How can people be expected to expose corruption and other crimes if they aren’t protected?
On 18 October 2020, the half-charred body of a man was discovered in the sugarcane fields alongside a stream near the village of Moka in Mauritius. This incident was initially dismissed as just another senseless killing on the idyllic island.
However, as the investigation proceeded, the victim was identified as Soopramanien Kistnen, a construction contractor and former member of the Mouvement Socialiste Militant – the majority in the country’s ruling coalition.
The police initially ruled the death as suicide, but after further investigation and pressure by civil society, it was determined to be a murder. It later emerged that before his death, Kistnen was about to expose a corruption scandal involving the government’s purchase of public protective equipment. So it appears that Kistnen’s death may not have been a senseless crime, but rather an indication of the dangers faced by anyone willing to blow the whistle on corruption (or any other type of crime).
Transparency International defines whistleblowing as ‘the disclosure of information about a perceived wrongdoing in an organisation, or the risk thereof, to individuals or entities believed to be able to effect action.’ The importance of whistleblowers in shedding light on complex crimes such as corruption, organised crime and terrorism cannot be overstated. They provide information crucial for law enforcement to detect and...
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