Kia ora everybody
I thought I would like to share this article with you to help
"celebrate" Bastille Day, ironically France's Independence Day. This
article comes from a magazine called Green Left Weekly (#188
5/24/95). The article appeared on the nz.soc.green list and is
reprinted with permission by the list owner
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> (with some parts omitted).
FOR A NUCLEAR FREE AND INDEPENDENT PACIFIC
SUSANNA OUNEI-SMALL is assistant director (decolonisation) of the
Suva-based Pacific Concerns Resource Centre, which serves as the
secretariat of the Nuclear Free and Independent Pacific movement.
She is also an activist in the Kanaky (New Caledonia) independence
movement.
"I am a little suprised," she states emphatically, "that everyone is
so shocked about the French government's decision to resume nuclear
tests at Mururoa atoll in Tahiti. Pacific Islanders know there is
nothing new about Frencha gencies doing whatever they want, whenever
they want. We never asked the French to colonise our countries. We
never asked them to set up their nuclear testing facilities. The
main issue for the people of the French colonies of the Pacific
remains independence".
The only sure way to end French nuclear tests once and for all is for
France to surrender control of Kanaky, Tahiti and the islands of
Wallis and Futuna, she said.
"France started nuclear testing in Tahiti in the '60s... nuclear
testing is an extenstion of the colonisation of Tahiti. Today the
Moahi people want their independence as well"....
A victory for the independence movement in Kanaky will also help rid
the Pacific of nuclear weapons, Ounei-Small pointed out. France has
been able to become an economic and nuclear power due to the wealth
accumulated from the exploitation of colonies throughout the world in
the past, and the continued exploitation of its Pacific colonies,
especially Kanaky...
To police its colonies, protect its investments and maintainits
nuclear program, France maintains the third largest military presence
in the Pacific after Australia and New Zealand...
It has flooded its Pacific possessions with migrants from France to
outnumber the local inhabitants. This policy has been most thorough
in Kanaky, where the proportion of indigenous people in the island's
population has declined from 52% in 1951 to 44% today.... In Tahiti
and Kanaky, there is an apartheid-like gulf between the rich and the
poor.
The French military and far-right settlers have claimed the lives of
many pro-independence fighters...
France is not the only colonial power in the Pacific... the United
States still holds the people of American Samoa, Hawaii, the
Federated States of Micronesia, Guam, Marshall Islands, Palau and the
Northern Marianas in various colonial political arrangements....
including an ecologically dangerous chemical weapons incinerator on
Johnston atoll... [and] US nuclear-powered and armed warships cruise
the Pacific....
Neither is the Australian government innocent... Australia is a key
partner with the French and US in economic issues and maintains a
military alliance with the US through the ANZUS treaty... it also
hosts important US bases which enhance its nuclear war fighting
capabilities and welcomes US nuclear warships... Australia's
willingness to sell uranium to France made it France's "best ally" in
the region....
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Some finishing notes: The French military maintain a heavy control
of the hospitals and statistics on cancers and birth deformities for
"French" Polynesian. The British and American governments have
admitted that their atmospheric tests have contaminated the
populations of the Pacific Islands, Nevada and Australia. These
populations suffer particularly from cancer and their children from
congenital malformation. The French government has made no such
admission [eventhough] radioactive fallout from rains have fallen
on the Cook Islands, Samoa and Fiji, and of course, "French"
Polynesia. Atmospheric testing stopped in 1974, to be replaced by
underground testing. This is what the French propose to do again at
Mururoa.
My notes: Please note that I hope this will not be construed as a
criticism of all "colonials" (past and present) who were born,
raised, lived and died peacefully in the Pacific (or of the French
people themselves). The fight for independence is a fight for the
right to self-govern, for the right to decide one's own future, and
for the right to protect one's own's ecosystem. The fight for
independence is the fight against the ego structures (we can call
them colonialism, or racism, or patriarchy...) who deny the
people the freedom to be "all that they can be".
Naku na ano
Nellie
