THE FRENCH COLONY IN THE SOUTH PACIFIC KNOWN AS ‘NEW CALEDONIA’ is the site of three open-pit nickel mining operations (an essential component for state-of-the-art batteries and in stainless steel production) exploiting a quarter of the world’s nickel reserves. The air and water is polluted with the acrid discharge of metal processing, with the island under the yoke of a colonialism which has not slackened since its infamous use as a prison colony. In recent weeks this centuries-old domination has been shaken to its core by the revolt of the indigenous Kanak youth.
The colonial economy in the hands of French administrators holds the country to ransom, dictating everything in the society to the benefit of foreign multinationals. Historically they have recruited opportunist puppets within the indigenous Kanak liberation movement to keep a lid on rebellion (one of these was memorably silenced in 1989 by the gunshots of a rebel who wouldn’t accept ‘peace accords‘ with colonialists to be signed on his behalf).
Earlier in May, the latest intrigue by France to rig the electoral system was the trigger for a new explosion of rebellion, surging against the men and structures of power. At the time of writing this revolt is far from over.
Kanak rebels have paralysed the capital city, cut all air traffic and have brought nickel production to a grinding halt. The images of the last weeks have been of burning barricades, thousands or French soldiers and police deployed to this imperial frontier, and shocked Foreign tourists evacuated from their island holidays on emergency military flights.
The international media is the voice of the enemy, and so the information we have is of little serious value, and is thin on the ground, but we want to make an effort to grasp something of this revolt from far away because it is a war which we are involved in whether we realise it or not.
Everywhere around us is the noxious electric garbage (e-vehicles, ‘renewable’ energy storage) whose metallic components have been ripped out of the ground that this unconquerable people are fighting on. Venerated by the faithful dogs of power as ‘progress’ we know what the demand for raw materials and energy tor the ‘electrified’ economy means: ecological carnage and colonial slaughter in the frenzy to construct a sterile, artificial world.
One small part of this global geography of domination is now a site of rebirth tor the social war. For all lovers or freedom then, whose desire is for these storms to engulf the maps of this controlled world, it is necessary to try to hear and to reply: so that revolt speaks to revolt, individual or collective, in a cacophony which reverberates through borders. Anywhere, everywhere.
