whole thing is the fact that these people are Custom and Immigration Officers and they have chosen to do this at the Seychelles International Airport where our visitors form their first and last impression of our Country and people. We are by no means saying that all Customs and Immigration Officers are racist, but it takes one bad apple to spoil the whole basket of apples. Some Custom and Immigration Officers are indeed very courteous and polite and knows how to approach a person and politely ask for their luggage to be searched without causing the least of animosity and grudges. These Officers should be commended. However, these are few and far between as for the most part these Officers are rude and aggressive and need to be taught how to talk to people. The “EOULA” approach makes people uncomfortable and naturally defensive causing verbal abuse and ugly scenes to develop quickly and out of control at our international airport.
This week we have received many complaints from people who go through Customs at the Seychelles International Airport. The complaints have come from predominantly black people who have accused the Customs Officers of being blatantly racist. These Officers, it is said, make it their business to target people of dark skin and humiliate and harass them endlessly. These people are treated like criminals, drug traffickers and terrorists and are made to endure degrading and humiliating treatment at the hands of these self-styled Gestapo who has made it their mission in life to render the life of black people going through Customs one of misery and humiliation. These practices have been going on for some time now and the victims have implored Le Nouveau Seychelles Weekly to take up this matter and bring it to the attention of the authorities here as it is once again tarnishing the image of our beautiful country. For those who do not know or have chosen to have selective memories, Seychelles is an African Country and Rene use to send Guy Sinon (he who is of darker skin) to the Continent regularly with the begging bowl to drum up support from his African brothers for the cause of the SPUP, who at the time had tres peux des sous! Lest we forget the Organisation of African Unity gave the SPUP its first land rover and one of the first acts of Rene after he took power through the barrel of a gun was to join the organisation leaving no doubt in the minds of the people of Seychelles that we are African and African we will stay until Rene and the SPPF decides otherwise.
It is no mean task going through the Immigration and Customs control on arrival at the Pointe Larue International Airport if you are of a darker complexion. Your chances of being scrutinise more than is necessary is on average ten times more than your fairer skin counterpart. The Immigration for their part finds it difficult not to treat anyone from Africa coming into this country like a criminal. Recently a middle age lady flew in from Kenya. She was coming into the country to be reunited with her husband who for seventeen years has been working as an English teacher with the Ministry for Education. To say the lady was given a hard time is an understatement. The young Immigration Officer at the counter went as far as accusing the lady of being a liar. Eventually she was accompanied outside to identify her husband among the waiting crowd. The customs is acting like German Gestapo in the Hitler era harassing dark skin people on a regular basis. You can be as Seychellois as you want, just not be dark skin otherwise you automatically becomes a target and you are bound to experience a difficult time going through customs! That is even if you do not have anything to declare and you chose the Green Channel. Someone remarked that they don’t pick on the white people because they think that all white people are tourists from England and the language barrier scares them to bits. They therefore feel intimated and crawl into their shell as soon as a white person goes through the Green Channel. All we can say to our black brothers and sisters is beware of the man in the suit at the Seychelles International Airport!
