Journalists who report on environmental issues are encountering growing difficulties in many parts of the world, reports Reporters Without Borders.
According to the tally kept by RSF, 200 journalists have been subjected to threats and physical violence, including murder, in the past 10 years because they were working on stories linked to the environment.
Twenty four were murdered in Latin America and Asia — including the Pacific, which makes these two regions the most dangerous ones for environmental reporters.
From restrictions on access to information and gag suits to physical attacks, the work of environmental journalists and their safety are increasingly threatened.
RSF has denounced the obstacles to the right to information about ecological and climate issues and calls on all countries to recognise the vital nature of the work of environmental journalists, and to guarantee their safety.
Nearly half of the journalists killed in India in the past 10 years — 13 of 28 — were working on environmental stories that often also involved corruption and organised crime, especially the so-called “sand mafia,” which illegally excavates millions of tons of this precious resource for the construction industry.
Amazon deforestation
Journalists covering the challenges of deforestation in the Amazon are also constantly subjected to threats and harassment that prevent them from working freely.
The scale of the problem was highlighted in 2022 by the murder of Dom Phillips, a British reporter specialised in environmental issues.
“Regarding the environmental and climate challenges we face, the freedom to cover these issues is essential,” said RSF’s editorial director Anne Bocandé.
The leader of the left-wing MPs’ coalition in the French parliament was summoned for questioning by police on Tuesday 23 April. It was over an investigation into suspected justification of “terrorism” over comments on 7 October attack by Hamas on Israel.
In reality, the politician was stating the truth: that the Hamas attack came off the back of decades of Israeli colonialism and occupation-based apartheid.
Panot: telling the truth about Israel
Mathilde Panot heads the lower house of parliament faction of the France Unbowed (LFI) party, which has been repeatedly accused by opponents of failing to clearly condemn the attack by Hamas.
The LFI – which is now France’s strongest political force on the left – has in turn lashed out at what it sees as an erosion of free speech and accused Israel of committing “genocide” against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.
Panot said it was the first time in modern French history that a head of a parliamentary faction “was summoned on such serious grounds”:
I am warning about this serious exploitation of justice aimed at suppressing political expression.
On 7 October, the French LFI group in parliament published a text which sparked controversy because it described the Hamas attack as “an armed offensive by Palestinian forces” that occurred “in a context of intensification of the Israeli occupation policy” in the Palestinian territories.
Of course, this context is correct.
Manufacturing consent for genocide
However, as the Canary previously wrote, the West has been manufacturing consent for Israel’s genocide in Gaza. For example, it has pushed the notions that:
Hamas’s attack was unprovoked – despite decades of Israeli apartheid, killings of Palestinians, and war crimes against them.
The far-right Israeli government is the victim and a ‘good guy’ in this – when it is an openly racist, authoritarian colonial occupier.
Israel’s actions in Gaza and the Occupied Territories are permissible – when it is clear it has repeatedly broken international law in recent days.
However, Western colonialists were never going to manufacture anything other than consent for hatred of Palestinians – and for Israel’s killing of them.
The LFI’s firebrand figurehead and former presidential candidate Jean-Luc Melenchon described the summons an “unprecedented event in the history of our democracy”, accusing the authorities of “protecting a genocide”.
Last week, two conferences by Melenchon on the situation in the Middle East were cancelled in Lille, first at the university then in a private room.
This is against the backdrop of the US now sending $13bn more in military aid to Israel. That’s despite its forces killing at least 34,183 people in Gaza, most of them women and children.
A pro-independence activist in New Caledonia is warning France to immediately halt its planned constitution amendments or face “war”.
The call for a u-turn follows proposed constitutional changes to voting rights which could push the number of eligible anti-independence voters up.
Pacific Independence Movement (le Mouvement des Océaniens indépendantistes) spokesperson Arnaud Chollet-Léakava was one of the thousands who took to the streets in Nouméa in protest last Saturday.
A dog wearing a Kanak flag at the pro-independence rally last Saturday. Image: RNZ Pacific/Lydia Lewis
She feared the indigenous people of New Caledonia — the Kanak people — would lose in their fight for independence:
“They want to make us a minority . . . it will make us a minority!
“The law will make the Kanaky people a minority because it will open the electoral body to other people who are not Kanaky and who will give their opinion on the accession of Caledonia to full sovereignty,” Ponija said.
Security was high last weekened with more than 100 additional security forces sent from France for the protest and counter-protest. Image: RNZ Pacific/Lydia Lewis
‘Heading towards a civil war’ A French man who has lived in New Caledonia for two decades said independence or not, he just wanted peace.
The man — who wanted to remain anonymous out of fear of retribution — said he moved to New Caledonia knowing he would be living on colonised land.
Having experienced violence in 2019, the man begged both sides to be amicable.
“[It’s] very complicated and very serious because if the law is not withdrawn and passed. We are clearly heading towards a civil war,” he said.
“We hope for peace and we hope that we find a common agreement for both parties.
“People want peace and we don’t want to move towards war.”
The constitutional bill was endorsed by the French Senate on April 2.
The next stage is for the bill to be debated, which has been set down for May 13.
Then both the Senate and the National Assembly will gather in June to give the final stamp of approval.
This would allow any citizen who has lived in New Caledonia for at least 10 years to cast their vote at local elections.
The Kanaky New Caledonia pro-independence rally last Saturday. Image: RNZ Pacific/Lydia Lewis
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.
It crackles like a Geiger counter in a uranium mine: in 2023, Emmanuel Macron announced plans for six additional EPR [European Pressurized Reactor] nuclear power plants. Hang on, no, perhaps fourteen in the long term.
In reviving nuclear in the name of the struggle against global warming, the European Union has followed suit. Japan is promising new developments on the nuclear front. The US is experimenting with miniature reactors. China is building with gusto … All these ‘ionizing’ projects seem to indicate that fission-based nuclear power is in full swing.
In fact, it is to the contrary. A report of experts published in December 2023, the World Nuclear Industry Status Report 2023 [549 p!], using data supplied by the International Atomic Energy Agency and national states, provides the evidence. The part of electricity generation due to nuclear power is the lowest in 30 years (9.2 percent), compared to near double that figure in the 1990s.
Over twenty years, the cost of a nuclear kilowatt hour has increased slightly, whereas the cost of solar and wind has plummeted (‘melted’), these days coming in at roughly half that of nuclear. In 2022, the report highlights, €35 billion has been invested in nuclear globally, compared to … €455 billion in renewables.
France is still trying to recover from an annus horribilis in 2022. In addition to higher costs associated with the war in Ukraine, reactor shutdowns have multiplied. In August 2023, 60 % of France’s 56 reactors were dysfunctional. During 2023, production has augmented, but it has stayed at the level of … 1995.
Showcases of French savoir-faire, the EPR reactors are not ‘making sparks’, accumulating shutdowns, delays (twelve years for Flamanville, on the English Channel, and thirteen years for Olkiluoto, in Finland) as well as cost blowouts (the bill multiplied by 1.7 [for now] at Hinkley Point, in Great Britain, by 3 at Olkiluoto and by 6 at Flamanville!).
During this time, plutonium (for which every gram is of fearsome toxicity), an essential fuel for these ‘toys’, piles up. The accumulated stock for France has reached an unprecedented level of 92 tonnes.
Small problem: how can EDF [Électricité de France], which has acquired a debt of €65 billion, finance the announced projects? This question doesn’t stop Brussels from supporting them – in spite of the industrial disaster on course. No matter that, for several years, within the EU, renewable energy (hydraulic, wind and solar) has generated the most electricity, ahead of nuclear, followed by gas and coal.
South Korea was formerly one of the principal international competitors of EDF for conquering foreign markets. These days South Korea shows itself more reluctant, especially after a calamitous 2022. Kepco, the national electrician, has lost more than €22 billion, adding to a debt of €131 billion – a record. Nuclear contributes 29.6 % to production, currently less than coal. But the promises – within ten years coal’s contribution is supposed to be cut in half and that of renewables tripled. As for nuclear, it will grow by … 5 %.
Japan only starts to pick up with the atom after the closure of several reactors following Fukushima. To the subsequent shortage of electricity add the financial dimension of the catastrophe: in 2021, the government estimated it at more than €200 billion. Thirteen years after the event, the Prime Minister, Fumio Kishida, wants to rekindle nuclear (‘accelerate the particles’) but furnishes no details on new reactors.
Last year, production in Japan was at its lowest level (equivalent to that of the 1970s), and only 6 % of electricity was of nuclear origin. In spite of announcements, distrust persists, especially since the discovery of misrepresentations (modification of results of chemical analyses, falsification of measures of resistance of materials) of Japan Steel Works, manufacturer of components for reactors, selling them worldwide and notably to France.
China is the country most committed to the atom. Of 58 reactors currently under construction globally, 23 (40 %) are in the Middle Kingdom. However, if nuclear trots, renewables gallop flat out. Nuclear represents 5 % of electricity, whereas wind and solar furnish 15 %, progressing more quickly than coal, which remains far and away the main ‘source of the juice’. Another vexation: Beijing exports little of its savoir-faire. This is because the US, among others, have blacklisted Chinese enterprises, accused them of having siphoned American technology for its military ambitions. Slanderous!
The United States remains the champion of nuclear energy but its brainpower has not kept pace (‘their neutrons are not very quick’). In 2022, the contribution of nuclear to electricity generation has fallen to 18.2 % – the lowest rate since 1987 – less than coal and renewables, the latter passed for the first time to pole position. American reactors are on average the oldest in the world (42 years), and only two reactors have been brought into service in the last twenty-five years.
And what a debut! The AP1000 (variation of the EPR) of Vogtle (Georgia) began operation in March 2023, eight years later than planned and at an estimated cost of €28.5 billion — more than double the initial estimate. [The French business newspaper] Les Echos (25/1/22) has cheekily described the feat as a local ‘Flamanville’. This financial debacle has much contributed to the failure of Westinghouse, a giant of nuclear reactor manufacturing. The event has also provoked the shutdown of the construction site (nine years of work) and of two other AP1000s in South Carolina. Living fossils!
As a consequence, the US is paying more attention to mini reactors, or SMR [small modular reactors]. Save that NuScale, the champion of the type, last November, cancelled a vast construction program of six of these miniatures, for which the budget had almost tripled …
Russia is the veritable world champion of the ‘civil atom’. That said, however, it produces only 20 % of the country’s electricity. Rosatom, the Russian EDF, foreshadows a small increase to 25 %, but in … 2045. It is overseas where business is booming. Russia, a nation at war, is building reactors in countries as peaceful as Iran, Egypt, India and Türkiye. Without forgetting China, one of Russia’s best customers.
Russia’s commercial secret? Its discounted prices, its turnkey packages and, above all, its control of the indispensable enriched uranium. Russia furnishes much of the latter to Europe but also to the US, 31 % of its supplies coming from Russia. All this while imposing sanctions on Putin’s country, which toys with the nuclear threat, going so far as to bomb the vicinity of Ukraine’s nuclear reactor at Zaporizhzhia [Why would Russia bomb a nuclear power plant that it has been in control of since 2022? Also: “Jeffrey Sachs: Biden Needs to Tell Ukraine to Stop Bombing the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant or Face Real Armageddon” — DV ed] – the largest such in Europe.
Business is business.
This article appeared in the French weekly Le Canard enchaîné, 24 January 2024, under the title “Partout dans le monde, l‘énergie nucléaire coûte un pognon de dingue!” It has been translated by Evan Jones and is reproduced with permission.
The French Senate has endorsed a Constitutional review project bearing significant modifications to the local electoral rules for New Caledonia, but with amendments.
The text passed on Tuesday with 233 votes in favour and 99 against.
It aims at modifying the conditions for French citizens to access a special list of voters for the elections in New Caledonia’s three provinces and the Congress.
Since 2007 the electoral roll for those local elections was “frozen”, allowing only people residing in New Caledonia before 1998.
However, the French government and its Home Affairs and Overseas Minister Gérald Darmanin introduced earlier this year a new text for a “sliding” electoral roll allowing citizens who had been residing in New Caledonia for an uninterrupted 10 years to be on the local roll.
The move has been strongly contested by pro-independence parties in New Caledonia, who fear the new rules (which would grant the local vote to up to 25,000 extra voters) will threaten the French Pacific terrotory’s political balance.
During heated debates last week and Tuesday for the vote, Senators sometimes traded robust words, with the left-wing parties (including Socialists and Communists) rallying in support of New Caledonia’s pro-independence parties and accusing Darmanin of “forcing the text through”.
New Caledonia’s pro-independence umbrella, the FLNKS, last week officially demanded that the French government withdraw its Constitutional amendment and that instead a high-level mediatory mission be sent to New Caledonia.
Parallel to the Parliamentary moves, New Caledonia’s politicians, both pro and against independence, have been asked to meet for comprehensive talks in order to draw up a new agreement that would replace the now-defunct Nouméa Accord, signed in 1998.
Nouméa Accord
One of the Accord’s prescriptions was that three consecutive referendums on New Caledonia’s self-determination be held.
All three ballots took place in 2018 and 2021 and three times independence was defeated, albeit in narrow votes in the first two referendums.
However, even though the FLNKS contested the result of the third referendum (boycotted by the independence parties because of the covid pandemic), French President Emmanuel Macron said in July 2023 that he now considered New Caledonia wanted to remain French.
The next step in the Nouméa Accord was for political stakeholders to engage in “inclusive” talks to examine the “situation thus generated”.
The French government’s current moves are said to be a pragmatic response to those sometimes elusive guidelines.
The provincial elections, which were originally scheduled to take place in May, have now been postponed to December 15 “at the latest”.
But in the Constitutional review project, even though the sole subject is the change in access to local elections roll of voters, there are also references to the date of those elections.
This includes that even if a local, bipartisan, inclusive agreement was found and duly recognised between now and December 15, the Constitutional amendment would become irrelevant. Priority would be given to a local New Caledonian agreement to serve as the base for a new Constitutional amendment.
‘Give more time’ During debates since last week, the Senate’s Law Committee managed to introduce new amendments, sometimes rectifying the initial government text.
For instance, if the awaited accord to succeed the Nouméa pact came through, there would be a call for a new election date.
Originally, this would have been achieved by way of a government decree which, the government said, would be the fastest way.
Now the Senate has changed that to a Parliamentary process (also including New Caledonia’s Congress) which could take much more time to set in place.
The general idea, the Senate’s Law Committee said, was to “give more time” for the expected political agreement to happen “without applying excessive stress” to the whole process.
There was consensus on the need to “unfreeze” the local electoral roll (the measure was initially temporary and transitional under the Nouméa Accord) because it denied some 12,000 citizens (even if some of those, indigenous Kanaks or non-Kanaks, were born in New Caledonia) the right to vote.
It was feared that if those elections were held under the “frozen” rule, they would probably be declared invalid and unconstitutional.
Critics of the amendment, including New Caledonia’s first pro-independence Senator Robert Xowie, also said that the manner in which it was “forced” — more than its substance — was a major flaw and that the French State should keep an “impartial” posture, consistent with the spirit of the Nouméa Accord.
New Caledonia’s first pro-independence Senator Robert Xowie speaks before the French Senate Tuesday . . . . “The point of no return has not been reached yet.” Image: Sénat.fr/screenshot
‘Don’t inflame’ call “The point of no return has not been reached yet. We can still avoid lighting that spark which could inflame the whole situation”, Xowie told the Senate.
He also called on the French Prime Minister’s office, once directly in charge of New Caledonia’s matters, to return to steer these issues.
The 10-year uninterrupted residency condition was described by the government as “a reasonable compromise”, Darmanin’s delegate Minister for Overseas Marie Guévenoux told the Senate.
While apologising for Darmanin’s absence, she said the new self-imposed calendar challenges due to the change of implementation process would be hard to meet.
She said there were provisions in the initial draft that would have allowed the government to react more quickly by way of decree in suspending the provincial elections — and even postponing them as far as “November 2025”.
French delegate Minister for Overseas Marie Guévenoux speaks to the French Senate on Tuesday . . . calendar challenges would be hard to meet. Image: Sénat.fr/screenshot
Waiting for a local, inclusive political agreement After the Senate’s endorsement of the modified amendment, the text is, however, far from the end of its legislative journey: it is now due for debate before the National Assembly on May 13.
If it passes again, its legislative journey is not finished yet as it has to be endorsed sometime in June 2024 by the French Congress, which is a gathering of both the Senate and National Assembly by a required three-fifths majority.
Tensions high back in Nouméa During debates on Tuesday, Senators often alluded to the recent radicalisation from both the pro-independence and pro-French parties.
Last week, the two antagonist groups held two opposing demonstrations and marches at the same time, both in downtown Nouméa, only a few hundred meters away from each other.
Thousands, on each side, have held banners and flags opposing the electoral changes on one side and supporting them on the other side.
There was also a clear escalation in the tone of speeches held, notably by the French “loyalists”.
Part of their protest last Thursday was also to denounce a series of government-imposed taxes, including one on fuel (which has since been withdrawn after a series of blockades) and the other on electricity (to avoid bankruptcy for local power company Enercal)
Last month, “loyalists” members walked out of New Caledonia’s “collegial” government, saying they regarded their pro-independence party colleagues as “illegitimate”.
On the local scene, over the past few months, New Caledonia has been facing the very real effects of an economic crisis for its crucial nickel industry.
One of the three nickel mining plants has been temporarily shut down and the other two are facing a similarly bleak future, putting at risk thousands of jobs.
Paris has put on the table a rescue plan worth over 200 million euros to bail out New Caledonia’s nickel industry, provided it engages in stringent reforms to lower its production costs, but the signing, initially scheduled to take place by the end of March, has still not happened.
Later this week, New Caledonia’s congress is due to meet specifically on the matter to authorise President Louis Mapou to do so.
One strong opponent to the amendment’s vote this week, Mélanie Vogel (Greens and Solidarity caucus) warned the House she believed if the amendment was forced through “we are getting ready to break the conditions that made a return to civil peace possible”.
She and others from all sides of the House also supported the idea of some kind of a delegation to foster the conclusion of talks for the much-expected successor agreement to the Nouméa Accord.
During the first half of the 1980s, New Caledonia was the scene of a civil war between pro and anti-independence sides which only ended after the signing of the Matignon-Oudinot Accords in 1988.
The Nouméa Accord followed in 1998.
“We’re all waiting for this inclusive agreement to arrive, but for the time being, it’s not there. So this (constitutional amendment), for now, is the least bad solution,” Senator Philippe Bonnecarrère (Centrist Union) told the House.
“So this (constitutional amendment), for now, is the least bad solution.”
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
The signing of a “nickel pact” to salvage New Caledonia’s embattled industry has not been signed by the end of March, as initially announced by French Economy Minister Bruno Le Maire.
Le Maire had hinted at the date of March 25 last week, but New Caledonia’s territorial government President Louis Mapou wants to have his Congress endorse the pact before he signs anything.
The Congress is scheduled to put the French pact (worth hundreds of millions of euro) to the debate this Wednesday.
The pact is supposed to bail out New Caledonia’s nickel industry players from a grave crisis, caused by the current state of the world nickel prices and the market dominance of Indonesia which produces much cheaper nickel in large quantities.
The proposed aid agreement, however, has strings attached: in return, New Caledonia’s nickel industry must undertake a far-reaching reform plan to increase its attraction and decrease its production costs.
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.
The news editor of regional daily La Provence in France has been suspended after a front-page headline critical of President Emmanuel Macron was published – causing outrage across the newsroom.
Macron: drug dealers are better than him?
Macron recently launched a major operation against drug trafficking in the southern port city of Marseille and elsewhere. He said that gangland battles that last year left dozens dead had made life a misery for residents.
Following Macron’s Marseille visit, La Provence Daily published a front page on Thursday 21 March showing two people, presumably drug dealers, watching a police patrol. The accompanying headline said “He’s gone, but we’re still here”:
On the basis of the front page, La Provence‘s news editor Aurelien Viers was suspended for failing to follow its “values and editorial line”, according to the paper’s managing editor Gabriel d’Harcourt.
In an article To Our Readers published Friday 22 March, d’Harcourt said that the front-page quote and picture:
could lead people to believe that we agree to give drug dealers a voice so they can mock the public authority.
Hang on La Provence
However, in an article inside La Provence, the front-page quote was actually attributed to a resident of a poor Marseille neighbourhood, named only as Brahim. They said that the city:
found the means necessary to protect the president during his visit. He’s gone, but we’re still here, in the same hell.
D’Harcourt said his paper’s coverage of the visit had been “very good”, except for the front page:
where you get the impression that we’re spokespeople for the dealers… [the front page was] contrary to our roles and the role we want to play in Marseille and the surrounding region.
Let’s be real: it is highly unlikely that anyone who read La Provence‘s front page thought that it was endorsing drug dealers over Macron.
“Scandalised”
SNJ, the main union at La Provence, told Agence France-Presse (AFP) that the paper’s journalists were “scandalised” by Viers’s suspension.
A general staff assembly would decide on any protest action, it said. By 5pm on 22 March, La Provence‘s website said:
Due to a social movement by the Editorial Team, we would like to inform you of the non-publication of today’s newspaper.
That is, it appears staff walked out.
On X, people were calling the situation out for what it seemed to be:
Le directeur de la rédaction de La Provence mis à pied car la « une » d’aujourd’hui n’a pas plu à Emmanuel Macron. La liberté de la presse est piétinée en France ! pic.twitter.com/5kZCOXLzgC
Une Une qui dérange le pouvoir c’est souvent le signe que le journal fait son travail. Mais Rodolphe Saadé préfère céder aux caprices du gouvernement et écarter son directeur. Soutien à toute la rédaction de La Provence qui a décidé de se mettre en grève illimitée pic.twitter.com/tKpIJn7GG3
La Provence, published in Marseille, has a daily circulation of around 70,000. It is owned by CMA CGM Medias, which belongs to Rodolphe Saade, a Franco-Lebanese billionaire businessman. Saade, who has other high-profile media interests, this week announced that he would also buy Altice Media, which owns broadcasters BFMTV and RMC.
Sacré bleu!
Asked during an Altice staff meeting whether he would seek to censor unfavourable news about his media interests, Saade replied:
I wouldn’t like it, and I would let that be known… [But] I wouldn’t interfere.
French regulators said on Wednesday 20 March they were fining Google €250m for breaching commitments on paying media companies for reproducing their content online and for using their material for its AI chatbot – without telling them.
Google: pay up, say journalists – and the regulator agrees
Google had made commitments in 2022 to negotiate fairly with news organisations in France. This was a year after the Competition Authority hit the UStechnology giant with a €500m fine over the long-running dispute.
Organisations representing French magazines and newspapers – as well as Agence France-Presse (AFP) – had lodged a case with the regulator in 2019.
Under its commitments, the US tech giant has to provide news groups with a transparent offer of payment within three months of receiving a copyright complaint. However, the regulator said on 20 March it was imposing the new fine on Google for “failing to respect commitments made in 2022” and not negotiating in “good faith” with news publishers.
US tech giant says ‘blah, blah, blah’
The regulator said Google also used content from press agencies to train its AI platform Bard (now known as Gemini), without notifying them or the authority. It also failed to provide publishers and news agencies a technical solution allowing them to object to the use of their content. The French regulator said this ended up “hindering” their ability to negotiate remuneration.
It said Google had agreed to “not dispute the facts” as part of the settlement process. The US tech giant also proposed “a series of corrective measures” in response to the failings identified by the authority.
In a statement, Google said the fine was disproportionate and did not:
sufficiently take into account the efforts we have made to answer and resolve the concerns raised – in an environment where it’s very hard to set a course because we can’t predict which way the wind will blow next.
We’ve settled because it’s time to move on.
Google: plagiarising across Europe
The EU created in 2019 a form of copyright called “neighbouring rights” that allows print media to demand compensation for using their content.
France has been a test case for the rules. After initial resistance Google and Facebook both agreed to pay some French media for articles shown in web searches.
Other EU countries have also challenged Google over news content.
Spain’s competition watchdog launched an investigation into Google last year for alleged anti-competitive practices affecting news agencies and press publications.
But in 2022, Germany’s antitrust regulator shelved an investigation into Google’s News Showcase service, after the tech giant made “important adjustments” to ease competition concerns.
Greek call centre workers went on strike on Wednesday 13 March – joining colleagues in France as well. It was over pay, conditions, and crucially the racist and discriminatory treatment of migrant workers in Greece’s call centres.
Greek call centre workers on strike
With a massive new strike, workers in call centre companies in Greece demanded wage increases, collective contracts, and an end to the slave trade practices with the “special purpose visa” for migrant workers in call centres, where thousands of migrants work alongside Greek colleagues:
Photos from the massive 13rd March Strike of call center workers in Greece. Workers in Teleperformance says "Enough is enough" and raises the flag of struggle for better wages and working conditions.@SETIPATTIKIS@setipthesspic.twitter.com/2UwXnRRGP1
— Nakliyat-İş International (@nakliyatisint) March 13, 2024
Migrant workers in Greek call centres are paid less than their counterparts – prompting angry placards at the strikes:
In fact, after the official foundation of two new trade unions representing workers from the companies Teleperformance and Webhelp, the strikers yesterday were even more determined in the battle they are fighting, overcoming the threats and blackmails escalated by the employers:
It is significant that many of them were striking even though they are under performance “evaluation”, i.e. “hostage” status by the employer. Also, young workers who had not taken the step in the two previous strikes also took part, sending a message to the employers that their struggle is not being defused, but is instead escalating.
“Enough is enough” was typically heard over and over again:
It came with one voice from Greek and migrant workers, both in the rallies outside the companies’ offices in Athens and outside the parliament:
Enough is enough
There, the Greek call centre strikers all met up – responding to the joint strike call of the sectoral Telecommunications Information Technology Trade Union (SETIP) of Attica and the newly established Teleperformance (SETEP) and Webhelp (WUW) trade unions:
Ferhat Tum, president of the Greek call centre workers’ union of Teleperformance, said:
We fought another battle despite the employers’ blackmail to stop the strike. Today we gave them another answer. Let them come now to discuss the Collective Contract.
While at the same time with their colleagues in Greece, the workers of Teleperformance and Webhelp in France went on strike:
Enough is Enough | Τετάρτη 13 Μαρτίου Πολυεθνική 24ωρη Απεργία των Εργαζομένων στα Τηλεφωνικά Κέντρα σε Ελλάδα & Γαλλία.
Greek call centre workers went on strike on Wednesday 13 March – joining colleagues in France as well. It was over pay, conditions, and crucially the racist and discriminatory treatment of migrant workers in Greece’s call centres.
Greek call centre workers on strike
With a massive new strike, workers in call centre companies in Greece demanded wage increases, collective contracts, and an end to the slave trade practices with the “special purpose visa” for migrant workers in call centres, where thousands of migrants work alongside Greek colleagues:
Photos from the massive 13rd March Strike of call center workers in Greece. Workers in Teleperformance says "Enough is enough" and raises the flag of struggle for better wages and working conditions.@SETIPATTIKIS@setipthesspic.twitter.com/2UwXnRRGP1
— Nakliyat-İş International (@nakliyatisint) March 13, 2024
Migrant workers in Greek call centres are paid less than their counterparts – prompting angry placards at the strikes:
In fact, after the official foundation of two new trade unions representing workers from the companies Teleperformance and Webhelp, the strikers yesterday were even more determined in the battle they are fighting, overcoming the threats and blackmails escalated by the employers:
It is significant that many of them were striking even though they are under performance “evaluation”, i.e. “hostage” status by the employer. Also, young workers who had not taken the step in the two previous strikes also took part, sending a message to the employers that their struggle is not being defused, but is instead escalating.
“Enough is enough” was typically heard over and over again:
It came with one voice from Greek and migrant workers, both in the rallies outside the companies’ offices in Athens and outside the parliament:
Enough is enough
There, the Greek call centre strikers all met up – responding to the joint strike call of the sectoral Telecommunications Information Technology Trade Union (SETIP) of Attica and the newly established Teleperformance (SETEP) and Webhelp (WUW) trade unions:
Ferhat Tum, president of the Greek call centre workers’ union of Teleperformance, said:
We fought another battle despite the employers’ blackmail to stop the strike. Today we gave them another answer. Let them come now to discuss the Collective Contract.
While at the same time with their colleagues in Greece, the workers of Teleperformance and Webhelp in France went on strike:
Enough is Enough | Τετάρτη 13 Μαρτίου Πολυεθνική 24ωρη Απεργία των Εργαζομένων στα Τηλεφωνικά Κέντρα σε Ελλάδα & Γαλλία.
U.S. and Ukrainian armies attend the opening ceremony of the “RAPID TRIDENT-2021” military exercises.
President Biden began his State of the Union speech with an impassioned warning that failing to pass his $61 billion dollar weapons package for Ukraine “will put Ukraine at risk, Europe at risk, the free world at risk.” But even if the president’s request were suddenly passed, it would only prolong, and dangerously escalate, the brutal war that is destroying Ukraine.
The assumption of the U.S. political elite that Biden had a viable plan to defeat Russia and restore Ukraine’s pre-2014 borders has proven to be one more triumphalist American dream that has turned into a nightmare. Ukraine has joined North Korea, Vietnam, Somalia, Kosovo, Afghanistan, Iraq, Haiti, Libya, Syria, Yemen, and now Gaza, as another shattered monument to America’s military madness.
This could have been one of the shortest wars in history, if President Biden had just supported a peace and neutrality agreement negotiated in Turkey in March and April 2022 that already had champagne corks popping in Kyiv, according to Ukrainian negotiator Oleksiy Arestovych. Instead, the U.S. and NATO chose to prolong and escalate the war as a means to try to defeat and weaken Russia.
Two days before Biden’s State of the Union speech, Secretary of State Blinken announced the early retirement of Acting Deputy Secretary of State Victoria Nuland, one of the officials most responsible for a decade of disastrous U.S. policy toward Ukraine.
Two weeks before the announcement of Nuland’s retirement at the age of 62, she acknowledged in a talk at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) that the war in Ukraine had degenerated into a war of attrition that she compared to the First World War, and she admitted that the Biden administration had no Plan B for Ukraine if Congress doesn’t cough up $61 billion for more weapons.
We don’t know whether Nuland was forced out, or perhaps quit in protest over a policy that she fought for and lost. Either way, her ride into the sunset opens the door for others to fashion a badly needed Plan B for Ukraine.
The imperative must be to chart a path back from this hopeless but ever-escalating war of attrition to the negotiating table that the U.S. and Britain upended in April 2022 – or at least to new negotiations on the basis that President Zelenskyy defined on March 27, 2022, when he told his people, “Our goal is obvious: peace and the restoration of normal life in our native state as soon as possible.”
Instead, on February 26, in a very worrying sign of where NATO’s current policy is leading, French President Emmanuel Macron revealed that European leaders meeting in Paris discussed sending larger numbers of Western ground troops to Ukraine.
Macron pointed out that NATO members have steadily increased their support to levels unthinkable when the war began. He highlighted the example of Germany, which offered Ukraine only helmets and sleeping bags at the outset of the conflict and is now saying Ukraine needs more missiles and tanks. “The people that said “never ever” today were the same ones who said never ever planes, never ever long-range missiles, never ever trucks. They said all that two years ago,” Macron recalled. “We have to be humble and realize that we (have) always been six to eight months late.”
Macron implied that, as the war escalates, NATO countries may eventually have to deploy their own forces to Ukraine, and he argued that they should do so sooner rather than later if they want to recover the initiative in the war.
The mere suggestion of Western troops fighting in Ukraine elicited an outcry both within France–from extreme right National Rally to leftist La France Insoumise–and from other NATO countries. German Chancellor Olaf Scholz insisted that participants in the meeting were “unanimous” in their opposition to deploying troops. Russian officials warned that such a step would mean war between Russia and NATO.
But as Poland’s president and prime minister headed to Washington for a White House meeting on February 12, Polish Foreign Minister Radek Sikorski told the Polish parliament that sending NATO troops into Ukraine “is not unthinkable.”
Macron’s intention may have been precisely to bring this debate out into the open and put an end to the secrecy surrounding the undeclared policy of gradual escalation toward full-scale war with Russia that the West has pursued for two years.
Macron failed to mention publicly that, under current policy, NATO forces are already deeply involved in the war. Among many lies that President Biden told in his State of the Union speech, he insisted that “there are no American soldiers at war in Ukraine.”
However, the trove of Pentagon documents leaked in March 2023 included an assessment that there were already at least 97 NATO special forces troops operating in Ukraine, including 50 British, 14 Americans and 15 French. Admiral John Kirby, the National Security Council spokesman, has also acknowledged a “small U.S. military presence” based in the U.S. Embassy in Kyiv to try to keep track of thousands of tons of U.S. weapons as they arrive in Ukraine.
But many more U.S. forces, whether inside or outside Ukraine, are involved in planning Ukrainian military operations; providing satellite intelligence; and play essential roles in the targeting of U.S. weapons. A Ukrainian official told the Washington Post that Ukrainian forces hardly ever fire HIMARS rockets without precise targeting data provided by U.S. forces in Europe.
All these U.S. and NATO forces are most definitely “at war in Ukraine.” To be at war in a country with only small numbers of “boots on the ground” has been a hallmark of 21st Century U.S. war-making, as any Navy pilot on an aircraft-carrier or drone operator in Nevada can attest. It is precisely this doctrine of “limited” and proxy war that is at risk of spinning out of control in Ukraine, unleashing the World War III that President Biden has vowed to avoid.
The United States and NATO have tried to keep the escalation of the war under control by deliberate, incremental escalation of the types of weapons they provide and cautious, covert expansion of their own involvement. This has been compared to “boiling a frog,” turning up the heat gradually to avoid any sudden move that might cross a Russian “red line” and trigger a full-scale war between NATO and Russia. But as NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg warned in December 2022, “If things go wrong, they can go horribly wrong.”
We have long been puzzled by these glaring contradictions at the heart of U.S. and NATO policy. On one hand, we believe President Biden when he says he does not want to start World War III. On the other hand, that is what his policy of incremental escalation is inexorably leading towards.
U.S. preparations for war with Russia are already at odds with the existential imperative of containing the conflict. In November 2022, the Reed-Inhofe Amendment to the FY2023 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) invoked wartime emergency powers to authorize an extraordinary shopping-list of weapons like the ones sent to Ukraine, and approved billion-dollar, multi-year no-bid contracts with weapons manufacturers to buy 10 to 20 times the quantities of weapons that the United States had actually shipped to Ukraine.
Retired Marine Colonel Mark Cancian, the former chief of the Force Structure and Investment Division in the Office of Management and Budget, explained, “This isn’t replacing what we’ve given [Ukraine]. It’s building stockpiles for a major ground war [with Russia] in the future.”
So the United States is preparing to fight a major ground war with Russia, but the weapons to fight that war will take years to produce, and, with or without them, that could quickly escalate into a nuclear war. Nuland’s early retirement could be the result of Biden and his foreign policy team finally starting to come to grips with the existential dangers of the aggressive policies she championed.
Meanwhile, Russia’s escalation from its original limited “Special Military Operation” to its current commitment of 7% of its GDP to the war and weapons production has outpaced the West’s escalations, not just in weapons production but in manpower and actual military capability.
One could say that Russia is winning the war, but that depends what its real war goals are. There is a yawning gulf between the rhetoric from Biden and other Western leaders about Russian ambitions to invade other countries in Europe and what Russia was ready to settle for at the talks in Turkey in 2022, when it agreed to withdraw to its pre-war positions in return for a simple commitment to Ukrainian neutrality.
Despite Ukraine’s extremely weak position after its failed 2023 offensive and its costly defense and loss of Avdiivka, Russian forces are not racing toward Kyiv, or even Kharkiv, Odesa or the natural boundary of the Dnipro River.
Reuters Moscow Bureau reported that Russia spent months trying to open new negotiations with the United States in late 2023, but that, in January 2024, National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan slammed that door shut with a flat refusal to negotiate over Ukraine.
The only way to find out what Russia really wants, or what it will settle for, is to return to the negotiating table. All sides have demonized each other and staked out maximalist positions, but that is what nations at war do in order to justify the sacrifices they demand of their people and their rejection of diplomatic alternatives.
Serious diplomatic negotiations are now essential to get down to the nitty-gritty of what it will take to bring peace to Ukraine. We are sure there are wiser heads within the U.S., French and other NATO governments who are saying this too, behind closed doors, and that may be precisely why Nuland is out and why Macron is talking so openly about where the current policy is heading. We fervently hope that is the case, and that Biden’s Plan B will lead back to the negotiating table, and then forward to peace in Ukraine.
Haiti is in the headlines again and, as usual, the headlines on Haiti are mostly negative. They are also largely false. Haiti, they tell us, is overrun by “gang violence.” Haiti is “a failed state,” standing on the verge of “anarchy” and teetering on the edge of “collapse.” Haiti, they tell us, can only be stabilized and saved through foreign military invasion and occupation. We have seen these stories before. We know their purpose. They serve to cover up the true origins of the “crisis” in Haiti while justifying foreign military intervention and setting up an attack on Haiti’s sovereignty.
What is the reality behind the headlines? The reality is that the crisis in Haiti is a crisis of imperialism. Those countries calling for military intervention – the US, France, Canada – have created the conditions making military intervention appear necessary and inevitable. The same countries calling for intervention are the same countries that will benefit from intervention, not the Haitian people. And for twenty years, those countries that cast Haiti as a failed state actively worked to destroy Haiti’s government while imposing foreign colonial rule.
On Haiti, the position of the Black Alliance for Peace has been consistent and clear. We reject the sensationalist headlines in the Western media with their racist assumptions that Haiti is ungovernable, and the Haitian people cannot govern themselves. We support the efforts of the Haitian people to assert their sovereignty and reclaim their country. We denounce the ongoing imperialist onslaught on Haiti and demand the removal of Haiti’s foreign, colonial rulers.
What’s Going on in Haiti?
The crisis in Haiti is a crisis of imperialism – but what does this mean? It means that the failure of governance in Haiti is not something internal to Haiti, but it is a result of the concerted effort on the part of the west to gut the Haitian state and destroy popular democracy in Haiti.
Haiti is currently under occupation by the US/UN and Core Group, a self-appointed cabal of foreign entities who effectively rule this country.
The occupation of Haiti began in 2004 with the US/France/Canada-sponsored coup d’état against Haiti’s democratically elected president. The coup d’etat was approved by the UN Security Council. It established an occupying military force (euphemistically called a “peacekeeping” mission), with the acronym MINUSTAH. Though the MINUSTAH mission officially ended in 2017, the UN office in Haiti was reconstituted as BIHUH. BINUH, along with the Core Group, continues to have a powerful role in Haitian affairs.
Over the past four years, the Haitian masses have mobilized and protested against an illegal government, imperial meddling, the removal of fuel subsidies leading to rising costs of living, and insecurity by elite-funded armed groups. However, these protests have been snuffed out by the US-installed puppet government.
Since 2021, attempts to control Haiti by the US have intensified. In that year, Haiti’s president, Jovenel Moïse was assassinated and Ariel Henry was installed by the US and UN Core Group as the de facto prime minister. In the wake of the assassination of Moïse and the installation of Henry, the U.S. has sought to build a coalition of foreign states willing to send military forces to occupy Haiti, and to deal with Haiti’s ostensible “gang” problem.
The armed groups (the so-called “gangs”) mainly in the capital city of Haiti should be understood as “paramilitary” forces, as they are made up of former (and current) Haitian police and military elements. These paramilitary forces are known to work for some of Haiti’s elite, including, some say, Ariel Henry (Haiti’s former de facto prime minister). It should also be noted that Haiti does not manufacture guns; the guns and ammunition come primarily from the US and the Dominican Republic; and the US has consistently rejected calls for an arms embargo.
Moreover, as Haitian organizations have demonstrated, it is the UN and Core Group occupation that has enabled the “gangsterization” of the country. When we speak of “gangs,” we must recognize that the real and most powerful gangs in the country are the US, the Core Group, and the illegal UN office in Haiti – all of whom helped to create the current crisis.
Most recently, Ariel Henry traveled to Kenya to sign an agreement with Kenya prime minister William Ruto authorizing the deployment of 1,000 Kenyan police officers as the head of a multinational military force whose ostensible purpose was to combat Haiti’s gang violence. But the US strategy for Haiti appears to have collapsed as Henry has been unable to return to Haiti and there is renewed challenge to the constitutionality of that deployment.
The US is now scrambling for control, seeking to force Henry’s resignation while looking for a new puppet to serve as a figurehead for foreign rule of Haiti. While Haiti currently does not have a government, it has not descended into chaos or anarchy. The paramilitaries, it seems, are waiting for their orders to act, while the US strategy for Haiti is in crisis.
Why Haiti?
For BAP, the historic struggles of the Haitian people to combat slavery, colonialism, and imperialism have been crucial to the struggles of African people throughout the globe. The attacks on Black sovereignty in Haiti are replicated in the attacks on Black people throughout the Americas. Today, Haiti is important for U.S. geopolitical and economic viability. Haiti is in a key location in the Caribbean for US military and security strategy in the region, especially in light of the coming US confrontation with China and in the context of the strategic implementation of the Global Fragilities Act. Haiti’s economic importance stems from what western corporations perceive as a vast pool of cheap labor, and its unexploited land and mineral wealth.
BAP’S Position on the Current Situation in Haiti
BAP, as with many Haitian and other organizations, have consistently argued against a renewed foreign military intervention.
We have persistently demanded the end of the foreign occupation of Haiti. This includes the dissolution of the Core Group, the UN office in Haiti (BINHU), and the end of the constant meddling of the US, along with its junior partners, CARICOM, and Brazil’s Lula.
We have denounced the governments of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC) (with the exception of Venezuela and Cuba), for supporting US plans for armed intervention in Haiti and the denial of Haitian sovereignty.
We have denounced CARICOM leaders, and especially Barbados Prime Minister, Mia Mottley, for not only supporting US planned armed intervention in Haiti and offering their police and soldiers for the mission, but for also following US and Core Group dictates on the way forward in Haiti. Haiti’s solutions should come from Haitian people through broad consensus. CARICOM leaders cannot claim to be helping Haiti when they are acting as neo-colonial stooges of the US and the Core Group.
We have denounced the role of Brazilian president, Luiz Inácio “Lula” da Silva, for not only continuing Brazil’s role in the Core Group, but for also leading the charge, along with the criminal US government, for foreign armed military invasion of Haiti. We remind everyone that it was Lula’s government that led the military wing of the 2004 violent UN occupation of Haiti. Brazil’s soldiers led the mission for 13 years (until 2017).
In solidarity with Haitian groups, we have denounced the UN approved, US-funded, Kenyan-led foreign armed invasion and occupation of Haiti. We are adamant that a U.S./UN-led armed foreign intervention in Haiti is not only illegitimate, but illegal. We support Haitian people and civil society organizations who have been consistent in their opposition to foreign armed military intervention – and who have argued that the problems of Haiti are a direct result of the persistent and long-term meddling of the United States, the United Nations, and the Core Group.
We demand US accountability for flooding Haiti with military grade weapons. We demand that the US enforce the UN-stated arms embargo against the Haitian and U.S. elite who import guns into the country.
We will continue to support our comrades as they fight for a free and sovereign Haiti.
On Monday evening, France became the first country in the world to explicitly guarantee the right to an abortion within its constitution. Lawmakers were summoned by President Emmanuel Macron to the Palace of Versailles, the former royal palace that is oftentimes used for the passage of monumental laws instead of the Palais Bourbon in Paris, where the National Assembly usually meets.
This February, France’s Minister of the Interior Gérald Darmanin unveiled plans for a large-scale military operation against migrants in Mayotte. The island chain hosts a major French naval base in the Indian Ocean. Since France converted Mayotte from a “territorial collectivity” to an overseas department in 2011, authorities have deported thousands of undocumented residents. Most come from the…
The head of the Turkish Humanitarian Relief Foundation (IHH), Bulent Yildirim, has announced that the organisation will head a naval fleet to Gaza to break Israel’s siege of the bombarded Palestinian enclave.
Speaking at a huge public rally in Istanbul last week, Yildirim said: “The time for talking is over. We will go down to the sea, we will reach Gaza, and we will break the siege.”
Yildirim participated in the Gaza Freedom Flotilla in 2010. The boat he was on was boarded by Israeli troops and nine pro-Palestinian activists were killed at the time.
Turkish NGO plans to send naval fleet toward Gaza to break siege. Video: Middle East Eye
He is hopeful that this new fleet will be successful in breaking the siege as part of Istael’s genocidal war against Palestinians and helping bring some relief to many Gazans who are starving.
“We hope to include Kiwis on the upcoming flotillas to break the siege of Gaza,” said Roger Fowler, a founder and facilitator of Kia Ora Gaza, who was at the planning meeting in Istanbul.
He appealed for donations to this mission through Kia Ora Gaza.
In September 2016, Kia Ora Gaza facilitated Green MP Marama Davidson in joining the Women’s Boat to Gaza peace flotilla, and in 2018 veteran human rights campaigner and union leader Mike Treen represented New Zealand.
The recent Freedom Flotilla Coalition meeting in Istanbul to plan the humanitarian voyage to Gaza. Kia Ora Gaza’s Roger Fowler of Aotearoa New Zealand is on the left. Image: Kia Ora Gaza
Jordan airdrops aid to Gaza
Meanwhile, the Royal Jordanian Air Force has carried out airdrops of aid off the coast of the Gaza Strip — the biggest airdrop operation so far to deliver much-needed aid to millions of Palestinians amid restrictions by Israeli authorities on aid entering the territory by road.
The aid was dropped at 11 sites along the Gaza coast from its northern edge to the south for civilians to collect, and one French Air Force plane was also involved.
The military governments of Burkina Faso, Mali, and Niger have announced their exit from the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), claiming the regional bloc has become a tool for foreign powers, posing a threat to member states.
The decision was made public on Sunday in a joint statement by the coup leaders, who have faced increasing pressure from ECOWAS to transition to democratic rule.
Following the overthrow of Nigerien President Mohamed Bazoum last July, the latest coup in the West African region, the bloc threatened to use force to restore democratic rule after multiple attempts to persuade military rulers to reverse the coup failed. Both Mali and Burkina Faso have warned against the France-backed military action in Niger, claiming that any such move would be interpreted as an act of war against their countries.
The 15-nation economic group has sanctioned Burkina Faso, Mali, and Niger, including suspending them in response to the takeovers. The alliance has said it does not recognize the military-led regimes, and has vowed to no longer tolerate power grabs in the region, which has also witnessed a successful coup in Guinea and a recently attempted one in Guinea-Bissau.
However, Ouagadougou, Bamako, and Niamey have unified against ECOWAS, repeatedly accusing it of acting under Western influence. Late last year, the military rulers of the three former French colonies signed a charter that formed the Alliance of Sahel States (AES), committing to help each other, individually or collectively, in the event of an external attack or internal threats to their sovereignty. All three have also severed military ties with France, citing meddling and the failure of French troops to defeat Islamic insurgencies in the Sahel region, despite more than a decade of involvement.
On Sunday, Burkina Faso, Mali, and Niger denounced ECOWAS for failing to support them in fighting the region’s decade-long jihadist violence.
“When these states decided to take their destiny into their own hands, it [ECOWAS] adopted an irrational and unacceptable posture by imposing illegal, illegitimate, inhumane, and irresponsible sanctions in violation of its own principles,” the military leaders stated.
“After 49 years of existence, the valiant people of Burkina, Mali, and Niger note with great regret, bitterness, and great disappointment” in ECOWAS and have “decided in complete sovereignty on the immediate withdrawal” from the bloc, according to the statement.
In a response on Sunday, ECOWAS said it had yet to receive formal notification from the military authorities regarding their withdrawal.
Andrei Maslov, head of the Center for African Studies at Russia’s Higher School of Economics, told RT: “ECOWAS’ desire to make money from donor programs and cooperation with the EU and other Western institutions prevented the organization from pursuing policies in the interests of member states.”
ECOWAS has failed to capture its full potential and become a genuinely independent regional organization, Maslov claimed.
Maslov believes that the exit of the three countries from the bloc would provide them with more decision-making freedom.
French President Emmanuel Macron has defended his Indo-Pacific vision during the traditional New Year’s good wishes ceremony to the French Armed Forces in Paris.
Macron said tensions in the Indo-Pacific zone were a matter for concern because France was an integral part of the Indo-Pacific — both in the Indian and the Pacific oceans.
He recalled the French version of the Indo-Pacific had been masterminded in 2018 and had since been developed in partnership with such key allies as India, Australia, Japan and the United Arab Emirates.
“But we have also consolidated it and, may I say entrenched it, in our own (overseas) territories,” he said, citing New Caledonia as an example of French army presence to defend France’s sovereignty and “the capacity for our air force to deploy (from mainland France) to Oceania within 48 hours”.
He also praised the recent South Pacific Defence Ministers’ Meeting held in Nouméa last month when “France was the inviting power”.
He said Paris was able to strike “strategic partnerships” with neighbouring armed forces.
“The year 2024 will see us maintain without fail the protection of our overseas territories,” he told the troops.
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
Dr. Hassan Diab was wrongfully extradited from Canada to France in 2014, for alleged involvement in a bombing outside a Paris synagogue in 1980. He spent more than three years in a French prison before investigative judges determined that there was no evidence linking him to the crime, and ordered his immediate and unconditional release.
Hassan’s release was a moment of pure joy which we share with you in the videos below. Sadly, the joy did not last long. The French prosecutor appealed the release decision for political reasons and Hassan remains under the threat of being extradited once again to France for a crime he did not commit.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau must honour his words on June 20, 2018, when he acknowledged that “this is something that obviously was an extremely difficult situation to go through for himself [Hassan], for his family” and promised to “make sure that it never happens again”.
Ban comes as jailed Nobel laureate Narges Mohammadi begins new hunger strike before award ceremony
Iran has banned Mahsa Amini’s family from travelling to France to receive the EU’s top human rights prize on her behalf, as the family of the imprisoned Nobel peace prize winner Narges Mohammadi said she had begun a new hunger strike before Sunday’s award ceremony in Oslo.
In Mohammadi’s absence, her 17-year-old twin children Ali and Kiani, will instead collect the award on her behalf, reading out a speech their mother smuggled out of her cell.
As the genocide in Gaza resumes, it becomes ever more clear that the Operation “Al-Aqsa Flood”, launched by the Palestinian Resistance on October 7, and the events that followed, have not only destroyed the prestige of the Israeli army: they completely unmasked the hypocrisy of the West, who is not only silent but accomplice of the unprecedented massacres perpetrated against a defenseless and trapped civilian population, as well as the duplicity of most of the so-called Western “friends” of Palestine, be they political forces, media, Unions or associations.
On the 50th anniversary of the Yom Kippur War, all the factions of the Palestinian Resistance launched a spectacular air, land and sea offensive that succeeded in breaking the siege of Gaza, seizing numerous enemy bases and liberating, albeit temporarily, localities occupied in 1948 —a first in the history of the conflict. In just a few hours, hundreds of occupation soldiers were killed, and thousands of panic-stricken settlers fled (many on foot into the desert), shattering forever the myth of the so-called “most powerful army in the Middle East” and its supposedly infallible intelligence services: the Mossad, Shin Bet and Aman had not even imagined, neither in their most improbable scenarios nor in their worst nightmares, that such an operation was possible on the part of Hamas. Israel had only prepared for it in the north against Hezbollah, which certainly passed on its expertise to the Palestinian fighters. To date, Israel admits to having suffered 1,200 dead, thousands of wounded and over 200 prisoners. This is already the worst humiliation in the history of the “Zionist entity”, inflicted not by a coalition of national armies but by a militia besieged and suffocated for 16 years in a tiny piece of land, the most heavily guarded territory in the world.
But it’s not just Israel’s illusion of invincibility that has been shattered: Israel’s allies, namely the leaders and elites of Western countries, have revealed to the world the full extent of their racism, cruelty and hypocrisy, giving their unconditional support to the occupier and its preposterous claim of self-defense (a right denied to the Palestinians, while, according to international law, this right can only be invoked against a State, in this case Israel, and not against a colonized people) and by blaming Hamas for the escalation and all the casualties, including Palestinian deaths, echoing the rhetoric of the Israeli army. Neither the inflammatory statements by Israeli ministers about Palestinian “human animals” or “There are no innocents in Gaza” (not even the million children, a legitimate target for the occupier), nor the white phosphorus, nor the war crimes of depriving over 2 million Palestinians of water, electricity, fuel, medicine and humanitarian aid, nor the deliberate targeting of hospitals, ordering staff and patients to evacuate in record time or be killed, nor the massive and deliberate bombardment of residential buildings, which has razed entire neighborhoods to the ground and caused over 20,000 deaths, almost half of them children, and tens of thousands of injuries, nor, to cap it all, the ultimatum given to over a million inhabitants of North Gaza to take refuge in South Gaza within 24 hours (with, in the background, efforts to deport the entire population of Gaza to the Egyptian Sinai), an injunction that amounts to State terrorism, materially impossible to carry out (especially with fuel shortages and devastated roads) and which constitutes a crime against humanity, none of this has moved the “civilized West”, which refuses to condemn the occupier and continues to give it its full political, media and military support, vetoing ceasefire resolutions at the UN Security Council. Europe has even restricted, repressed and upright banned demonstrations in support of Palestine, with France going so far as to ban them altogether and consider it an anti-Semitic act to raise a Palestinian flag. After the first moral decay revealed by the war in Ukraine, where the West shamelessly explained that, unlike those of NATO’s wars in the Middle East, the Ukrainian victims were worthy and should move us because they were “like us” (blond with blue eyes), the last fig leaf covering the hideous, truly satanic face of the West has fallen, and is revealed to the whole world in all its abjectness, giving its blessing to the daily butchery of Palestinian men, women and children in the macabre tune of “We stand with Israel”. Behind the cloak of freedom, democracy, human rights and international law, behind the fine suits, perfume and pretensions of refinement, behind the calls to protect civilians and respect humanitarian international law, the rulers of Western countries revealed the full extent of their barbarity, indifferent if not hilarious in the face of the bloodbath, the bodies of shredded toddlers and suffocated premature babies in Gaza.
However, one of the most disgusting aspects of this great unveiling is the reaction of the so-called defenders of the Palestinian cause, who, with very rare exceptions, have allowed themselves to be crushed by pro-Israeli propaganda, whether through weakness, cowardice, fear of political-media vindictiveness or a latent racism that only truly sanctifies Jewish lives, deeming the massive killing of Arabs something normal, if not praiseworthy. Ever since October 7, the media, personalities and organizations considered, or even claiming, to be pro-Palestinian competed with zeal in their communiqués condemning the “terrorist attack” by Hamas and its alleged “atrocities” and “war crimes”, presenting Israel de facto in the position of a victim who would only defend itself (admittedly in a “disproportionate” manner, but fundamentally legitimate), without any shred of evidence (it has been revealed that a great many Israeli civilians were killed by their own troops), and in defiance of the most basic facts of the conflict: Gaza has been the victim for at least 16 years of the supreme crime according to the Nuremberg Tribunal, that is the crime of aggression (blockade is an act of war), not to mention regular assassinations, the colonization of the West Bank, apartheid, ethnic cleansing and the desecration of the Al-Aqsa mosque, all casus belli against which Hamas, the legitimate representative of the people of Gaza, has the legal and moral right to retaliate. The vast majority of the so-called “friends of Palestine” demonstrated their lack of humanity and regard for international law, which enshrines the right of occupied peoples to liberate themselves by all means, including armed struggle.
Here is a small selection of the shameful and ignominious political, media and trade union statements that have provided unforgivable support and even encouragement for the ongoing massacre in Gaza. All the examples below are taken from France, the self-appointed “Cradle of Human Rights” and allegedly less subservient to Israel’s interest than the US or UK, but the same bias (and much worse) can be found everywhere in the “enlightened West”.
La France Insoumise
Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s “La France Insoumise”, or LFI, is France’s main left-wing opposition party, presenting itself as a champion of the rights of minorities (especially Muslims) inside, and of the oppressed peoples outside (especially Palestine). LFI’s initial communiqué on October 7, which caused such a stir in France, was extremely timid. It did not take sides and seemed to consider Israel and Gaza equally to blame: “The armed offensive by Palestinian forces led by Hamas comes against a backdrop of intensifying Israeli occupation policy in Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem. We deplore the Israeli and Palestinian deaths. Our thoughts are with all the victims. The current escalation risks leading to a hellish cycle of violence. France, the European Union and the international community must act without delay to prevent this escalation.” LFI merely called for a “ceasefire” and “the protection of the population”, a “return to the negotiating table” and an active implementation of “UN resolutions”. This statement caused an uproar because it did not explicitly condemn Hamas or use the term “terrorist”, but it must be stressed that it did not condemn Israel either. Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s reaction on Twitter was in the same vein (“All the violence unleashed against Israel and Gaza proves only one thing: violence only produces and reproduces itself. Horrified, our thoughts and compassion go out to all the distraught victims of all this”), simply repeating outdated truisms about the “two-state solution” (it is dead and buried, and no power in the world could resurrect it).
But just as Mélenchon wimped out with the war in Ukraine, condemning Russia as solely responsible for unprovoked aggression and aligning himself totally with NATO, which he had claimed France would leave if he was elected President, LFI quickly gave in to the pack, “condemning the Hamas attack on Israel”, as well as the “massacres”, “abominable acts” and acts of “barbarism” allegedly perpetrated by the Palestinian Resistance (with only the Israeli army’s statements as evidence) and denounced “with the utmost force” its “war crimes aimed at terrorizing civilian populations”, boasting to use the very same words as Israel’s ambassador to the UN. “If our support must be total to the Israeli population, it cannot be unconditional to the Israeli government”, assures Manuel Bompard, coordinator of La France Insoumise. But why would anyone support a largely racist and supremacist people, who have always massively supported the massacres in Gaza? Why should anyone support Netanyahu’s far-right and even fascist government, be it conditionally, instead of just condemning it? Manuel Bompard recognizes Israel’s alleged “right to self-defense” but asks it to be “proportionate”: don’t the Palestinians also have the right to defend themselves, and much more so than the occupier? Hasn’t Hamas, which has caused far fewer Israeli casualties in its whole history than the number of Palestinians regularly massacred by Israel in a matter of days, acted in a “proportionate” manner? This can only be denied if we consider that a Palestinian life is worth less (and x times less) than an Israeli life. And are Hamas’s actions “Resistance”, asks a presenter? LFI bursts into indignation: “Nobody used that expression. It’s a flagrant act of outrageous manipulation, part of the polemics fabricated against LFI.” The NUPES parliamentary group, led by LFI, cowardly joined the minute’s silence for Israeli victims at the National Assembly: LFI claims to have asked for the inclusion of international and Palestinian victims, to no avail, but nevertheless took part in this scandalously one-sided tribute to the “worthy victims”.
Mélenchon crowned this betrayal of Palestine & Palestinians with a statement condemning Hamas not only for its attack (while admitting that there was as yet no evidence of massacres in the kibbutz, and pretending to ignore the fact that Israeli settlers are notoriously over-armed), but also for its very identity as a politico-religious movement, even though Hamas was elected in democratic elections (Jimmy Carter himself was there and testified to it), and its armed resistance against Israel is overwhelmingly supported by Palestinians and Arab-Muslim populations in general. In recalling his hatred of all theocracies, Mélenchon didn’t even notice the contradiction of not including Israel, a State founded on an amalgam between politics and religion, with a ruling coalition comprising fanatical Talmudists. Mélenchon also stressed that his refusal to use the term “terrorism” was purely from a legal perspective, and because “war crime” is worse than “terrorism”, and would allow Palestine to be dragged to the ICC (sic): “Hamas has unleashed a war operation against Israel. If we want war crimes to be tried and prosecuted, we have to call them by their name. This is possible at the International Criminal Court.” This, then, is LFI’s priority: not to erect a Palestinian state, but to drag the Palestinian Resistance (along with Israeli leaders, as if any White was ever condemned at the ICC) before the courts.
In short, La France Insoumise has abjectly submitted to the dictates of the pro-Israeli doxa, and has even outbid it, while presenting itself as sensitive to the Palestinian cause, in order to eat at all the racks. LFI only claims a position of dissidence to “keep the votes of the bearded” (and veiled) Muslims, as the odious Dupond-Maserati, Macron’s Justice Minister, put it. LFI’s deep-rooted racist and Islamophobic reflexes are further demonstrated by the disgusting fate it bestowed upon Taha Bouhafs, mercilessly defamed and crushed by the Party because he was an Arab true to his roots.
Mediapart
“The images are unbearable”. So begins an article on the front page of the October 10 issue of Mediapart, France’s main online “independent” & opposition media who unveiled so many scandals of Macron’s government. This edition was neither devoted to the Israeli massacres in the Gaza Strip, the destruction of hospitals and residential buildings, the use of white phosphorus against densely populated civilian areas (a war crime), nor to the unprecedented humanitarian crisis announced by the deprivation of drinking water, electricity, medicine, gas and fuel imposed on over two million Gazans trapped and with nowhere safe to take refuge, in order to force their deportation to Egypt (a crime against humanity). God forbid. Mediapart was talking about these infamous “Hamas war crimes”. And the “unbearable” images in question were not those of decapitated Palestinian babies, the bodies of infants and children pulled from the rubble of Gaza, the heart-rending farewells of a father, mother or child to loved ones killed in the bombardments, of Palestinians burned (dead or alive) in Gaza and the West Bank, of their lifeless bodies desecrated by acts of mutilation or settlers who completely undress the corpses of Palestinians and film themselves urinating on them, but simply of an Israeli woman captured by Hamas. The article, entitled “Civilian hostages at the hands of Hamas: ‘Unheard of in Israel’s history’”, continues: “In a video shared on the social network X and filmed on Saturday October 7 shortly after the Hamas terrorist attack on Israel, a woman, displayed like a trophy, lies face down, inert and almost naked, in the back of a pick-up truck. A Palestinian militiaman pulls her hair, another spits on her. Her name is Shani Louk. Her family recognized her by her hair and tattoos.”
Mediapart clearly adopts the Israeli point of view, speaking of an “Israeli 9/11” and a “bloodbath”, based solely on statements by the Israeli army (even though images showed that Israeli policemen were firing from the Nova rave party, which contradicts the idea of a gratuitous massacre in favor of that of civilians “caught in the crossfire”, not mentioning the reports about Israeli civilians butchered by their own troops from Apache helicopters in the implementation of a “mass Hannibal” directive). And Mediapart spoke of “unbearable images” when the only thing truly “unbearable”, for the Israeli society, is the end of the myth of the Israeli army’s ability to protect its settlers. Moreover, Mediapart insidiously peddles the widely-propagated idea that Shani Louk was raped and executed, 3 days after the images went viral. However, she was already scantily clad during the rave party in the Negev desert, and her family had claimed to have received proof that she was still alive. Still, Mediapart made the choice to echo the rhetoric of the Israeli government by speaking of a “terrorist” attack (a term never used for Israeli crimes, of a much bigger magnitude), propagates the trope of Arabs raping white women and grossly lies by saying that a Hamas fighter spat on her (it’s quite clear from the video in question that it’s a child doing it, which is regrettable, but very different from what is said). Significantly, far-right Marine Le Pen made exactly the same statements in the French National Assembly, and this worthy daughter of her father (Jean-Marie Le Pen was notoriously involved in torture in French Algeria) also retains only this striking image of the “colonist” as prisoner of the “natives”: Mediapart, media of Edwy Plenel (whom Mitterrand described as an agent of the United States), thus followed the footsteps of the French and Israeli far right, giving full credit to the occupation army’s version of events despite the absence of proof and huge record of lies broadcasted by the IDF, and highlighting images that are completely insignificant when compared to the daily life of Palestinians under occupation, with its series of executions, torture, well-documented rapes of Palestinian women prisoners, etc., at a time when Israel is committing its greatest massacre of civilians in Gaza ever. Much later in the article, without any strong epithet or condemnation, it will be mentioned coldly that “No electricity, no food, no water, no fuel” will be allowed in the Gaza enclave, and that the Israeli Defense Minister has stated “We are fighting animals and we act accordingly”. On this subject, Mediapart refrained from emotionally-charged comments such as those used on the Israeli side (“unbearable”, “Plunged into dread since that fateful Shabbat day”, “traumatic as these are”), showing clearly on which side its heart beats (on the side of “humans”, not “animals”) and where its priorities lie.
Worse still, Mediapart has also published an article entitled “Massacres in two kibbutzes: ‘They murdered children and the elderly in cold blood’”, presenting as if it were a proven fact the worst atrocities attributed to Hamas, once again based solely on statements by the Israeli army. The following IDF figures are quoted without questioning their statements: “an Israeli army official” (“It’s something more like a pogrom from our grandparents’ time”), “Major General Itai Virov” (“It’s not a war or a battlefield, it’s a massacre”), “Colonel Olivier Rafowicz, an Israeli army spokesman” (“What’s happening now in Israel is the discovery of the atrocity of massacres committed over two days by Hamas Islamist terrorists, including the carnage at Bee’ri kibbutz. Hundreds of men, women and children were slaughtered, torn to pieces and decapitated by men mad with hatred. This was repeated in dozens of places in Israel”), “Yossi Landau, Zaka commander” (“It’s incredible the number of victims we saw, what was done to these families, these children. I’ve been doing this job for thirty-three years and I’ve never seen anything like this”), along with “Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Galant” (“All those who came to behead, to murder women and Holocaust survivors will be annihilated at the height of our strength and without compromise. What we saw in the cities was a massacre”) and the Israeli (I24News) and Western (CNN) journalists selected by the army for its propaganda, who meekly peddled (then retracted) the story of the 40 beheaded babies (“They shot everyone, they murdered children, babies, old people, everyone, in cold blood.”).
The conclusion of this article is in the same vein. At the end of the last section, entitled “Pure Evil” (sic), we read:
“From the White House, U.S. President Joe Biden denounced the atrocities committed by Hamas in communities around Gaza, speaking of ‘pure evil’. ‘The brutality of bloodthirsty Hamas reminds us of the most horrific acts of ISIS, he said. This is terrorism which, unfortunately, is not new to the Jewish people. This attack evokes painful memories, the scars of a thousand years of anti-Semitism and genocide’.”
Never mind that there are no images or videos to back up these assertions, reminiscent of the worst Nazi diatribes. And there is absolutely no mention of the crucial fact that in Israel, relentless military censorship filters out the slightest publication in the media, even in times of “peace”. No doubt is expressed either as to the veracity of these claims, even though the first sentence of the article did indeed state that the kibbutz had been liberated after bitter fighting (“It was only on Monday, after two and a half days of fighting, that Israeli troops were able to regain control of the kibbutz in the locality of Kfar Azza”), without ever mentioning the possibility that some Israelis may have been killed in the exchange of fire or in the Israeli strikes. Many Israeli survivors did claim that their own forces were responsible for the deaths of many settlers, and the Hannibal Doctrine, according to which Israel would rather kill its own citizens than let them fall alive into the hands of Hamas, is well known, and was mentioned in the Mediapart article quoted above (it was referring to the potential targeting by the IDF of Israeli hostages kept in Gaza, not to the October 7 massacres). Thus, trampling on journalistic ethics and disregarding the enormous responsibility placed on the media at such a critical time, Mediapart had no qualms about acting as the spokesperson for the Israeli army as it was preparing to commit an unprecedented massacre in Gaza, peddling lies such as the one about the beheaded babies, which can only contribute to public acceptance of Israel’s “reprisals” against the “pure evil” that needs to be rooted out of Gaza. This hoax was endorsed by Biden in the above speech (he claimed to have seen pictures), but has since been retracted by the White House, which has clarified that no proof was provided, and that Biden had simply repeated the Israeli army’s statements (as he did again for the deadly strike against the Al-Ahli hospital in Gaza that killed hundreds of civilians, attributed by the occupier to an Islamic Jihad rocket, as if the Resistance in Gaza had missiles able to cause such a huge level of destruction). Incidentally, the names of Israeli victims published by Haaretz do not include any babies, but the damage was done. And to this day, Mediapart doesn’t consider it necessary to publish a retraction (any more than it ever repented its despicable slander against Julian Assange). Mediapart has even gone so far as to censor comments questioning the reality of the facts alleged in the article and the irresponsibility of a newspaper to publish them without any verification in such a context, deleting them by the dozen without even taking responsibility for this censorship, which is attributed to the authors of the said comments (the only mention is “This comment has been unpublished by its author”).
The icing on the cake: these two articles were written by a certain… Rachida El Azzouzi. And to think that some people say that France is racist and that Arabs can’t succeed while staying true to themselves…
CGT
The General Confederation of Labour (CGT) is a national trade union center. It is the first of the five major French confederations of trade unions, and is deeply rooted in France’s history of social struggles and international solidarity. Here is how the CGT reacted to the events of October 7:
“On Saturday October 7, Hamas unleashed an offensive of unprecedented violence, attacking a large number of civilian targets. The CGT condemns this escalation, which bereaves and targets millions of Israeli and Palestinian civilians alike, and does a disservice to the Palestinian cause.”
These are the first words of the communiqué issued by the CGT on October 9, entitled “For a just and lasting peace between Israel and Palestine!” It is a veritable concentrate of cowardice, lies and ignominy.
“Unprecedented violence”? But everything Hamas has done, even taking into account the crimes attributed to it without any proof, Israel has been doing far worse for decades! Do Israeli lives count for more than Palestinian lives? Why speak of “unprecedented violence” or “a milestone crossed”, when Palestine is, in the worst case scenario, merely reproducing in a homemade way what the occupation has been doing to it on an industrial scale since 1948?
So it’s “Hamas escalation” that targets “millions of Israeli and Palestinian civilians alike”. Israeli civilians come first, of course, given the highly unequal exchange rate between Jewish and Arab lives, but even the Palestinian victims would not be targeted by the occupation’s aviation and artillery, but by Hamas itself?! It is pure Israeli rhetoric to state so bluntly that Hamas is responsible for all the deaths in Gaza, be it via the myth of “self-defense”, “human shields” or other such outrageous lies.
Finally, from the comfort of its offices in the Paris region, the CGT has the unheard-of arrogance to decree what serves or “does a disservice to the Palestinian cause”, demonstrating a mentality imbued with colonial smugness and haughtiness.
The final paragraph of the CGT’s confederal communiqué restates a few facts that should have been the starting (and only) point:
“The Israeli government, dominated by the far right, openly conducts a policy of apartheid and inexorably pursues the colonization of the West Bank and East Jerusalem, in defiance of all international decisions, closing the door more and more to any peace process, while Benyamin Netanyahu calls for the razing of the cities of Gaza.
The CGT recalls that the Human Rights Council of the United Nations, in a report published on Tuesday June 7, clearly condemns Israel’s policy on the situation: ‘The conclusions and recommendations related to the root causes of this conflict point overwhelmingly to Israel, which we analyze as an indicator of the asymmetrical nature of the conflict and the reality of one state occupying another’.”
The CGT, which blamed Hamas for this “escalation” and its consequences throughout its communiqué, is therefore in total contradiction. But it’s not the demand for coherence, or morality, that takes precedence, but rather the demand to “howl with the wolves” and condemn Hamas.
On October 18, the CGT issued a new communiqué entitled “Stop the bloodbath in Gaza immediately”. Despite this encouraging title, its content is just as distressing as that of the previous communiqué, if not more so. It begins as follows:
“For the past 10 days, the people of Gaza have been subjected to terrible strikes in retaliation [sic] for the acts of terror perpetrated by Hamas on October 7. The CGT has unambiguously condemned this policy of making things worse, which does a disservice to the Palestinian cause. It is not surprising that Hamas should make this type of choice, as it has been violating women’s rights and multiplying arbitrary arrests for almost 20 years in Gaza, imposing a double penalty on the enclave, which has been held under an outrageous blockade by Israel since 2007.”
While the population of Gaza had been pounded and genocided for over 10 days, with thousands dead, tens of thousands wounded and hundreds of thousands displaced, the CGT devoted its entire opening tirade to condemning Hamas, with only the word “outrageous” condemning Israel for its blockade at the very end of the paragraph. The same accusatory inversion is at work, via a reversal of chronology that places Gaza in the position of aggressor rather than victim (in a way legitimizing reprisals), with “terrible strikes” on one side and “acts of terror” on the other (accusing Israel of terrorism is out of the question, even when they threaten 1 million inhabitants with annihilation if they don’t evacuate northern Gaza at once). The “policy of making things worse” is not that of Netanyahu’s far-right government, which has left the Palestinian population with no other choice but armed struggle, but that of Hamas, which moreover “violates women’s rights”: is this a reference to the wearing of the veil, a notorious sign of backwardness for the CGTists, even when it is freely worn? All that’s missing is a reference to the rights of the non-existent LGBTI+ community in Gaza to complete the picture (on November 8, the CGT did choose a LGBT flag to call for a demonstration for a ceasefire in Gaza…). And we find once again this major concern of the CGT for what serves and disserves the Palestinian cause, which is one of the priorities of their Montreuil offices: as we read at the end of the communiqué, “The CGT is currently working to build the widest possible arc of forces in favor of an immediate ceasefire and a just and lasting peace for this region of the world.” Under such conditions, the people of Gaza are truly ungrateful for having launched the October 7 offensive, which threatens to scupper the plans for a just and lasting peace skilfully matured, between two packs of beer, by the CGT Union’s experts. All the Palestinians had to do was wait a few more decades and the job was done, what the hell…
But the worst is yet to come. A few paragraphs later, we read:
“The CGT demands that France, a permanent member of the UN Security Council, immediately mobilize the resources of its diplomacy to obtain an immediate ceasefire and prevent the announced annihilation of northern Gaza by a large-scale land, sea and air offensive. The CGT also demands that everything possible be done to help the civilian population. The generosity and exceptional measures (including temporary protection) rightly implemented to help Ukrainians fleeing the war must also be extended to the Palestinians!”
Not only is there no explicit condemnation of this crime against humanity in the making, namely the deportation of the population of Gaza to the south and then to the Egyptian Sinai desert, but after a timid request that France should “prevent” it, the CGT calls for this deportation to be facilitated by the reception of the expelled Palestinian populations, in the same way that the Ukrainian populations were massively welcomed in Western countries following Russia’s intervention.
The CGT, which yesterday supported the Algerian National Liberation Front (FLN) —at a time where the risk was not an indictment for “apology for terrorism”, but indeed “terrorism” and “high treason”, with the death penalty not been abolished yet—, has changed: today, its General Secretary Sophie Binet denounces Hamas as “terrorist” (she had also supported the banning of the abaya dress in schools…). These positions demonstrate once again that, despite cosmetic differences, the CGT is aligned with NATO policy and that of Western capitals, a position that has only been confirmed since it left the World Federation of Trade Unions (composed of Southern countries) in 1995.
To put the finishing touches to this sad picture of solidarity with Palestine in France, it should be pointed out that French associations, even Muslim and pro-Palestinian ones such as the AFPS (France Palestine Solidarity Association, whose first press release was very respectable), also threw stones at Hamas. The UJFP (French Jewish Union for Peace) at first issued some very good statements, but eventually gave in to the anti-Hamas mob. Many rallies where only calling for a ceasefire, with the majority of speakers competing in their zeal to condemn “Hamas atrocities” as if it all started from there.
Why did this happen?
Over and above the overtly Zionist political and media pressure and its unbearable bludgeoning of the Israeli narrative, as well as the very real judicial threats of charges of apology for terrorism (the New Anticapitalist Party has been indicted for “apology of terror” because of its initial exemplary press release, later retracted, along with two CGT members for their local communiqués or tweets), which may explain the blindness and/or cowardice of all these voices, we must remember that the issues at work in occupied Palestine largely overlap with those of the history of colonialism. In particular, we need to remember the ambiguous position of so-called left-wing or progressive Western forces in the face of national liberation struggles against their own countries. An extract from Jean-Paul Sartre’s Preface to Frantz Fanon’s Wretched of the earth, dedicated to the Algerian War, expresses all that needs to be said about the “support” of LFI, Mediapart, the CGT and so many others for the Palestinian cause:
“The Left at home is embarrassed; they know the true situation of the natives, the merciless oppression they are submitted to; they do not condemn their revolt, knowing full well that we have done everything to provoke it. But, all the same, they think to themselves, there are limits; these guerrillas should be bent on showing that they are chivalrous; that would be the best way of showing they are men. Sometimes the Left scolds them: ‘You’re going too far; we won’t support you any more.’ The natives don’t give a damn about their support; for all the good it does them, the French Leftists might as well shove it up their a**es. Once their war began, they saw this hard truth: that every single one of us has made his bit, has got something out of them; they don’t need to call anyone to witness; they’ll grant favoured treatment to no one.
There is one duty to be done, one end to achieve: to thrust out colonialism by every means in their power. The more far-seeing among us will be, in the last resort, ready to admit this duty and this end; but we cannot help seeing in this ordeal by force the altogether inhuman means that these less-than-men make use of to win the concession of a charter of humanity. Accord it to them at once, then, and let them endeavour by peaceful undertakings to deserve it. Our worthiest Western souls are racist. (…)
This is the end of the dialectic; you condemn this war but do not yet dare to declare yourselves to be on the side of the Algerian fighters; have no fear, you can count on the settlers and the hired soldiers; they’ll make you take the plunge.”
Yes, this half-hearted support for Palestine of the Western Left is all about racism (and even Islamophobia). The martyrdom of the Palestinian population, which has been going on for decades, has never moved “our worthiest Western souls” as much as the Gaza uprising against the soldiers and settlers, even though the violence of Hamas and the number of Israeli victims are far less than what the occupier regularly inflicts on the Arab population. The West shed more tears on the fake story of 40 decapitated Israeli babies than on tens of premature Palestinian infants suffocated to death by Israel in Al-Shifa Hospital: the mere illusion of a Jewish death is worse, so much worse than the real, actual and horrendous death of thousands of Palestinian children, as if they were meant to die before they come of age. As for “taking the plunge” and supporting the Palestinian Resistance, it’s likely that our “worthiest souls” will never do so, given our indifference to the massacre of almost ten thousand children, a single strike against a hospital resulting in over 500 civilian casualties, the assault on hospitals, the imminent risk of death hanging over hundreds of thousands of Palestinians trapped and deprived of drinking water, food, electricity, fuel and medicine, and the specter of a mass exodus, which have not shaken our conviction that any declaration of “support” for Palestine must begin with a condemnation of the “war crimes” of Hamas, the “terrorist” organization that is “holding hostage” the people of Gaza (no matter how much this contradicts the facts, it gives a clear conscience).
Norman Finkelstein, son of Auschwitz and Warsaw Ghetto survivors and a world authority on the Palestinian question, contextualized and commented on these positions, and affirmed genuine support for the Palestinian struggle. Such a courageous stance is so rare that it is worth quoting at length:
“My parents were in the Warsaw Ghetto up until the uprising in April 1943. The uprising in the ghetto is normally regarded as a heroic chapter, or the only heroic chapter during the Nazi extermination. And when the anniversary came around, probably around 20 or 30 years ago, Amy Goodman of Democracy Now!, she interviewed my mother about the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. And my mother was very – let’s just put it this way – she was very skeptical of all the praise that was being heaped on it. She said, number one, we were all destined to die, so there’s no great heroism in trying to resist when there was no other option available, we were going to be deported and exterminated. Number two, she said that the resistance was vastly exaggerated, which in fact was true. It was a very minuscule resistance to the Nazi occupation of Warsaw at the time. And so I saw that Amy Goodman, her face began to drop because my mother was diminishing what was supposed to be a heroic chapter or the only heroic chapter during that horrific sequence of events. So my mother said, excuse me, Amy asked her, “was there anything positive from what happened?” And I remember my mother commenting, first she talked about the ingenuity, the ingenuity of the fighters in the Warsaw Ghetto. And she described how they had no implements. They developed this very complex catacombs – what were called “bunkers” in the ghetto – using their bare hands. And I remember her use of that word ingenuity. And then when I saw or witnessed or read about the ingenuity of the people of Hamas, the most surveilled place on God’s earth. Every nook and cranny of Gaza is under 10,000 different Israeli surveillance technologies. And yet they managed, amidst all this, to block all of the surveillance and conduct this operation — I pay tribute to that ingenuity! I pay tribute to the resistance of a people with literally, or almost literally, their having figured out a way to resist this concentration camp imposed on them or overcome it…
And I have the same sense of wonderment – I am still totally baffled – that Hamas figured out a way to tribute the human ingenuity and that spirit of resistance, and all the powers that each individual can summon forth in that struggle for resistance to defeat a very formidable or impose a defeat, even if it turns out not to be longstanding, to impose a momentary defeat on those racist supremacists and Übermenschen who just don’t believe the Arabs are clever enough, smart enough, have enough ingenuity to prevail.
As to the question of the civilians and the civilian deaths, I don’t know what happened. I’ll patiently listen and I will as fairly as I can parse the evidence as it becomes available. I’m not gonna put a “but,” I’m not gonna put a “however,” I’m just gonna state the facts. Number one, I was rereading the other day Karl Marx’s Civil War in France, and that describes the period when the Parisian workers come to power in Paris, form a commune, and the government, the official government, was assassinating prisoners of war, hostages. and it became so brutal that the Communards, as they were called, they took about 50 or 60 hostages. The government wouldn’t relent, it wouldn’t relent, and the Communards killed the hostages.
Karl Marx defended it. He defended it. He said “it was a matter of… They were being treated with such contempt, the Communards.” The Communards were begging for a way to peacefully resolve this. They asked for one of their leaders, Blanqui, to be returned to them, and the government wouldn’t. You know, John Brown, he didn’t have a clean record. When he was in a battle in Kansas over a place called Osawatome, he killed hostages. He did. And when he was hung, it was very hard to find a person to defend him. Actually, I recently learned from reading something by Cornel West, one of the few people who spoke on his behalf was Herman Melville, the author of Moby Dick, which I wasn’t aware of. But he killed hostages, and he was hung and very few rose to his defense, but before you knew it, the Civil War came along. And, one of the marching songs in the Civil War was “John Brown’s body lies a-mouldering in the grave.” History’s judgment can be very different than the momentary judgment.
It is so appalling, it’s not just the despiriting, it’s so appalling, the reaction of all of these cowards and careerists and scum who use their microphones called Twitter to just denounce the Hamas attack. Most of the Hamas militants, probably the ones who broke through the fence, it’s their first time out of Gaza because you assume they’re mostly in their 20s. The blockade has gone on now for 18 years. They grew up in a concentration camp. They want to be free. One of the natures of the current technology is they get to see on the screen all these people walking free. They want to be free. They joined Hamas, they volunteered. Yes, by international law, they constitute combatants. Do I think they’re legitimate targets because they’re combatants? You’ll never convince me. You will never convince me.
I know what the law says. I know what I’m legally obliged to say. I know what as a scholar or reported scholar I’m supposed to say. But, are you going to convince me a person who grew up in a concentration camp and wants to breathe free air, is – to use the language of international law – a legitimate target, I can’t do it. I cannot. Now, people are going to say, “you’re a hypocrite, you say you uphold international law, you know the fundamental principle of international law is the principle of distinction. Now you’re contradicting yourself.” Yeah, I’ll admit it. I don’t think legal formulas can capture every situation. And I don’t believe a child who was born into a concentration camp is a legitimate target. If he, in this case, it is he, if he wants to be free. I can’t see it.
Now, how far are they allowed to go in order to break out of that camp? How far are they allowed to go? I think that’s a legitimate question. But here I’ll give you an example. In 1996, the International Court of Justice was asked to deliver what’s called an advisory opinion. The question put to the court was this, is the use or threat of use of nuclear weapons illegal under international law? Is the use or the threat of use of nuclear weapons illegal under international law? Now, as all of you know, the fundamental principle of the laws of war is the distinction between civilians and combatants, between civilian sites, a military base, and so forth. So insofar as nuclear weapons by their inherent nature are unable to distinguish between civilians and combatants, civilian sites and military sites, insofar as they inherently can’t do that, the question obviously arises, are they legal under international law?
So there was a huge Supreme Court I.C.J. deliberation on this question, and their conclusion was that under almost all circumstances, the use of nuclear weapons was illegal under international law for the reasons just stated. However, the court said there’s one area where we can’t decide. And the area where we can’t decide, the court said, was what if the survival of a state was at stake? Namely, what if a country faced the prospect that an attack would come at the price of the disintegration of the state? And the I.C.J. said, well, maybe if a state, its survival was at stake, maybe the use of nuclear weapons might be justified. Now bear in mind, the I.C.J. did not deliberate on the survival of a people. It deliberated on the survival of a state. And so I say, if the International Court of Justice – the highest judicial body in the world – couldn’t decide whether you have the right to use nuclear weapons to defend the survival of your state, then I would say you clearly have the right to use armed force in order to protect the survival of your people. So, by current international law standards, I find it very hard to condemn the Palestinians, whatever they did. I find it very hard.
When I see the Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the Ilhan Omars, the Bernie Sanders, when they “condemn” the revolt of the inmates in the concentration camp. “Israel has the right to defend itself when the inmates breach the walls of the camp.” I spit on them. They nauseate me. But unfortunately, you can count on the fingers of one hand – and even less than the fingers in one hand – the number of people who showed any heart, any soul, any compassion for the God-forsaken people of Gaza.”
It is interesting to note that all these betrayals of the Palestinian cause are taking place at a time when, in the eyes of Western opinion, steeped in centuries of prejudice about the “superiority of the White man” and decades of Hollywood propaganda about the presumed supremacy of American armies and their allies, Gaza is about to be annihilated, its population about to undergo a mass and definitive deportation, and the Palestinian cause is about to breathe its last. We can only imagine the chorus of howls, cries and vociferations that will emanate from the capitals of the “civilized West” on the day when the forces of the Axis of Resistance (Iran, Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Hezbollah…) enter the stage for the Great War of the Liberation of Palestine, which will inevitably end with the exodus of 6 million Zionist settlers to Europe and America, on the model of the end of French Algeria. On that day, which is much closer than most people imagine, the deafening silence in the face of the imminent total ethnic cleansing of the more than two million Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, and the completion of that of the three million Palestinians in the West Bank, will be replaced by a thunder of enraged and impotent recriminations, threats of war and perhaps Armageddon if Israel is not saved. But at the end, when Palestine and its allies are victorious and settlers are forced to leave, all the hate speech about immigrants and the need to “remigrate” them whence they came from will turn into a bitter rivalry to welcome Jewish “refugees” expelled from the former State of Israel, as we saw during the war in Ukraine.
In a way, this situation is to be welcomed. It’s just as well that the masks are coming off. The Palestinian cause is too sacred for cowards, opportunists and hypocrites to claim to be among its defenders during the struggle, and to pretend to have worked for it, after the destruction of Israel, with their declarations of “support”. It is necessary that impostors be expunged from the ranks of the true defenders of the Palestinian cause, and that only its sincere supporters remain. This is perhaps the last condition for its Liberation.
New evidence has emerged on the devastating human rights impact of French fossil fuel giant TotalEnergies’ destructive oil and gas pipeline project in Uganda. On Thursday, Human Rights Watch (HRW) accused Ugandan authorities of harassing, arresting and beating activists and demonstrators protesting the East Africa Crude Oil Pipeline (EACOP).
The news comes amidst a global crackdown on climate activists, and the while fossil fuel major announced another quarter of killer profits.
Activists and non-profits fight the EACOP project
TotalEnergies and the China National Offshore Oil Corporation are joint venture partners on the $10-billion project to develop oilfields in Uganda.
The project involves fossil fuel companies drilling around 400 oil wells in Murchison Falls National Park. Notably, this is the largest protected area in Uganda. The companies will then transport the crude along the 1,445-kilometre (900-mile) EACOP to the Tanzanian port of Tanga.
Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni has hailed the project as an economic boon. However, environmental and human rights organisations and activists have been fiercely opposing the project. The Canary has documented a number of these actions.
In February for instance, after the Tanzanian government greenlit the project, campaigners hosted a global day of action against it. Activists from the #StopEACOP movement targeted financial institutions linked to the project.
Then, in June we reported on the coalition of nonprofits taking the fossil fuel giant to court in Paris.
Moreover, activists have continued to keep up the heat. In August, campaigners from multiple organisations staged protests outside the offices of a number of the project’s potential insurers.
Ultimately, the numerous actions have called out EACOP’s shocking environmental and human rights impacts. As the Canary‘s Tracy Keeling has detailed, the project threatens nearly 2,000km² of biodiverse protected wildlife habitats.
Moreover, the Parliament of the European Union has estimated that the project could displace over 100,000 people.
To make matters worse, the Canaryhighlighted a Business and Human Rights Resource Centre report which singled out TotalEnergies for the impacts of EACOP on environmental defenders. In particular, attacks on rights defenders associated with the project placed TotalEnergies within the top five worst companies for these types of human rights violations.
Now, HRW’s new findings has built on this picture.
Crackdown against EACOP opponents
Its new report is entitled ‘Working On Oil is Forbidden’: Crackdown Against Environmental Defenders in Uganda. In it, HRW have documented the Ugandan government’s crackdown on freedoms of expression, association, and assembly. Moreover, the non-profit identified the repeated harassment, arbitrary arrests, and unlawful detention that authorities have subjected environmental defenders to for opposing the project.
HRW interviewed 31 people across Uganda and Tanzania between March and September 2023. This included 21 activists fighting the project from Uganda.
John Kaheero Mugisa is the former head of the Oil and Gas Human Rights Defenders Association, which is pushing for fair compensation for those displaced. Mugisa told HRW he was arrested several times and his health had deteriorated after seven months in prison.
Meanwhile, activists working in Uganda’s capital Kampala as well as Buliisa and Hoima – the two towns closest to the oilfields – said police raided their offices in 2021.
One activist told HRW:
Most of us limit our work because of pressure and threats from our local officials. We fear arrest and losing our livelihood
Moreover, police have issued threats against community members speaking out against their displacement for the project. Jealousy Mugisha travelled to France for a court hearing and said he was detained and interrogated for hours after returning to Uganda.
He told HRW that government security agents at the airport warned him:
You are not supposed to witness in France again. If you go again, you will lose your life.
A ‘chilling environment’ on human rights
Additionally, HRW also interviewed students police had arrested at demonstrations.
One of those HRW interviewed said security detained him during a protest in June at Uganda’s parliament. He explained to HRW that uniformed parliamentary security officials and others used:
batons, gun butts, and… their boots to step on our heads.
Senior environment researcher at HRW Felix Horne said of the findings that:
This crackdown has created a chilling environment that stifles free expression about one of the most controversial fossil fuel projects in the world. The government of Uganda should immediately end arbitrary arrests of anti-oil pipeline activists and protect their right to exercise freedom of expression, in accordance with international human rights norms
Of course, the repression of environmental defenders against the project reflects a global trend. In May, the French police suppressed protestors blocking the entrance to the fossil fuel major’s annual general meeting (AGM). As the Canary‘s Glen Black reported, the police curtailed the protest aggressively by:
firing teargas into the crowd. Videos on social media also appeared to show officers using pepper spray and physically assaulting people
Moreover, the London’s Met police used the UK’s new draconian anti-protest legislation on Just Stop Oil activists on Monday 30 October. The Guardianreported that:
Pictures and video circulated by the campaign showed officers kneeling on and handcuffing protesters, and carrying them into waiting police vans.
The activists were protesting the UK’s latest announcement of new offshore oil and gas licences, which it also announced on Monday. The government awarded TotalEnergies three of the 64 newly licensed blocks.
The fight continues against profiteering fossil fuel companies
Of course, HRW’s new damning report has arrived a week on from TotalEnergies third quarter profits announcement. On 26 October, the French fossil fuel giant posted $6.5bn in profits. The results took its shareholder pay-outs for 2023 to $11.9bn.
So, activists from across the world are keeping up the fight against the climate-wrecking profiteer – and in solidarity with communities and environmental defenders fighting the project.
On Friday 3 November, campaigners from a new coalition will begin a series of over 200 actions across multiple continents. Led by 350.org, the ‘Power Up’ coalition are demanding that governments make big polluter pay up to finance a just energy transition to renewables.
Kicking off the campaign in multiple cities across Europe, activists plan to stage a neon-lit parade on bicycles, roller skates and skateboards from TotalEnergies’ headquarters to the French Parliament district. Youth climate activist Pascal Mirindi from the Democratic Republic of Congo will speak on the devastating impacts of the EACOP project on communities in Africa.
This fall, the military junta in Niger compelled France to agree to withdraw its ambassador and 1,500 soldiers from the country. The decision followed an ultimatum from Nigerien authorities and a wave of protests demanding their expulsion, as well as a tense standoff at the French embassy. At the height of the crisis, French President Emmanuel Macron announced that the junta had taken Ambassador…
As of Oct 23, France completed its military withdrawal from Niger following months of local protests. From 2013 to 2022, France deployed over 3,000 troops to the countries of the G5 Sahel (Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali, Mauritania, and Niger) as part of a counterterrorism mission known as Operation Barkhane. After coups in Mali, Burkina Faso, and now Niger, all three countries have expelled the French presence.
While coverage in western media has fixed on the coups themselves, the story on the ground is more complicated. The actions of the coup governments are backed by broad social movements and popular opposition to France’s relationship to the region, which extends far beyond Operation Barkhane. 14 countries in West and Central Africa have their currencies under the control of France in the form of the CFA Franc. 1 in 3 lightbulbs in France are powered by uranium mined from Niger, yet more than 80 percent of Nigeriens lack access to electricity. France’s influence in the region, though waning, is also backed up by the US Africa Command (AFRICOM), which has some 29 bases across the region, including the world’s largest drone base in Niger. These and other challenges are among those the new coup governments of the Sahel will have to overcome as they attempt to chart new paths forward for their countries.
Inemessit Richardson of the Thomas Sankara Center for Liberation and African Unity in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso, speaks with The Real News about the anticolonial movement reshaping the Sahel, and what challenges lie ahead for the region as a new chapter dawns. Inemessit Richardson is President of the Thomas Sankara Center for Liberation and African Unity, a political education center and community library in Burkina Faso.
Editor’s Note: This interview was recorded on Sept. 26, 2023. France began its withdrawal from Niger on Oct. 10.
Additional links/info:
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Follow the Thomas Sankara Center for Liberation and African Unity on Instagram.
Studio Production: Adam Coley Post-Production: David Hebden
Transcript
The following is a rushed transcript and may contain errors. A proofread version will be made available as soon as possible.
Ju-Hyun Park:
Welcome to The Real News. My name is Ju-Hyun Park, engagement editor at The Real News. Today we’ll be talking about recent developments in the Sahel region of Africa, particularly the recent announcement by France that it is withdrawing militarily from its former colony of Niger. We’ll also discuss the three coup governments in Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger that have arisen in the past couple of years to challenge French Neocolonialism in the region.
Before I begin, I’d like to remind our viewers that The Real News is a completely independent and not-for-profit news organization. We pride ourselves in telling the stories that corporate media won’t and we can tell those stories, because we don’t run advertisements or depend on corporate donors to keep the lights on. We’re powered by supporters such as yourself. So if you can, please take a moment to like, comment, and subscribe, and consider making a small donation to keep our reporting funded.
The Sahel region has undergone a major and rapid transformation in the past two years. From 2014 to 2022, France militarily occupied five nations in the region, all of them former colonies: Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger, and Chad, where permanent French military bases were established as well as in Mauritania. The pretext for French occupation was a counter-terrorism mission known as Operation Barkhane, intended to enhance regional security. To be clear, the presence of armed militant groups throughout the Sahel is a major problem, one that goes back to the Libyan civil war when the US slash NATO destruction of the Libyan state and economy created the condition for many such militant organizations to proliferate throughout the region.
At its height, operation Barkhane saw 5,500 French troops deployed across the Sahel. Yet despite almost a decade of intervention, France failed to meaningfully curb violence in the region and stoked the anger of local populations through attacks on civilians such as an airstrike on a wedding in Mali in 2021, which killed 22 people. The fortunes of the French have turned with the rise of new coup governments in Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger, opposed to their continued presence. It ought to be noted that in the case of Mali and Burkina Faso, the governments of Assimi Goita and Ibrahim Traore, replaced prior military juntas that were friendly to the French and not the target of international sanctions.
The rise of these new governments has begun a rollback of French power, with France withdrawing from Mali in August 2022, and Burkina Faso ordering France to leave in January of this year. On July 26, Aku and Niger under the leadership of Abdur Haman Tchiani ousted former president Mohamed Bazoum. Since coming into power, the Tchiani government has set its sights on cutting Niger free of France for good. This has not only entailed ending military cooperation and demanding France withdraw its troops; Niger is also the second-largest supplier of uranium to the EU and French multinationals hold important stakes in the mining companies that own and exploit Niger’s mineral resources. Tchiani’s push to expel France militarily and economically has been backed up by social movements which have staged two months of nationwide protests demanding France’s departure. On September 22, France finally relented and announced the withdrawal of its troops and its diplomats.
So what lies ahead for the Sahel and how do we understand these recent events? Joining me today to help situate these developments, is an important guest for the Thomas Sakara Center for Liberation and African Unity in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso. The Thomas Sankara Center is a lending library and political education center in the Cissin neighborhood of Ouagadougou that has operated for two years. It provides political education courses and access to a library of anti-colonial and revolutionary texts that most Burkina Bay families would be otherwise unable to afford or access on their own. Inemesit Richardson is president of the Thomas Sankara Center and a member of the All-African People’s Revolutionary Party. Inemesit, thank you for joining us.
Inemesit Richardson:
Thank you so much for having me on. I really appreciate talking to you.
Ju-Hyun Park:
Appreciate having you here. Now we’re certainly looking at a really momentous occasion today. It’s been two months of constant protests from Nigerians demanding the withdrawal of France. Could you start by helping us better understand the situation on the ground? What are the social movements and sectors of society that have mobilized in the last few months and what is driving them?
Inemesit Richardson:
Okay, well, we first need to understand that the Sahel region of Africa has been increasing in an anti-imperialist consciousness for many years. So what we’re seeing right now is the buildup of many years of mobilizing getting bigger and bigger and bigger, to the point that now we have heads of states who are representing these popular movements that are emerging from the cause of the masses of people. So if we look back to around 2018- 2019 or so, we see an eruption of mobilizing against the CFA Frank currency. And then very close to this time period we start to see mass-mobilizing protests growing to the point where it’s starting in the hundreds, growing to the thousands, to the tens of thousands in Mali against the French military operation. At one point Mali was really the base in the center.
They called their operation, Operation Barkhane, and it was based out of Mali primarily, but really across the Sahel. There was an alliance called the G5 Sahel Group with Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger, Chad, and Mauretania. So all of those countries had some form of French military occupation. And so the movement, which at one point was very focused on the CFA Frank currency, and still is, became also a movement that was very much against military forms of imperialism. And Mali became at one point the center of that. And then once we see Mali has a coup and the coup leads to this progressive anti-imperialist government of Assimi Goita, we see an absolute explosion of mobilization and anti-imperialist consciousness at an all time high all across the Sahel region, including in Burkina Faso and in Niger.
And so well before the coup in Niger happened, there was the coup first in Mali. Then there was two coups in Burkina actually, the second one bringing about an anti-imperialist leader who took a similar move against France like Mali did. Then it became a question where, among the people it was almost like a matter of time when would Niger be the next one to go in this direction? The people were ready. There was a lot of false flag alerts coming from regular Niger citizens saying, okay, the coup’s going to happen soon, the coup’s happening. Until it finally did.
Ju-Hyun Park:
Thank you so much for that background. It’s very important that you mentioned that in the case of both Mali and Burkina Faso, these were governments that were headed up by military juntas prior to the most recent coups. But it was only after these most recent coups took a stance against French intervention in the military sense as well as France’s economic neo-colonial control of the region, that these governments began to experience consequences from France and from neighboring states as well. To bring us into understanding the roots of these popular uprisings a little further, could you describe a little bit and explain some of what exactly the CFA Frank is for those of us who may be unfamiliar? What exactly, historically, is it coming from and what are its impacts on the actual societies which are subjected to it?
Inemesit Richardson:
Okay. The CFA Frank is a colonial currency. Now we can say it’s a neo-colonial currency. It’s a pretty unique currency in the sense that there aren’t very many currencies in the world, or really any that operate just like it, except for the Comorian Franc which is pretty much the same thing under a different name. So there are 14 countries in Africa that use this currency, plus Comoros, which has the same thing, like I said, but under a different name. It’s divided into two regions, one in West Africa and one in Central Africa, and they operate in the same way. Countries that use this currency have to hold about 50% of their national reserves in the French Treasury out in Paris. That number has changed in the past but if I’m not mistaken, it’s around 50% right now. The currency is anchored to the Euro, it’s pegged to the Euro.
The value of the currency does not reflect anything to do with any local economies existing within Africa. If the Euro increases in value, so does the CFA, if the Euro falls in value, so does the CFA. It’s really a fixed exchange rate that’s based on whatever rate is going to be favorable towards the EU and accessing raw materials at a favorable rate and also having a market to export their goods. It gives France voting and veto power in the two regional banks. There’s a regional bank in West Africa and there’s another regional bank that oversees the CFA in Central Africa. France has enormous power within those banks to pretty much determine certain financial agreements and economic trade agreements for the African countries that are in those regions and that use this currency.
And even though as I mentioned, both the currencies in West and Central Africa are the same, they’re like the same system, they have the same name, they operate in the same way, West and Central African currencies actually cannot trade directly with each other through the CFA Frank currency. They have to convert it to the Euro first and then transfer that back into the West African currency has to be transferred into the Euro and then converted into the Central African one and vice versa. I’m not necessarily the expert on the economics and monetary policy but I can say that there’s a great book that’s written about this, I believe it’s called Africa’s Last Colonial Currency: The CFA Frank Story. I’m more familiar with the title in French, but it’s by Ndongo Samba Sylla and I believe Fanny Pigeaud, if I’m not mistaken. So I recommend that for people who are curious about how this currency operates.
Ju-Hyun Park:
Yeah, thank you so much for that really insightful overview of the CFA. I feel like what you’re describing there is really an intentional system of dependency that’s being foisted onto nations in Western Central Africa, where a certain amount of their wealth is always going to be cycled back into France in the form of these reserves. And at the same time, because there are rules in terms of the ability to exchange one form of CFA for another, you have these two regional blocks that are economically being divided in a very artificial and unnatural way that is really only to the benefit of outsiders.
Pivoting a little bit to better understand the everyday ins and outs of Operation Barkhane, you’re speaking to us today from Burkina Faso. I’m wondering if you can share a little bit from your vantage what the experience of Operation Barkhane has been for everyday people in Burkina Faso? How have the last several years of civil conflict and French intervention really impacted people on the ground? And since you’ve also seen the rise of the Traoré government most recently, what has this new government meant for people in a material sense?
Inemesit Richardson:
Okay, so I’ll start by saying that Burkina Faso is a country that I admire a lot for its dignity. It’s a country that has a lot of dignity and that time and time again has really been on the forefront of defending its own sovereignty. And so I really admire that about this country in particular. But it is true that over the past several years now, the country has been in some ways, very much destabilized by these paramilitary terrorist organizations. A lot of this is blow back from the NATO invasion of Libya which led to a power vacuum in the Libyan state. And certain groups are able to access Libyan arms from the fallen state and bring those into the Sahel. And there’s been immense crisis ever since.
Ouagadougou, since I’ve been here, is an area of the country that sees less of this violence directly. Most of the violence is towards the Malian border and the Nigerian border areas but we feel a lot of the impact of what it means to be in a state that’s currently waging war against these paramilitary groups. And so we understand this is the state, as much as I don’t want to paint a picture of crisis within Ouagadougou, where on a day-to-day basis here in the capital, things are relatively safe. At the same time, there are internally displaced people, people who have fleed from those northern regions that have had to abandon their agriculture, which has had an impact on the country’s economy. It’s destroyed the tourist economy. Burkina Faso hosts the largest film festival on the African continent, FESPACO, and it’s been severely impacted by these attacks.
And then there’s a level of fear living in a context where there are these groups that are operating and we see that it’s had a massive impact on people’s lives. One of the ways it’s impacted Ouagadougou, it’s increased general poverty and hardship across the country as a whole. Like I said, there’s places where people would have agriculture and have farms where they can’t anymore. There’s less people who are coming in. Also, the people-to-people relationships in the Sahel are so strong. There’s so many people who have family members who are in Mali or in Niger and those border areas are generally pretty fluid with people constantly going back and forth. But it is extremely dangerous right now to take common routes to Niger or to Mali and even certain villages that are people’s villages that they’ve fled from. They can no longer go back right now because a lot of these villages are in a situation of crisis and warfare.
A lot of sections of the country there’s a huge migration out of those regions and they’ve been a little bit siphoned off from the rest. People don’t go there anymore and people aren’t able to have those people to people connections, visit their family members who live on the Malian side of the border or the Nigerian side of the border. So it’s been pretty devastating these past few years for the country as a whole. And pretty much every day there’s people who are talking about how do we come up with a solution towards this violence? And people have realized that the best solution is one that is not relying on Western military intervention, to say there’s no trust at all between ordinary people and these western militaries, the French military, the US, and Germany.
The movement started off very specifically calling out France and then more and more I’m hearing NATO being evoked and people starting to realize more and more that it’s not a question of France but this whole NATO camp. And the average, I say average person, it’s a very widespread question right now is asking where are these groups getting their arms? We don’t have weapons that are manufactured in this region. How are they so well armed? Where are they getting these supplies from? There’s a lot of distrust, a lot of people who are saying, is it really in the interest of these western governments to be fighting terrorism? Or is it not more in their interest to prolong this situation, so that they can stay here longer where they have access to the resources that they want to have, the partnerships that they wanted to have, at least with the heads of states prior to the current ones.
Ju-Hyun Park:
Thank you so much for that really expansive overview of what we’re dealing with here. Too often it is easy to forget that these stories of big geopolitical shifts really concern the lives of millions of people, people who are dealing with, as you’re saying, poverty with insecurity. From what it sounds like, also separation from loved ones, from their homes, from their families. So it really is in the interests of the majority of people to find a solution to the crisis that has gripped the region in the last several years. And that seems to be something that is very important for us to have a grounding in as we look to what’s been going on more at the state level, that we have to understand that there are popular demands and there is a popular will that’s backing up the agendas that we’re seeing from these new governments.
Shifting gears a little bit, you mentioned the role of the US or rather NATO, and I was wondering if we could get into that a little bit. Because a lot of the activities that we’ve been seeing from the outside seem to be focused on expelling the French but they aren’t the only foreign military presence in the region. They’re not the only international player that’s involved in the Sahel. The US is also a major player. It has the largest drone base in the world located in Agadez, in Nige. Also as we know USAFRICOM, which stands for African Command, has a massive and growing presence throughout the continent that is involved with multiple governments either at the level of direct military occupations, at the level of military trainings and consultations with various countries.
So can you help us better understand the role of the US military and NATO in conjunction with the French? And it seems that you’re mentioning that NATO is becoming more of a target but if you could comment a little bit on the status of that and what people are seeing as a priority on the ground at the moment.
Inemesit Richardson:
Okay. I’ll say when I first came here, I almost never heard people speaking as critically about the US. People understood the US was there and still to some extent right now, the US is treated more like a minor player, at least within the context of Burkina Faso. The US and France have done imperialism a little bit differently in the past few years and it’s led to a different outcome; France has been a little bit more forward and visible, especially with things like the CFA Frank and also with some of the companies that operate on the ground here. We have Orange for our telecommunications company which is a primarily French based, though multinational, company. We have companies like Total that are everywhere. So there’s more visibility on France’s end but increasingly, people are understanding that NATO is really an alliance. Which means that these countries are working together and at the end of the day, they represent the same interests.
They might sometimes have little competition between them but they really represent the same interests and the same status quo. So people are increasingly critical of the West as a whole. Especially in the context of Niger, like you said, Agadez is one of the largest AFRICOM drone bases. It’s between Agadez and Lemunje in Djibouti that are the massive US military presences. And people don’t know this as much but the CIA has their own drone base in Niger. It’s located in the village of Druku, which is near the Libyan border but it’s on the Niger side. There’s been a massive US military presence in Niger. I mentioned earlier that France has concentrated in recent years on Mali before they were expelled and then they moved even more into Niger.
They were always everywhere but Mali was like the French headquarters. Niger was really like the US headquarters in terms of the US’ strategic military interest. Not to say that they aren’t all everywhere but the base was biggest for the US within Niger. I’ve seen, especially on the Nigerian side of things, there is a little bit less of this exclusive French focus. There have been mobilizations that have been very clearly saying we need the US to get out. We need AFRICOM to get out. And people recognize it’s increasingly… It’s a question of the West, a question of NATO, seeing that at the end of the day, their interests tend to always align.
people are very clear that the countries they want to work with are not at all in that camp. They want to leave that… The US, France, and Germany are also present in the Sahel. They want to leave all those players behind. They recognize this history of exploitation. People know about the history of the CIA in Africa and they’re really looking to partner with countries that for once can actually be a partnership. Not a neo-colonial relationship but countries that are willing to work in a way that’s mutually beneficial and talks of technology transfers that US or France never ever put on the table.
Ju-Hyun Park:
Yeah, that point you raised about technology transfers is really important. As we’ve been saying, Niger as well as Burkina Faso and Mali are really important sources of minerals and other primary commodities to the global economy. I believe that Niger is something like the second-largest provider of uranium to the EU and most of the… There are French multinationals that hold very important stakes in a lot of the mining companies that own and exploit the mineral resources of Niger. So I’m wondering, looking ahead to questions beyond the immediate moment, beyond the struggle to expel the French, beyond the struggle to expand people’s political understanding, beyond the French military presence, what future is being charted by the three governments that we’ve seen in Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger? Is there a common vision that’s being strove towards and implemented? And what are the real prospects of seeing progress on that in the next few years?
Inemesit Richardson:
That’s a good question. So on the grassroots level, what the people have called for is Pan-Africanism and that’s being taken up now and it’s actually being taken quite seriously by some of these heads of state. I really think especially here in Burkina Faso, the Traoré administration, Prime Minister Kyélem de Tambèla, they seem to be taking this question of Pan-Africanism quite seriously. And what do people mean by that? A lot of people right now are turning to this vision of people like Kwame Nkrumah, Ahmed Sekou Toure and Modibo Keita. Modibo Keita was a Pan-African leader out of Mali. The three of those leaders, they signed an agreement saying that they would start the creation of a United States of Africa. They call it the Union of African States: the Ghana, Guinea, Mali Alliance. And there’s a long history of this call for a totally unified Africa and people are interested more and more in this history of Pan-Africanism and then more and more exploring what it could have looked like.
Thomas Sankara of course, is a huge inspiration across Burkina, the Sahel, and the African continent as a whole. He’s also evoked as a Pan-African leader who stood up for African Unity. Cheikh Anta Diop is lesser known maybe outside of this region, but he’s talked about a lot. He has some great books that he’s written about Pan-Africanism that I see more and more people are interested in. There have been calls for and mobilizations for this totally unified Africa, this United States of Africa vision. There’s also been… Some of this has translated into what’s talked about federation and there’s questions about what a federation could look like. But I know on the people to people level, the idea of the federation is inspired by the Mali Federation, which was a federation that existed between what is now Senegal, Mali at Burkina Faso — At the time it was upper Volta and then Benin, at Daomem — Were invited to join though it never really concretized.
But this again was this idea of a federal government linking together several African states that were divided through this colonial history and process. So people really want this unified Africa. Muammar Gaddafi’s also talked about a lot as somebody who called for this, who confronted the currency question head on, so that Africa needs a universal currency. And so people really want to live in an Africa where there is a shared currency, where there’s shared citizenship, freedom of movement, there’s transportation to get around and navigate a shared passport. Everything that we would understand a federal government to look like and encompass: shared foreign policy, et cetera, militarily even that’s a big question. Why is it that we have countries like… Nigeria has had problems with Boko Haram for how many years now? Then Mali is fighting against these terrorist paramilitary organizations and then we have hyper-militarism and intervention in the Horn of Africa. And the way we operate is like every African for himself or herself.
And so this is really being called into question, why are we operating in this way? And then we see NATO for example, they have a shared military unit and even though we disagree with their politics and their analysis and where they present themselves, at least the idea of NATO is this touch one, touch all idea. It’s like if the people who are exploiting Africa have that mentality, it’s only normal that Africa moves more and more and more towards the closest forms of unity that we can arrive at.
Ju-Hyun Park:
That’s a really excellent and cogent point that you’re offering there: If the world is going to be shaped by the Pan-Europeanism that’s embodied within NATO, why should there not also be a Pan-Africanism that is in opposition to that operating for the purpose of achieving real independence, sovereignty, and truly wellbeing for African people within the continent and arguably around the world? You’ve raised a lot of really important points. It’s a really beautiful and significant thing that there are people looking back to the very recent revolutionary history of the continent for inspiration in terms of a chart to path forward. And we’re already seeing some of those foundations being laid. Last week, The Alliance of Sahel States, the AES, was announced between Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger, and Guinea. I’m wondering if you can provide our audience with a little bit of context as to what this new security and mutual assistance alliance really is, where it’s coming from, and what goals it’s intending to accomplish?
Inemesit Richardson:
Okay. Burkina Faso and Mali we’re the first states to begin to disentangle themselves from France, beginning militarily. And I believe the currency question is really what’s on the table in the immediate future. And very early on once Burkina Faso started to follow in this direction that Mali charted, immediately the prime ministers and the heads of states got together to begin talking about this federation. It’s so popular that people walked on foot from Bamako to Ouagadougou. I don’t want to get this wrong but it’s something like 800 kilometers to arrive from Bamako to Ouagadougou. So that’s how strongly people feel. There was another delegation that I believe set off from Mali near the border of Mauritania. I don’t know how long that route was but people really were walking on foot to express how deeply they believed in this cause of African unity in the creation of a federation that would unite African people.
And the heads of state did take this up. The prime ministers took this up. There was a meeting earlier in the year between the prime ministers of Burkina Faso, Mali, and Guinea, where they first announced that they were working on this question of creating a federation and that any African country that wants to join is welcome to join it. Again, at the Russia-Africa summit that happened in July of this year, president Ibrahim Traore revoked this and said we are still working on this federation and we want to unify with Mali. Then, more recently, as you mentioned, there’s this new alliance of Sahelian states, which I believe is really following in the same direction. If you read what the charter said, it has actually exactly what I was referring to with this touch one, touch all mentality.
It says that any attack on the sovereignty of any one of the states that is in this alliance will be considered an attack on all of the states. They really started to form into this block and people are going to keep encouraging the states to push further and further and further until we can get as close as possible. Like I said, it’s a devastating time where people who have families on different sides of the borders cannot even cross those borders to see their loved ones. This is the context of a part of the world where these borders were drawn so arbitrarily, really competition between European states largely, especially with the Ghana Burkina border but within the French border.
France has reconstituted these small sub-regional administrative units so many times and one of the conditions for achieving independence was that states could not unify that independence and decide to overcome these colonial divisions. It was one of the conditions that they respect these boundaries. I know so many people who their villages are practically cutting across these borders. It’s like the people in the eastern side of Burkina Faso, the western side of Burkina Faso, they speak the same language as the majority of people in Mali.
It’s really like this all over every border area you get to. So people really feel strongly about the position these heads of states are taking in favor of having a greater and greater unity.
Ju-Hyun Park:
Thank you so much for that overview. And a really important element in pushing these four nations to come together has also been the level of backlash that they’ve experienced, not only from France and the US but also from the Economic Community of West African States or ECOWAS, which quite significantly was threatening an invasion of Niger and up to, I believe, an expiration date of August 6. But there still continued to be some discussion around that. And of course there’s been all manner of sanctions, particularly harsh against Niger, which I believe has had 70% of its electricity production cutoff from neighboring Nigeria.
I’m wondering if you can tell us a little bit about what you believe might be the future development of these threats against the AES, particularly given that now France is announcing its withdrawal, does this mean that from here on out things are going to improve? Is there a possibility that there could be even more pressure applied from within ECOWAS to either stage some military intervention or to increase sanctions and other coercive measures against these countries?
Inemesit Richardson:
It’s amazing that France is retreating from Niger. They’ve really been forced out. They’ve been pushed out. They have no choice that people of Niger don’t want them there. I also think there’s going to be consequences and backlash that we are anticipating and the people know there’s going to be backlash and there’s a mentality here that we’re preparing for what that will look like on the ground across these states. Like you mentioned, the sanctions in Niger are already quite severe and have already impacted a lot of regular working people. The prices of a lot of basic goods have increased overnight and that’s the result of ECOWAS sanctions. The problem with the ECOWAS dynamic within the Sahel is that it’s so unpopular already within the other ECOWAS states, we’ve seen protests in Benin, we’ve seen protests in Nigeria, we’ve seen protests in Senegal.
These are some of the main countries that are spearheading these threats against Niger. From what I understand, there was a French warship that pulled up to the shores of Benin; At least people believed that that was what the vehicle was, that was in Benin’s waters, and that led to even more mobilizations in Benin. It’s the same dynamic with mentioning across the African continent with some of these border areas, so like the north of Nigeria and much of the south of Niger, these are the same people who have been families on both sides of the border and are changing forever. And so there’s massive backlash and it makes the situation a little tricky for ECOWAS. These are already very unpopular leaders. Tinubu of Nigeria has already been called into question by a lot of Nigerians in regards to the election and whether or not that was legitimate.
Macky Sall in Senegal, my gosh. There’s been mobilizations and the streets of Dakar have been lit on fire in mobilizations against Macky Sall. So these are massively unpopular leaders which puts them in a tricky situation. But what we are seeing outside of these sanctions — And I don’t know if they’ll continue, what that’ll look like, and for how long — But what we are seeing is that western countries are sanctioning the Sahel. So the US and the EU now have stations on Mali, claiming that Mali is working with Wagner, the Russian group, which the Malian government has never confirmed. They’ve always said that they haven’t. I strongly believe that African countries can work with whoever they want and that has nothing to do with the West. Their sanctions are illegal. There’s no legal process… That should be in place. We are supposed to legalize sanctions. So there’s illegal sanctions that are imposed on Mali. Germany has actually been at the forefront of pushing the EU towards sanctioning Niger.
This is something that personally I anticipate, and I’m waiting to see, will Niger be sanctioned? Burkina Faso doesn’t have those Western sanctions on it yet but that’s another thing. I am waiting to see it and holding my breath anticipating that these sanctions are going to come, especially since they’ve already come and they’ve already been placed on Mali. This economic warfare will be a strategy towards repressing these states.
And to add real quick, these are landlocked countries. Imposing sanctions on landlocked countries is exponentially more severe because we don’t have access to the water to be able to easily connect with countries that would otherwise be open to trading with us or being friendly. There is a level of dependence where we would need ECOWAS to support in solidarity or some coastal state. We’re lucky that we have Guinea-Conakry right now who has taken a position in defense of Mali, Burkina, and Niger, but it’s really, really hard imposing sanctions on alignment countries. Very devastating.
Ju-Hyun Park:
Absolutely, and we see how these sanctions are also extremely political in the sense of trying to enforce a certain agenda upon these countries. We mentioned before that in the case of Mali and Burkina, there were already junta governments in power before the current coups happened. And these governments were not under sanctions because they were complying with an agenda that was amenable to the US and to the EU. But now that there are governments in power that are trying to put forward a more sovereign and more independent development path and way of relating to their neighbors and to the wider world, suddenly the hammer is coming down. Suddenly there is so much concern over the internal democracy and the state of the politics within these countries,which of course is really a smokescreen for these other agendas that have a lot more to do with the interests of multinationals within the Sahel at large.
The picture that we’re establishing is that this is really momentous that France is being forced from Niger, but the struggle is not over yet. There’s still a lot of possibility for increased repression, a lot of possibility for increased blow back, but there are also other currents and other trends that we should be looking at. You mentioned the protests that are taking place in Senegal, that have taken place in Nigeria and in Benin as well, and even from the standpoint of really uprooting the French presence in the Sahel, there’s more to be done. There’s still the permanent military base in Chad. There continues to be, as we mentioned before, French control of the CFA Frank. So I’m wondering what opportunities you see going ahead? Is there a possibility for increased resistance in any one of these countries in particular? Is this a regional situation that we need to keep an eye on in multiple places, or are there particular hotspots that could be next to sort of breakthrough the current moment?
Inemesit Richardson:
That’s a great question. Because for me — At least from my standpoint — I felt that the coup in Niger was very predictable and from the position that I’m in, a lot of people talked about and anticipated a coup in Niger for a very long time. But it’s a little harder to see where to go from here. We do see, like I mentioned, mass mobilizations against French imperialism in Senegal, but Senegal is also a country that has a very different relationship with its military. It’s one of the few West African countries that’s never had a coup before. It’s sometimes treated like a bragging point where there’s a UA dynamic sometimes with the Senegalese protests. They’re anti [inaudible 00:39:55] but also pro-democracy, defining democracy in a narrow, I would say bourgeois, sometimes electoral list way. It’s fine if there’s a progressive outcome but long story short, it’s a different relationship with the military.
So it’s hard to say whether or not there’d be a coup in a place like Senegal. Patrice Talon is very unpopular in Benin. I don’t know. Again, it’s a different context a little bit because they don’t have as much of the boots on the ground French military-style invasion in Benin, but he’s very unpopular. So if he was overthrown somehow, I wouldn’t necessarily be surprised. There’s this context of Chad that you mentioned. It’s a good example of a coup government that the West has supported. Mohammed Dewji took power from his father, Idris Dewji, who ruled over the country for decades, in a coup.
And that coup was not denounced and Chad was not sanctioned in this way, and there was no we’re going to invade Chad. It was pretty much like all, cool, we know this family. This is the Dewjis, they’ve allied with us for a long time. And so it’s a country that has a lot of potential to follow this trend. The problem is that Mohammed Dewji has proved himself to be very, very, what’s the word? It’s a dangerous situation to mobilize in and that makes it harder.
Protestors came out on the streets last year and they were gunned down. It’s a very repressive situation but it’s still a situation where there’s a lot of potential, especially because it’s really in this same region that’s having these massive uprisings and people are fed up with France and are fed up with the Western countries. We’re seeing coups in Central Africa now. I would say that so far the one that happened in Gabon is a very different character than the ones that have happened in the Sahel. Unfortunately, it seems like the new administration in Gabon is one that was closely allied with the Bongo leaders in that history of we call Françafrique. But the fact that it happened is very interesting.
It remains to see will he be able to hold onto power? What’s going to happen? Burkina Faso had a more reactionary coup before we got the progressive one. It’s a little bit difficult, different in Central Africa but again, people are seeing what’s happening across the pond in the West Africa region and maybe there is potential for that to erupt into a bigger anti-imperialist movement that could be calling into question France’s role. And then hopefully it’s happening, this expanding into a question of AFRICOM and NATO as well.
Ju-Hyun Park:
Excellent. Thank you so much for that overview. What we’re clearly seeing is that there are bright spots, there are opportunities, there is some hope to be seen in these other situations, but of course the situation is very complex and the challenges are very real. The repression you mentioned in Chad is something that really has gone uncommented on. I was reading recently, I believe more than a 100 people were killed at that protest that you mentioned last year, and up to a 1,000 people have also been arrested in the crackdown that followed.
So there is a real danger that people are facing on the ground but of course we want to lend all our support for the bravery that they’re demonstrating and for their continued struggle. I do want to be respectful of your time. You’ve given so much of it. I also wanted to ask one final question, particularly given your specific background. You’ve come to Burkina Faso from the US. You are a member of the AAPRP, which is a party that operates internationally for a Pan-Africanist horizon. So I was wondering, as you’ve been in the context of Burkina Faso during this really historically transformative experience, what inspiration and lessons do you think African people beyond the Sahel and even beyond the contenant, can take from these struggles?
Inemesit Richardson:
One of the things that Burkina Faso taught me is that sovereignty is possible and that Pan-Africanism is possible. Sometimes I talk to African people who live in various parts of the world and it seems like this is such a far off thing. It’s such a huge ambitious goal but is it really realistic? And if there’s something that’s so fulfilling and inspirational to be on the ground somewhere where people really believe in the unity of African people worldwide, believe that we can be sovereign, believe that we can overthrow neocolonialism and all forms of imperialism, and that Africa can really defend itself and represent something on the world stage in a dignified way. It’s hard to live in the context of after the slave trade ends, then there’s the colonial period, and then after the colonial period it’s like neocolonialism.
It’s been hundreds and hundreds of years of various iterations of exploitation so I understand why a lot of people feel like, okay, this is it, and we’re not getting off the plantation, as some people would say. But being here, I really, really feel like it’s possible. And not even possible, it’s inevitable. I witnessed… And to say Burkina Faso is a context where it’s like I am around people who are 16, 17, 18 years old saying, I would give my life to defend Africa. There’s such a heightened level of consciousness among people who are so young and there’s this mentality of we have everything, we have nothing to lose, and we have everything to gain.
So being on the ground here, it’s really transformative. I really encourage African people and all oppressed and colonized people worldwide, to get involved with organizations that are fighting for liberation, to stand up to the empire. And African people, like I said, we should all be in Pan-African organizations. We should all join organizations, Pan-Africanism is possible, and it’s not something that was happening in the ’60s and is over. It’s something that people are willing to live and die for on the ground in multiple parts of the African continent and around the world.
Ju-Hyun Park:
Well, that’s incredible. And Inemesit, thank you so much for your time. This has been in Inemesit Richardson from the Thomas Sankara Center for Liberation and African Unity here on The Real News. We’ll be signing off now but are looking forward to staying up to date with developments on the ground in the Sahel and with the broader vision towards a United Socialist Pan-African State. Thank you so much.
France’s new Education Minister, Gabriel Attal, launched the 2023 school year with a thunderous announcement: “I decided it will no longer be possible to wear an abaya at school,” he said, in the name of a preposterous conception of secularism (or laïcité) adopted by President Emmanuel Macron.
This “abaya ban” is a serious violation of the fundamental rights of presumed Muslim (i.e., racialized) pupils, who are unfairly stigmatized and discriminated against.
Though he is the youngest Minister of the Fifth Republic, 34-year-old Attal used the oldest and dirtiest trick in the book, namely the politics of scapegoating an oppressed, defenseless minority. Just like his predecessors, who were fond of such nauseating polemics that obscure the real and glaring problems of the French educational system.
Aminata, Assma, Yasmine, Alicia, Hassina, sent home for “non-compliant outfits”
What is an abaya?
The term “abaya” refers to a variety of dresses of varying lengths, which are in no way religion-specific garments, but simple fashion items with a cultural connotation at most. Major brands such as Zara, H & M and Dolce & Gabbana have been making their own for a long time.
As proof of this, when Sonia Backès, the French Secretary of State in charge of Citizenship, was shown several types of dresses on TV and asked to identify if they were abayas and whether they should be accepted or forbidden in schools, she hesitated, stammered and side-stepped the question, replying that “it depends on the context.”
Thus, in a quasi-official manner, the criteria for acceptance or rejection depend not on the garment itself, but on the pupil wearing it and their supposed religion, something that has only been based on their skin color and/or name. At the height of hypocrisy, Attal justified this blatant discrimination by saying that “you shouldn’t be able to distinguish, to identify the religion of pupils by looking at them.”
A traumatic start to the school year
Yet this is exactly what has been happening since the start of the school year, with hundreds, if not thousands, of middle- and high- school girls being scrutinized, hounded, stigmatized and humiliated, even blackmailed, and ordered to partially undress or be sent home for wearing outfits as neutral as a tunic, skirt or kimono, deemed too loose or too covering, as if the suspected modesty was a crime of lese-laicity. This obsession with controlling women’s bodies is reminiscent of the colonial period.
“Aren’t you pretty? Unveil yourself!” Propaganda poster distributed in 1957 by the Fifth Bureau of Psychological Action of the French Colonial Army in Algeria, urging Muslim women to take off their Islamic scarf.
Ironically, such a step places France alongside retrograde countries such as Saudi Arabia and Afghanistan that have instituted a “morality police” enforcing a strict dress code, with the notable distinction that French bans do not apply to everyone, but only to pupils presumed to be Muslim.
One can only be outraged by the criminalization of teenage girls through traumatizing interrogations and expulsions, which take place outside any legal framework and could only be justified by a proper disciplinary procedure. Attal’s office counted the cases of pupils wearing abayas to the nearest unit (unlike the number of missing teachers, a plague touching half the secondary schools, as a Teacher’s Union found out).
Attal even sent journalists a list of the middle schools and high schools concerned, inviting them to cover the start of the new school year there. This showed no regard for the serenity and safety of staff and pupils, sacrificed to the media hype surrounding this new witch-hunt.
The abaya ban has nothing to do with secularism, which is even flouted by this political attempt to unilaterally extend the domain of what is religious. Rather, it is the very thing that the candidate Emmanuel Macron himself denounced in 2016-2017 as “laicism,” this “radical and extreme version of secularism that feeds on contemporary fears”, and which targets Islam exclusively, turning millions of our fellow Muslims into “enemies of the Republic”.
By considering the wearing of simple clothing as a deliberate attack on secularism, a concerted offensive “in an attempt to challenge the republican system,” or even a reminder of the 2015 terrorist attacks and the murder of the teacher Samuel Paty, who was beheaded for showing his pupils derogatory “Charlie Hebdo” cartoons depicting the Prophet of Islam, Macron and his ministers unmask themselves, adopting a discourse that was reserved for the most hateful right-wingers.
By putting tens of thousands of teenagers under suspicion – behind their qamis and abayas – of being “enemies from within,” united to bring down republican values and even of being potential terrorists and by urging us to be “relentless” against these migrants, they are descending into a kind of State conspiracy-mongering that is as absurd as it is abject.
This insidious logic of stigmatization and exclusion was already at work in the 2004 law banning conspicuous religious symbols in schools, opposed by teacher unions such as the CGT Éduc’action as it only really targeted the Islamic veil, described as “proselytizing” and “ostentatious” in a grotesque abuse of language that heralded current and future excesses.
Far from turning schools into a protected “sanctuary,” these politically driven measures are spreading racism, sexism and hatred and turning them into a veritable battleground. This alleged desire for emancipation through coercion to impose an arbitrarily defined “republican dress code” on suspicious middle- and high-school girls flouts the concept of equal treatment of pupils and the inalienable right of some of them to choose their clothing style, driving them to angst and failure at school. Will we have to wait for a tragedy to put an end to this “shame”?
Worse still, these vexatious measures may give rise to a whole generation of teenagers — an age that is particularly sensitive to injustice — who have a legitimate distrust and resentment of the institution and its staff, who are transformed into the zealous auxiliaries of a kind of “dress police,” coupled with a “police of intentions” summoned to track down alleged Islamist overtones (which would be both conspicuous and concealed — a very French oxymoron) behind inoffensive fabrics.
The “communitarianism” and “separatism” that are supposedly fought against can only emerge stronger, just like the far-right, which is closer to power than ever thanks to the institutional backing given to its prejudices, rhetoric and fallacious battles, adopted by a dubious “republican arc,” which reaches as far as the French Communist Party.
The real priorities
This umpteenth polemic, validated by docile and irresponsible media echo chambers, and by part of the left, conveniently eclipses from the headlines all the glaring problems from which public education, its staff and users are suffering: shortage of teachers and assistants for pupils with special needs; job cuts and class closures; incessant budget cuts; lack of attractiveness of our underpaid professions; difficult working conditions; overcrowded and overheated classrooms due to under-resourcing of establishments and inadequacy of equipment and premises; international downgrading in terms of achievements; inflation; impoverishment of the population, with nearly 2,000 children on the street and tens of thousands out of schools; and so on.
Instead of tackling these fundamental problems, the government prefers to continue its authoritarian headlong rush and its policy of deliberately destroying public services for the benefit of the private sector. Moreover, this same government will have no trouble presenting the General National Service [a monthly session in military facilities for high school pupils] and the uniform — symbols of its reactionary vision of schooling currently being tested — as a panacea for problems fully of its own creation, with measures which tend only to bring young people into line and divide society even further.
Every individual has the fundamental right to choose their clothing without being subjected to discriminatory restrictions. The abaya ban is an unacceptable intrusion into pupils’ privacy and constitutes an attack on their freedom and personal identity, trampling underfoot the ideas of inclusion, living-together and acceptance of differences that are officially advocated.
The lack of response from teachers’ unions and the civil society to this iniquitous law, which scorns the vocation of educational staff and tarnishes the image of France abroad, speaks volumes about the normalization of Islamophobia in the so-called “Cradle of Human Rights” and the oppression and helplessness of its millions-strong Muslim community.
France’s new Education Minister, Gabriel Attal, launched the 2023 school year with a thunderous announcement: “I decided it will no longer be possible to wear an abaya at school,” he said, in the name of a preposterous conception of secularism (or laïcité) adopted by President Emmanuel Macron.
This “abaya ban” is a serious violation of the fundamental rights of presumed Muslim (i.e., racialized) pupils, who are unfairly stigmatized and discriminated against.
Though he is the youngest Minister of the Fifth Republic, 34-year-old Attal used the oldest and dirtiest trick in the book, namely the politics of scapegoating an oppressed, defenseless minority. Just like his predecessors, who were fond of such nauseating polemics that obscure the real and glaring problems of the French educational system.
Aminata, Assma, Yasmine, Alicia, Hassina, sent home for “non-compliant outfits”
What is an abaya?
The term “abaya” refers to a variety of dresses of varying lengths, which are in no way religion-specific garments, but simple fashion items with a cultural connotation at most. Major brands such as Zara, H & M and Dolce & Gabbana have been making their own for a long time.
As proof of this, when Sonia Backès, the French Secretary of State in charge of Citizenship, was shown several types of dresses on TV and asked to identify if they were abayas and whether they should be accepted or forbidden in schools, she hesitated, stammered and side-stepped the question, replying that “it depends on the context.”
Thus, in a quasi-official manner, the criteria for acceptance or rejection depend not on the garment itself, but on the pupil wearing it and their supposed religion, something that has only been based on their skin color and/or name. At the height of hypocrisy, Attal justified this blatant discrimination by saying that “you shouldn’t be able to distinguish, to identify the religion of pupils by looking at them.”
A traumatic start to the school year
Yet this is exactly what has been happening since the start of the school year, with hundreds, if not thousands, of middle- and high- school girls being scrutinized, hounded, stigmatized and humiliated, even blackmailed, and ordered to partially undress or be sent home for wearing outfits as neutral as a tunic, skirt or kimono, deemed too loose or too covering, as if the suspected modesty was a crime of lese-laicity. This obsession with controlling women’s bodies is reminiscent of the colonial period.
“Aren’t you pretty? Unveil yourself!” Propaganda poster distributed in 1957 by the Fifth Bureau of Psychological Action of the French Colonial Army in Algeria, urging Muslim women to take off their Islamic scarf.
Ironically, such a step places France alongside retrograde countries such as Saudi Arabia and Afghanistan that have instituted a “morality police” enforcing a strict dress code, with the notable distinction that French bans do not apply to everyone, but only to pupils presumed to be Muslim.
One can only be outraged by the criminalization of teenage girls through traumatizing interrogations and expulsions, which take place outside any legal framework and could only be justified by a proper disciplinary procedure. Attal’s office counted the cases of pupils wearing abayas to the nearest unit (unlike the number of missing teachers, a plague touching half the secondary schools, as a Teacher’s Union found out).
Attal even sent journalists a list of the middle schools and high schools concerned, inviting them to cover the start of the new school year there. This showed no regard for the serenity and safety of staff and pupils, sacrificed to the media hype surrounding this new witch-hunt.
The abaya ban has nothing to do with secularism, which is even flouted by this political attempt to unilaterally extend the domain of what is religious. Rather, it is the very thing that the candidate Emmanuel Macron himself denounced in 2016-2017 as “laicism,” this “radical and extreme version of secularism that feeds on contemporary fears”, and which targets Islam exclusively, turning millions of our fellow Muslims into “enemies of the Republic”.
By considering the wearing of simple clothing as a deliberate attack on secularism, a concerted offensive “in an attempt to challenge the republican system,” or even a reminder of the 2015 terrorist attacks and the murder of the teacher Samuel Paty, who was beheaded for showing his pupils derogatory “Charlie Hebdo” cartoons depicting the Prophet of Islam, Macron and his ministers unmask themselves, adopting a discourse that was reserved for the most hateful right-wingers.
By putting tens of thousands of teenagers under suspicion – behind their qamis and abayas – of being “enemies from within,” united to bring down republican values and even of being potential terrorists and by urging us to be “relentless” against these migrants, they are descending into a kind of State conspiracy-mongering that is as absurd as it is abject.
This insidious logic of stigmatization and exclusion was already at work in the 2004 law banning conspicuous religious symbols in schools, opposed by teacher unions such as the CGT Éduc’action as it only really targeted the Islamic veil, described as “proselytizing” and “ostentatious” in a grotesque abuse of language that heralded current and future excesses.
Far from turning schools into a protected “sanctuary,” these politically driven measures are spreading racism, sexism and hatred and turning them into a veritable battleground. This alleged desire for emancipation through coercion to impose an arbitrarily defined “republican dress code” on suspicious middle- and high-school girls flouts the concept of equal treatment of pupils and the inalienable right of some of them to choose their clothing style, driving them to angst and failure at school. Will we have to wait for a tragedy to put an end to this “shame”?
Worse still, these vexatious measures may give rise to a whole generation of teenagers — an age that is particularly sensitive to injustice — who have a legitimate distrust and resentment of the institution and its staff, who are transformed into the zealous auxiliaries of a kind of “dress police,” coupled with a “police of intentions” summoned to track down alleged Islamist overtones (which would be both conspicuous and concealed — a very French oxymoron) behind inoffensive fabrics.
The “communitarianism” and “separatism” that are supposedly fought against can only emerge stronger, just like the far-right, which is closer to power than ever thanks to the institutional backing given to its prejudices, rhetoric and fallacious battles, adopted by a dubious “republican arc,” which reaches as far as the French Communist Party.
The real priorities
This umpteenth polemic, validated by docile and irresponsible media echo chambers, and by part of the left, conveniently eclipses from the headlines all the glaring problems from which public education, its staff and users are suffering: shortage of teachers and assistants for pupils with special needs; job cuts and class closures; incessant budget cuts; lack of attractiveness of our underpaid professions; difficult working conditions; overcrowded and overheated classrooms due to under-resourcing of establishments and inadequacy of equipment and premises; international downgrading in terms of achievements; inflation; impoverishment of the population, with nearly 2,000 children on the street and tens of thousands out of schools; and so on.
Instead of tackling these fundamental problems, the government prefers to continue its authoritarian headlong rush and its policy of deliberately destroying public services for the benefit of the private sector. Moreover, this same government will have no trouble presenting the General National Service [a monthly session in military facilities for high school pupils] and the uniform — symbols of its reactionary vision of schooling currently being tested — as a panacea for problems fully of its own creation, with measures which tend only to bring young people into line and divide society even further.
Every individual has the fundamental right to choose their clothing without being subjected to discriminatory restrictions. The abaya ban is an unacceptable intrusion into pupils’ privacy and constitutes an attack on their freedom and personal identity, trampling underfoot the ideas of inclusion, living-together and acceptance of differences that are officially advocated.
The lack of response from teachers’ unions and the civil society to this iniquitous law, which scorns the vocation of educational staff and tarnishes the image of France abroad, speaks volumes about the normalization of Islamophobia in the so-called “Cradle of Human Rights” and the oppression and helplessness of its millions-strong Muslim community.
Students in Kampala have been beaten and arrested for marching against a 900-mile pipeline co-owned by a French company
In mid-September, four dozen university students marched through Kampala, the capital city of Uganda, to deliver a petition to parliament calling on the government to end fossil fuel investments and scrap the 900-mile east Africa crude oil pipeline (Eacop).
The young climate activists were led by 29-year-old Abduh Twaib Magambo, an environmental science student, who carried the two-page typewritten petition that said: “As students and young people of this country, we are the direct and major victims of [the] climate crisis living in a country that is among the most affected by climate change yet one of the least prepared to respond and tackle its effects.
UK has led the way, with countries across the continent making mass arrests, passing draconian new laws and labelling activists as eco-terrorists
Human rights experts and campaigners have warned against an intensifying crackdown on climate protests across Europe, as Guardian research found countries across the continent using repressive measures to silence activists.
In Germany, France, Italy, Sweden, the Netherlands and the UK, authorities have responded to climate protests with mass arrests, the passing of draconian new laws, the imposing of severe sentences for non-violent protests and the labelling of activists as hooligans, saboteurs or eco-terrorists.
Practice ruled to be discriminatory, but Conseil d’État says it does not have power to force change in policy
France’s highest administrative court has recognised discriminatory police identity checks based on racial profiling exist in France and are not isolated cases, but said it could not change political policy on the issue.
In a class action against the French state, six French and international organisations including Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and the Open Society Justice Initiative had asked for French authorities to be found at fault for failing to prevent the widespread use of racial profiling.
