Former colonies condemn France's stifling influence An article by a Nigerian journalist

Freedom is the battle cry of a group meeting this week in Baku, the capital city of Azerbaijan, to draw the world’s attention to the remaining territories still under colonial rule.

The body, Baku Initiative Group, is a non-governmental organisation launched in Baku on  July  6 this year during an international conference staged by the Non-Aligned Movement with  the theme: “Towards the Complete Elimination of Colonialism.”  Azerbaijan, an oil and gas-rich nation of about 10 million people, is located between two continents – Asia and Europe.  Azerbaijan is currently the chair of the Non-Aligned Movement.”

The list of the last colonies on the globe as updated by the United Nations on September 22, 2020, includes the following 17 territories: New Caledonia, United States Virgin Islands Montserrat, Saint Helena, Anguilla, British Virgin Islands, Gibraltar, Cayman Islands, Falkland Islands (Malvinas), Turks and Caicos Islands, French Polynesia, American Samoa, Guam, Pitcairn and Tokelau. Closer home to Nigeria, it should be remembered that Western Sahara is still being claimed by Morocco and the Saharawi Democratic Republic. Given the passionate tone and tenor of the discussions by participants at the Baku meeting, the peoples of these territories seem to feel that their cause for national independence seems to be a forgotten issue by the rest of the world.   Worse still, the territories represented at the meeting have tiny populations.

For the people of the southern hemisphere, the struggle for national independence was the major issue on the global democratic agenda in the last century. 

At the birth of the  United Nations on October 24, 1945, about a third of the countries in the world were under colonial rule. Following World War II, the wave of decolonisation more or less defined the UN  in the second half of the 21st century. In the process,  more than 80 countries achieved national independence. And among these countries are 11 Trust Territories, which secured their self-determination by way of independence. Some, of course, elected to be in association with independent states.

However, in this century only South Sudan, Kosovo, Serbia, Montenegro, and East Timor have attained national independence. The decolonisation process of the last century in different continents is still considered one of the greatest successes of the United Nations. Unfortunately, the attention of the world body appears to have shifted away from the problems of those peoples still seeking national sovereignty. This appears to be a historical regression. Freedom should come to all countries regardless of the size of their populations.

It is in the context of the foregoing that the Baku Initiative Group (BIG) is focusing  on “Neo-Colonialism: Violations of Human Rights and Injustice.”  As  a side event, a session was held on “Decolonisation: Women Empowerment  and Development.” This provided a  forum for the specific oppression of women under colonial to be extensively discussed. And diverse experiences were shared. Names of many heroines of the women’s struggles in different countries came up for the great lessons they offer. The role of women in the process of decolonisation also received a lot of attention. Political parties and other organizations from the territories under colonial rule and dependencies were represented.  

Among the main colonial masters are France, the United Kingdom,  the United States,  Spain, the Netherlands, and Australia.

However, France received the greatest knocks from the representatives of 14 countries at the Baku meeting. President of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev seemed to have set the tone in a message to the conference. He recalled that in the 1955 conference that led to the birth of the Non-Aligned Movement in Bandung, Indonesia, one of the basic principles proclaimed was as follows:  “The subjection of peoples to alien subjugation, domination, and exploitations constitutes a denial of fundamental human rights, is contrary to the Charter of the United Nations and is an evil which should speedily be brought to an end.” He said that Azerbaijan was concerned about colonialism and neo-colonialism.

Here is what Aliyev said, inter alia, of France: “Overall, most of the bloody crimes of the colonialism history of mankind were committed by none other than France. France had occupied tens of countries in Africa, Southeast Asia, the Pacific, and Latin America, plundered their resources, and for many years oppressed their peoples while perpetrating numerous war crimes and crimes against humanity. The French troops subjected hundreds of thousands of civilians to ethnic cleansing based on their ethnic and religious affiliation.

“Throughout 30 years in the 20th century, France had conducted nearly 200 nuclear tests in French Polynesia and 17 nuclear tests in Algeria. The dire consequences of those tests have, to this day, affected Polynesia and the Algerian people. In response to the appeals by the multitude of organizations, it is imperative to evaluate the repercussions of the nuclear tests and disburse appropriate compensations.”

Aliyev’s anti-French rhetoric is understandable because France is an ally of Armenia, a country which Azerbaijan is having a dispute over Nagorno-Karabakh. Only last month, France agreed to supply arms to Armenia just as Russia has agreed to supply arms to Azerbaijan.

Coincidentally, the groundswell of anger over France’s colonial domination of some territories is coming at the same period with the upsurge of anti-French sentiments in some of its former colonies in West  Africa – Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger, Gabon etc. The socio-economically asphyxiating influence of Paris in these countries is now being rejected openly on the streets by the people.  Military regimes are even embraced in some of the Francophone countries because people consider the toppled politicians as lackeys of France.

The case of decolonisation promises to be another ideological and moral challenge to liberal democracy in this century. This is because the hypocritical colonizers happen to be the police of democracy around the world. Meanwhile, one of the basic principles of liberal democracy is the respect for the civil rights of human beings everywhere. Whether in the metropole or in the colony the dignity of the human being should be respected. The provenance of liberal democracy could be located squarely in the European Enlightenment of the 17th and 18th centuries. The inspiration for the pursuit of liberal democracy came from, among other sources, the American Revolution of 1776  and the French Revolution of 1789. The following words  are  embodied in the American Declaration of Independence: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator  with certain inalienable Rights,  that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”  The slogan of the French Revolution was “Liberty, Equality and Fraternity.” All these rights and virtues have universal applications. The rights belong to all human beings.

However, as the participants at the Baku conference are making the case quite eloquently more than 200 years of democratic revolutions in the United States and France, the colonial masters have historically denied the people of the colonies their rights. Meanwhile, the greatest thing a people could gain from democracy is freedom. A colonized people lack the freedom to claim their nationhood.

The participants at the Baku conference recounted how this denial was sometimes done with the brutality of colonial suppression. Today, the approach of the imperial powers is more subtle. It is done through ideological manipulation. For instance, when referendums are called in some territories the colonial powers sometimes prop up some elements within the colonies to argue against independence as if the colonized people suffer from the Stockholm syndrome.

As one of the participants, Ella Tokoragi, a member of the Tavini Party Independence of French Polynesia, puts it, in the struggle against colonialism and neo-colonialism the Western ideology that has sustained the systems should be questioned.