THE FRENCH IMPERIALISTS MUST BE KICKED OUT OF NEW CALEDONIA!
15 days after the anti-colonial uprising in New Caledonia, a third of the country is in the hands of the original population – the Khanak people – despite the efforts of political negotiation and the criminal repression of the French imperialist government.
New Caledonia comprises several islands, including the main Tierra Grande, home to the capital Noumea with a total area of 19,000 km2, located 1500 km east of Australia and under French colonial rule since the first half of the 19th century.
The Kanaks know European colonialism very well since they were literally hunted to be sold as slaves until in 1853 the territory was incorporated into the French colonial empire. Since then there has been a long tradition of resistance to oppression, parallel to the history of criminal French colonial subjugation. In fact, until 1946 they lived on “reserves” in the best style of Soweto or Gaza and they only got out of that status through their own struggle.
The country has the fourth largest reserve of nickel in the world and an abundance of cobalt and chromium, which generated the massive expulsion of residents who live within the exploited areas with the consequent systematic destruction of ecosystems. Added to this was that in the 1950s, the defeat and expulsion of French imperialism in Indochina and Algeria caused France to evacuate the exploitative French settlers expelled to New Caledonia, giving them enormous agricultural areas. The local bourgeoisie is French, as are all industrial, service, or public employees.
This population had to face the consequences of hundreds of nuclear tests and the systematic theft of their lands to expand agricultural operations. France houses half of its naval forces in the South Pacific there.
Kanako National and Socialist Liberation Front (FLNKS), against which France unleashed fierce repression that led to a civil war between 1985 and 1988, as a result of which France murdered hundreds of residents.
Since the UN approved its status as a territory pending decolonization in 1986, France has systematically refused to comply with the mandate. In 1998, the Nouméa agreements were signed. France transferred local powers to an autonomous government and committed to holding 3 referendums on independence in 2018, 2020, and 2021, which were grossly manipulated, and gave the anti-independence vote the winner.
This time, what unleashed the fury was the approval last Monday the 13th by the French National Assembly of an electoral reform project for the overseas territory of New Caledonia, consisting of granting the right to vote to citizens born in mainland France, who have resided on the island for at least 10 years, to block any possibility that the independence vote could win in the next provincial elections despite the usual electoral fraud.
The French maneuver did nothing more than combine discontent over the current deterioration of living conditions and unemployment of close to 40% of the Khanaks. and exports of minerals whose exploitation destroys the environment and leaves no benefit to the population, with the historical hatred of the colonialist master and the realization that liberation from French chains is increasingly a concrete possibility, as demonstrated in Chad, Burkina Faso, Mali, and Niger, who have begun to break free from the French colonial chains in total decline.
Both the local government exercised by the National Union for Independence (UNI) and the FLNKS have called for calm and dialogue with the French colonial authorities, without prejudice to the fact that they are complicit in the misery of the Kanak people.
Down with the French colonial regime in New Caledonia!
We must prepare the defense!
Nothing with the openly traitorous local UNI and FLNKS calling for calm and negotiations!
For the greatest international solidarity with the Kanaco people!
Boycott France and its companies around the world!
French workers and unions must demand the withdrawal of their government from New Caledonia!
Worker and peasant government of the Kanaco people!
Immediate expropriation and expulsion of French landowners and companies!
Down with all the imperialists!
We must build a strong Revolutionary Party!
Down with capitalism!