Preamble and translation of ‘Kanaky: the time of the colonies is over!’ by the Union Communiste Libertaire (UCL)
In May of this year, large-scale unrest broke out in the French Melanesian territory of Kanaky, more commonly known as New Caledonia. Large sectors of the Indigenous Kanak population protested against a proposal for a new voting law that would expand the electoral power of the white settler population. So far over fifteen hundred people have been arrested, over one hundred and fifty have been injured, and nine have been killed. The protests picked back up again in late June after key Kanak independence activists were detained and transported to mainland France.
Australians generally think of Kanaky-New Caledonia as a happy-go-lucky land of tourist resorts. In actual fact, it is a hotbed of social unrest with a severely divided population. The protests from the Kanak population have not simply been driven by pro-independence sentiments, but by general disillusionment with the country’s economic situation. According to the official French statistics, over 70% of Kanaks live below the poverty line, and around 20% are unemployed.
The Australian government is watching the unrest keenly. Officially, Australia is neutral on the independence question, especially when dealing with the Independent Melanesian states like Fiji and Papua New Guinea which are broadly supportive of the independence forces. However, the Australian government is fundamentally pro-France. In December Penny Wong signed an agreement with the French minister for Foreign Affairs that would allow for increased reciprocal access to each other’s military bases. The brewing conflict between Chinese and American-led imperialism has meant that even its location alone is significant. The country is also very valuable: its nickel deposits are crucial for the production of electric vehicle batteries.
Even if Kanaky-New Caledonia secures independence, it would still be confronted with many of the political-economic problems it faces now. However, a grassroots struggle against French colonialism could develop into something more: a struggle against colonialism that encompasses the entire region and goes beyond just the fight for independence .
The Asia-Pacific region is a pressure cooker. Class conflict is getting more and more acute in countries like Papua New Guinea as capitalism continues to overturn traditional Indigenous societies, turning customary land into private property and throwing its members into the working class. We don’t need to wait until the next war to find the solutions to these problems: solidarity can and should be built between workers in Australia and workers in the Asia-Pacific now.
Below is a translation of an article published by the Union Communiste Libertaire in their newspaper Alternative Libertaire. The Union Communiste Libertaire is a platformist organisation (i.e., in the same tradition as us) that is based in France and is active in the Kanak solidarity movement there. The growth of a similar solidarity movement in Australia would be a welcome development.
Settler colonialism, whether Australian or French, deserves to fall!
Kanaky: The time of the colonies is over!
The arrival of Emmanuel Macron confirming that he wants “neither retreat nor delay but a call for calm”, has sown confusion and cemented a climate of grief and fear which continues to reign. The dissolution of the National Assembly has diverted the media from the problem which remains nonetheless just as important to resolve: the end of the colonisation of Kanaky.
Kanaky, or Kanaky-New Caledonia, is an archipelago of islands situated in the Pacific Ocean between Australia and New Zealand, registered on the list of territories “to decolonise” by the UN. The 1998 Nouméa accords were supposed to launch a 20-year process of decolonisation, resulting in three referendums on the full sovereignty of Kanaky, but the French State wants to maintain its grip for geopolitical and economic interests. Indeed, Kanaky has geographical proximity to China as well as maritime and mineral resources.
The UCL (Libertarian Communist Union) was already denouncing this situation several weeks before the beginning of the revolts, which began when the police opened fire upon protesters opposing the constitutional reform. This was in fact planned for a “thawing of the electoral body” in Kanaky. It consisted – we speak in the past tense, given it was temporarily suspended with the dissolution of the National Assembly – of enlarging the electoral body of Kanaky to integrate the latest arrivals, the majority from France, accentuating the political minority status of the Kanak people, despite them being the Indigenous population. The objective was to authorise as voters every person who had settled in the territory for ten years. This was equivalent to adding 25 000 new voters to an electoral roll of 180 000; something considerable.
Worse still, we learned on the 19th June of the arrest of 11 independentist figures, notably from the CCAT (Field Action Coordination Unit). Their offices were searched in the process, as these figures of the movement were accused of being responsible for revolts which the French government themselves had provoked, in getting the police to open fire on the Kanak people during a protest, and by their forced passage of a colonial reform without any consultation.
This is essential for all settler colonialism, as it was in Algeria. For 171 years, the French State has firstly decimated the Kanak peoples, then organised the replacement of the Indigenous population with waves of immigration.
The French State has not renounced its colonial empire, and is strongly destabilising societies which remain colonised, confronting the people with extreme violence: on the part of the French police, but also the settler militias wanting to conserve their privileges and the colonial situation.
It is time for the French State to withdraw from this territory situated more than 22 000 km from Paris. The time will come for the inhabitants of Kanaky to decide for themselves the future society that they want to construct, in re-discovering at the same time their access to the most fundamental rights, to know the right to their history, to their land, to their culture, to their dignity and to their self-determination.
Solidarity with all the anticolonial people and organisations, from the UGTG (Workers Union of Guadeloupe) of Guadeloupe to the FLNKS (Kanak and Socialist National Liberation Front) of Kanaky, who suffer under and struggle against the colonial government of the French State, in territories called “overseas”, or in the decolonised countries still under its influence.
Complete solidarity with the Kanak people and with the independentist movement in its entirety! 171 years of occupation is enough: the time of the colonies is over!
Union communiste libertaire, le 22 juin 2024.