2024-07-27 22:04:33
According to the Olympic Charter, “the aim of the Olympic Movement is to place sport at the service of the harmonious development of mankind, contributing to the creation of a peaceful society concerned with the preservation of human dignity.”
As reported by Day.Az, this is stated in a statement distributed by the Baku Initiative Group about the violation of the principles of the Olympic Games at the Olympics in Paris.
“While French President Emmanuel Macron and his government are positioning the Olympic Games currently being held in Paris as a ‘moment of peace and hope’, France’s colonial and neo-colonial policies suggest otherwise,” the statement said.
According to data obtained from representatives of political parties and movements fighting for the independence of Polynesia, Corsica, Melanesia, the Caribbean group of islands and the Antilles, cases of discrimination in employment and housing, as well as the exploitation of natural resources or, for example, mass immigration organized under the patronage of the French government, have been recorded.
We present a number of cases that are completely contrary to the spirit of the Olympics:
– in the relevant territories, a weak economic development strategy is being implemented in favor of the French monopolists: the population’s excessive dependence on food (more than 80% of food products come from France), the high cost of living, poverty (in French Guiana, 50% of the population lives below the poverty line) and mass unemployment, leading to all sorts of unrest (violence, arms and drug trafficking) seriously threaten the future of these territories;
– non-ratification of the 1989 Convention on Indigenous Peoples (No. 169) (French Guiana);
– the establishment of a hegemonic French culture and an assimilation policy that relegates endangered indigenous languages to the background, the application of French curricula to indigenous children that do not correspond to their wishes regarding local history, geography, culture or their future;
– land grabbing (90% of French Guiana’s land belongs to the French state), control over an exclusive economic zone (EEZ) of millions of square kilometers (France is the second largest maritime power in the world with an EEZ of 11 million square kilometers), plundering of natural resources; decades of deportation policies against indigenous youth in France have caused an unprecedented demographic crisis in Guadeloupe and Martinique;
– the establishment of a two-tier colonial “justice” that treats all resistance as a crime and protects the corrupt (the arrest of young people who fought against chlordecone poisoning and land theft in Martinique and Guadeloupe, the application of exclusive jurisdiction and detention conditions for Corsicans, the arrest of the president of the Association Kollektiv Jistiss Matinik, Hervé Pinton);
– “empty chair policy” after the inclusion of Polynesia in the list of countries subject to decolonization;
– denial of the local population the right to participate in the Olympic Games, including under the flag of their country;
– the use by colonial Western powers of territories (Guiana, Martinique, Guadeloupe) against the will of indigenous peoples as geostrategic military bases to prepare for war, in particular in the Indo-Pacific region (Polynesia, New Caledonia), as well as in the Caribbean-American region and in Corsica (Solenzara base);
– the failure to respect the decolonization process, which is a commitment of the Nouméa Accord, and thus the transformation of the Kanaks into a minority in their lands as a result of the illegal referendum and the expansion of the number of voters, as well as the numerous arrests and deportations of CCAT (Network for Coordination of Actions on the Ground) activists who are far from their countries and families.
With that in mind, we ask rhetorical and simple questions.
Can the Olympic Games, a “moment of peace and hope” in the 21st century, be held in a country that subjugates people?
Couldn’t the Olympic host country lift the restrictions on freedom in Kanaki and also release the political prisoners? They too have the right to experience this “moment of peace” in their own home with their children,” the statement said.
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