[News] The Pacific Lands and Seas Are Neither Forbidden nor Forgotten
Anti-Imperialist News
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Thu Jul 18 11:33:49 EDT 2024
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*The Pacific Lands and Seas Are Neither Forbidden nor Forgotten: The
Twenty-Ninth Newsletter (2024)*
Mahiriki Tangaroa (Kūki ’Airani), /Blessed Again by the Gods (Spring)/,
2015.
Dear friends,
Greetings from the desk of Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research
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Since May, a powerful struggle has rocked Kanaky (New Caledonia), an
archipelago located in the Pacific, roughly 1,500 kilometres east of
Australia. The island, one of five overseas territories in the
Asia-Pacific ruled by France, has been under French colonial rule since
1853. The indigenous Kanak people initiated this cycle of protests after
the French government of Emmanuel Macron extended voting rights in
provincial elections to thousands of French settlers in the islands. The
unrest led Macron to suspend the new rules while subjecting islanders to
severe repression. In recent months, the French government has imposed a
state of emergency and curfew on the islands and deployed thousands of
French troops, which Macron says
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will remain in New Caledonia for ‘as long as necessary’. Over a thousand
protesters have been arrested by French authorities, including Kanak
independence activists such as Christian Tein, the leader of the
Coordination Cell for Field Actions (/Cellule de coordination des
actions de terrain/, or CCAT), some of them sent
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to France to face trial. The charges
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against Tein and others, such as for organised crime, would be laughable
if the consequences were not so serious.
The reason France has cracked down so severely on the protests in New
Caledonia is that the old imperial country uses its colonies not only to
exploit its resources (New Caledonia holds the world’s fifth largest
nickel reserves), but also to extend its political reach across the
world – in this case, to have a military footprint in China’s vicinity.
This story is far from new: between 1966 and 1996, for instance, France
used islands in the southern Pacific for nuclear tests. One of these
tests, Operation Centaure (July 1974), impacted
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all 110,000 residents on the Mururoa atoll of French Polynesia. The
struggle of the indigenous Kanak peoples of New Caledonia is not only
about freedom from colonialism, but also about the terrible military
violence inflicted upon these lands and waters by the Global North. The
violence that ran from 1966 to 1996 mirrors the disregard that the
French still feel for the islanders, treating them as nothing more than
detritus, as if they had been shipwrecked on these lands.
In the backdrop of the current unrest in New Caledonia is the Global
North’s growing militarisation
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of the Pacific, led by the United States. Currently, 25,000 military
personnel from 29 countries are conducting Rim of the Pacific (RIMPAC),
a military exercise that runs from Hawai’i to the edge of the Asian
mainland. Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research worked with an
array of organisations – a number of them from the Pacific and Indian
Oceans – to draft red alert no. 18
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on this dangerous development. Their names are listed below.
They Are Making the Waters of the Pacific Dangerous
What is RIMPAC?
The US and its allies have held Rim of the Pacific (RIMPAC
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exercises since 1971. The initial partners of this military project were
Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and the United
States, which are also the original members of the Five Eyes (now
Fourteen Eyes
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intelligence network built to share information and conduct joint
surveillance exercises. They are also the major Anglophone countries of
the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO, set up in 1949) and are
the members of the Australia-New Zealand-US strategy treaty ANZUS,
signed in 1951. RIMPAC has grown to be a major biennial military
exercise that has drawn in a number of countries with various forms of
allegiance to the Global North (Belgium, Brazil, Brunei, Chile,
Colombia, Ecuador, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Israel, Italy,
Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, the Netherlands, Peru, the Philippines,
Republic of Korea, Singapore, Sri Lanka, Thailand, and Tonga).
RIMPAC 2024 began
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on 28 June and runs through 2 August. It is being held in Hawaiʻi, which
is an illegally occupied territory of the United States. The Hawai’ian
independence movement has a history of resisting RIMPAC, which is
understood to be part of the US occupation of sovereign Hawai’ian land.
The exercise includes over 150 aircraft, 40 surface ships, three
submarines, 14 national land forces, and other military equipment from
29 countries, though the bulk of the fleet is from the United States.
The goal of the exercise is ‘interoperability’, which effectively means
integrating the military (largely naval) forces of other countries with
that of the United States. The main command and control for the exercise
is managed by the US, which is the heart and soul of RIMPAC.
Fatu Feu’u (Samoa), /Mata Sogia/, 2009.
Why is RIMPAC so dangerous?
RIMPAC-related documents and official statements indicate that the
exercises allow these navies to train
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‘for a wide range of potential operations across the globe’. However, it
is clear from both US strategic documents and the behaviour of the US
officials who run RIMPAC that the centre of focus is China. Strategic
documents also make it clear that the US sees China as a major threat,
even as the main threat, to US domination and believes that it must be
contained.
This containment has come through the trade war against China, but more
pointedly through a web of military manoeuvres by the United States.
This includes establishing more US military bases in territories and
countries surrounding China; using US and allied military vessels to
provoke China through freedom of navigation exercises; threatening to
position US short-range nuclear missiles in countries and territories
allied with the US, including Taiwan; extending the airfield in Darwin,
Australia, to position US aircraft with nuclear missiles; enhancing
military cooperation with US allies in East Asia with language that
shows precisely that the target is to intimidate China; and holding
RIMPAC exercises, particularly over the past few years. Though China was
invited to participate in RIMPAC 2014 and RIMPAC 2016, when the tension
levels were not so high, it has been disinvited since RIMPAC 2018.
Though RIMPAC documents suggest that the military exercise is being
conducted for humanitarian purposes, this is a Trojan Horse. This was
exemplified, for instance, at RIMPAC 2000, when the militaries conducted
the Strong Angel international humanitarian response training exercise
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In 2013, the United States and the Philippines cooperated in providing
humanitarian assistance after the devastating Typhoon Haiyan
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Shortly after that cooperation, the US and the Philippines signed
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the Enhanced Defence Cooperation Agreement (2014), which allows the US
to access bases of the Philippine military to maintain its weapons
depots and troops. In other words, the humanitarian operations opened
the door to deeper military cooperation.
RIMPAC is a live-fire military exercise. The most spectacular part of
the exercise is called Sinking Exercise (SINKEX), a drill that sinks
decommissioned warships off the coast of Hawai’i. RIMPAC 2024’s target
ship will be the decommissioned /USS Tarawa/
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a 40,000-tonne amphibious assault vessel that was one of the largest
during its service period. There is no environmental impact survey of
the regular sinking of these ships into waters close to island nations,
nor is there any understanding of the environmental impact of hosting
these vast military exercises not only in the Pacific but elsewhere in
the world.
RIMPAC is part of the New Cold War against China that the US imposes on
the region. It is designed to provoke conflict. This makes RIMPAC a very
dangerous exercise.
Kelcy Taratoa (Aotearoa), /Episode 0010 /from the series Who Am I?
Episodes, 2004.
What is Israel’s role in RIMPAC?
Israel, which is not a country with a shoreline on the Pacific Ocean,
first participated in RIMPAC 2018, and then again in RIMPAC 2022 and
RIMPAC 2024. Although Israel does not have aircraft or ships in the
military exercise, it is nonetheless participating in its
‘interoperability’ component, which includes establishing integrated
command and control as well as collaborating in the intelligence and
logistical part of the exercise. Israel is participating in RIMPAC 2024
at the same time that it is waging a genocide against Palestinians in
Gaza. Though several of the observer states in RIMPAC 2024 (such as
Chile and Colombia) have been forthright in their condemnation of the
genocide, they continue to participate /alongside Israel’s military/ in
RIMPAC 2024. There has been no public indication of their hesitation
about Israel’s involvement in these dangerous joint military exercises.
Israel is a settler-colonial country that continues its murderous
apartheid and genocide against the Palestinian people. Across the
Pacific, indigenous communities from Aotearoa (New Zealand) to Hawai’i
have led the protests against RIMPAC over the course of the past 50
years, saying that these exercises are held on stolen ground and waters,
that they disregard the negative impact on native communities upon whose
land and waters live-fire exercises are held (including areas where
atmospheric nuclear testing was previously conducted), and that they
contribute to the climate disaster that lifts the waters and threatens
the existence of the island communities. Though Israel’s participation
is unsurprising, the problem is not merely its involvement in RIMPAC,
but the existence of RIMPAC itself. Israel is an apartheid state that is
conducting a genocide, and RIMPAC is a colonial project that threatens
an annihilationist war against the peoples of the Pacific and China.
Ralph Ako (Solomon Islands), /Toto Isu/, 2015.
Te Kuaka (Aotearoa)
Red Ant (Australia)
Workers Party of Bangladesh (Bangladesh)
Coordinadora por Palestina (Chile)
Judíxs Antisionistas contra la Ocupación y el Apartheid (Chile)
Partido Comunes (Colombia)
Congreso de los Pueblos (Colombia)
Coordinación Política y Social, Marcha Patriótica (Colombia)
Partido Socialista de Timor (Timor Leste)
Hui Aloha ʻĀina (Hawai’i)
Communist Party of India (Marxist–Leninist) Liberation (India)
Federasi Serikat Buruh Demokratik Kerakyatan (Indonesia)
Federasi Serikat Buruh Militan (Indonesia)
Federasi Serikat Buruh Perkebunan Patriotik (Indonesia)
Pusat Perjuangan Mahasiswa untuk Pembebasan Nasional (Indonesia)
Solidaritas.net (Indonesia)
Gegar Amerika (Malaysia)
Parti Sosialis Malaysia (Malaysia)
No Cold War
Awami Workers Party (Pakistan)
Haqooq-e-Khalq Party (Pakistan)
Mazdoor Kissan Party (Pakistan)
Partido Manggagawa (Philippines)
Partido Sosyalista ng Pilipinas (Philippines)
The International Strategy Center (Republic of Korea)
Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (Sri Lanka)
Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research
Communist Party of Nepal (Unified Socialist)
CODEPINK: Women for Peace (United States)
Nodutdol (United States)
Party for Socialism and Liberation (United States)
When the political protests began in New Caledonia in May, I hastened to
find a book of poems by Kanak independence leader Déwé Gorodé
(1949–2022) called /Under the Ashes of the Conch Shells /(/Sous les
cendres des conques/, 1974). In this book, written the same year that
Gorodé joined the Marxist political group Red Scarves (/Foulards
rouges/), she wrote the poem ‘Forbidden Zone’ (/Zone interdite/), which
concludes:
Reao Vahitahi Nukutavake
Pinaki Tematangi Vanavana
Tureia Maria Marutea
Mangareva MORUROA FANGATAUFA
Forbidden zone
somewhere in
so-called ‘French’ Polynesia.
These are the names of islands that had already been impacted by the
French nuclear bomb tests. There are no punctuation marks between the
names, which indicates two things: first, that the end of an island or a
country does not mark the end of nuclear contamination, and second, that
the waters that lap against the islands do not divide the people who
live across vast stretches of ocean, but unite them against imperialism.
This impulse drove Gorodé to found Group 1878 (named for the Kanak
rebellion of that year) and then the Kanak Liberation Party (/Parti de
libération kanak/, or PALIKA) in 1976, which evolved out of Group 1878.
The authorities imprisoned Gorodé repeatedly from 1974 to 1977 for her
leadership in PALIKA’s struggle for independence from France.
During her time in prison, Gorodé built the Group of Exploited Kanak
Women in Struggle (/Groupe de femmes Kanak exploitées en lutte/) with
Susanna Ounei. When these two women left prison, they helped found the
Kanak National Liberation and Socialist Front (/Front de Libération
Nationale Kanak et Socialiste/) in 1984. Through concerted struggle,
Gorodé was elected the vice president of New Caledonia in 2001.
Stéphane Foucaud (New Caledonia), /MAOW!/ (2023).
In 1985, thirteen countries of the south Pacific signed the Treaty of
Rarotonga
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which established a nuclear-free zone from the east coast of Australia
to the west coast of South America. As French colonies, neither New
Caledonia nor French Polynesia signed it, but others did, including the
Solomon Islands and Kūki ‘Airani (Cook Islands). Gorodé is now dead, and
US nuclear weapons are poised
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to enter northern Australia in violation of the treaty. But the struggle
does not die away.
Roads are still blocked. Hearts are still opened.
Warmly,
Vijay
Website <www.eltricontinental.org>
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