When I sat in Parliament on Tuesday and I listened to the Prime minister explaining the rationale behind the police’s attitude towards Sudha Singh and Pascale Bodet as well as the MITD’s harassment of Hemandar Madhow, when I saw Vasant Bunwaree sitting smugly there, waiting for the Prime minister to defend him, when I looked at the indifferent faces of all the other ministers and majority MPs, I couldn’t help thinking that if those people can sit through this, can so coolly accept the fact that people are being victimised because it’s a convenient way of getting an increasingly desperate minister off the hook, I tell myself that there’s not much hope at all for the rest of us.

Is there no one among the 38 MPs who loses sleep over the fact that innocent people are paying the price for standing up to a minister and his protégées? Is there absolutely no one who seethes when they realise how the police is being used as an instrument of repression?

MITD psychologist Pascale Bodet’s professional reputation is slurred in Parliament because Vasant Bunwaree, already on the defensive in November last year, couldn’t defend the MITD in the face of increasing evidence that they have connived to protect an alleged paedophile. Then suddenly a matter that had been pushed under the carpet since 2011 became so important that the police were deemed not good enough to enquire; a Fact Finding Committee (FFC) is set up and unsurprisingly no evidence was found regarding the alleged paedophile’s relationship with the minor. Yet, even before the FFC sat, Pravind Jugnauth had already submitted ample evidence to the police- among which proof that a relationship more pronounced than that of teacher-student, existed between the alleged paedophile and his 14 year old student. Funny, huh?

Now, trade unionist Hemandar Madhow, who has for the past few years been a prime witness to Bunwaree’s increasing infl uence at the MITD, was interdicted from duty because he’d dared speak about the “chaotic situation” at the MITD. Madhow was cleared by a disciplinary committee but was still given a “severe warning” by the MITD; a measure of the pettiness of those in charge.

Then, pay back time seemed to gather momentum; Pascal Bodet, then Sudha Singh were arrested. Because a political agent of Vasant Bunwaree who also happens to work at the MITD- but is not the officer in charge- went to the police to complain about a case of forgery of documents that he shouldn’t even have been in possession of, in the first place.

He was acting under instructions, he said in a newspaper yesterday. Whose instructions? I think we know.

Remember Madhow? The fearless trade unionist explained two weeks ago in l’express the extent of Vasant Bunwaree’s interference at the MITD. No prize for guessing what happened to him; yep, he was interdicted. Once again.

And not one of those self-professed modernists and socialists in power has anything to say about this. Absolutely amazing.