Solidarity to the people of New Caledonia

Solidarity to the people of New Caledonia

Down with the French colonial repression of the Kanak people!

The uprising of the indigenous Kanak people on the island of New Caledonia in the Pacific Ocean and the response of the state and the French settler militias have led to a situation described as a quasi-civil war. The French government and the local authority of the settlers, who are also the bourgeoisie of New Caledonia, refuse to recognise the right of self-determination for the archipelago, which is 17,500 kilometres from Paris and has been a French colony since 1853.

After fierce struggles by the indigenous Kanak, which took on an armed form in the 1970s and 1980s, the French government was forced to hold three referendums on the right to self-determination and independence. In 2020 the result was marginal (53% in favour of remaining in the French state) and then the next one was organised in the midst of the pandemic crisis, despite the pro-independence forces' position being postponed. The boycott they organised resulted in a turnout of only 44%. As the demographic situation in the archipelago is moving in favour of the natives, Paris is seeking to guarantee the future maintenance of the colonial regime of New Caledonia by enlarging the electorate with people who were not even born in the archipelago. In the face of this undemocratic seizure of power, the political and trade union pro-independence movement has called for a series of demonstrations and street blockades. The thousands of young people and workers who have mobilised have been confronted by the police forces and by settler militias, which the police has allowed to operate undisturbed.

Macron declared a state of emergency and ordered the deployment of military reinforcements to the ports and the airport of the capital Nouméa, as well as the intervention of special forces sent from Paris to suppress the movement. In France, the mainstream media portrayed the colonialist militias as bulwarks against 'chaos' and stigmatised the Kanak rebels. At the same time, social networks such as Tik Tok are censored to prevent the population from spreading information about colonial and racist repression. The French media reproduce over and over again images of the "damage" caused by the mobilization to the rich industrial and commercial areas, while remaining silent about the huge income disparities between the indigenous inhabitants and the settlers, the unemployment rate that particularly affects the Kanak, the inequality of access to education or health care, the impact of large-scale mining projects on the lives of the indigenous people, the incredible concentration of wealth in the hands of a handful of large settler families.

All these are signs of the permanence of a colonial model based, for a century and a half, on the expropriation of land, the plundering of natural resources, oppression and racism on an island that has 25% of the world's nickel deposits.

In recent years, French imperialism has suffered a series of blows, mainly in Africa. The French bourgeoisie wants to maintain its positions in the Pacific against its competitors, as well as the important natural resources of the archipelago, and cannot accept any substantial change in the colonial order in New Caledonia. The French right and far right support the government and even call on it to step up repression, while parties of the centre and some on the 'left' call for the 'restoration of the democratic order'. Calls for calm would mean the imposition of an unjust peace in favour of Paris and the settlers, against the interests of the Kanak people, the working class and the youth of the archipelago.

NAR for Communist Liberation declares its support for the Kanak people, the oppressed whose right to resist the colonial order is unquestionable.

If the uprising succeeds in making Macron and the settler bourgeoisie back down, this would be a victory for all the colonized and oppressed peoples of the world, such as that of Palestine. In every country of the world the organisations of the workers' movement, the young people mobilised against the genocide in Palestine are fighting from a class perspective alongside every oppressed people with internationalist solidarity and the social liberation of all peoples and the working class as a horizon.

NAR for Communist Liberation, International Committee