Nuevamente el pueblo ecuatoriano ha tomado las calles y las rutas. La Confederación de Naciones Indígenas del Ecuador (CONAIE) inició movilizaciones el 13 de junio en todo el territorio exigiendo el cumplimiento de una plataforma de 10 puntos básicos que hacen a exigencias sentidas por los y las de abajo. Luego de más de un año de diálogo infructuoso con el gobierno y de demandas insatisfechas, la CONAIE retoma la lucha.

Con el correr de los días se suman más sectores sociales: estudiantes, docentes, el conjunto de trabajadores y población en general. Cientos de miles participan de diversas marchas y de la toma de la Casa de la Cultura, edificio que previamente había sido ocupado por la policía. El gobierno de Lasso decretó el Estado de Excepción, el cual tuvo que retirar por la presión del pueblo movilizado. Sin embargo, la represión ha sido feroz: varios muertos, heridos, detenidos, desaparecidos en todo el país. Varios testimonios indican que los niveles represivos han sido de los más altos en la historia del país. El Ejército está en las calles junto a la policía.

Ante tanta represión, el pueblo ha redoblado la lucha. Se manifiesta con total firmeza la continuidad de las movilizaciones y la búsqueda de una salida política y negociada al conflicto, atendiendo las demandas populares.

Esta no es la primera vez que el pueblo de Ecuador se moviliza con tanta fuerza. Ya lo hecho en varias ocasiones y ha enfrentado políticas y gobiernos neoliberales con anterioridad. De hecho, varios de esos gobiernos cayeron a causa de la movilización popular, la cual ha adquirido como en esta ocasión, ribetes de revuelta social. Bucaram, Mahuad y Lucio Gutiérrez fueron derrocados por las protestas de este mismo pueblo que no tolera despojo y que no se lo escuche. En 2019, el pueblo de Ecuador hizo retroceder el aumento del combustible que imponía el gobierno anterior, liderado por Lenin Moreno.

Esta lucha es parte del ciclo de protestas en nuestro continente, que se inició con intensas y masivas movilizaciones en Puerto Rico, Haití, Ecuador, Chile y Colombia. Este ciclo aún continúa abierto y tiene un nuevo capítulo en este nuevo levantamiento del pueblo ecuatoriano liderado por sus organizaciones sociales más representativas. Estas movilizaciones son continuidad de aquellas de 2019.

Ante el saqueo de las políticas neoliberales que se imponen en el continente y se profundizan, la única alternativa de los pueblos latinoamericanos es ganar las calles y profundizar la lucha. Saludamos al hermano pueblo de Ecuador y su valeroso ejemplo, su coraje y su rebeldía, y especialmente su grado de organización y coordinación del movimiento popular, nucleando a varias expresiones del mismo en las calles tras un mismo objetivo.

En estos momentos el movimiento indígena ecuatoriano realiza un “acuerdo de paz” con el gobierno de Lasso, previa aceptación de dicho gobierno a negociar y a bajar aún más los combustibles, uno de los principales reclamos populares que dieron inicio a las protestas. ¡¡La lucha paga!! ¡¡Sólo el pueblo salva al pueblo!!

¡¡VIVA LA LUCHA DEL PUEBLO ECUATORIANO!!
¡¡ABAJO EL NEOLIBERALISMO!!
¡¡ARRIBA LOS Y LAS QUE LUCHAN!!

COORDINACIÓN ANARQUISTA LATINOAMERICANA (CALA)

☆ Federación Anarquista Uruguaya (FAU)
☆ Coordinación Anarquista Brasilera (CAB)
☆ Federación Anarquista de Rosario – Argentina- (FAR)

ORGANIZACIONES HERMANAS

☆ Federación Anarquista Santiago -Chile- (FAS)
☆ Organización Anarquista de Córdoba -Argentina- (OAC)
☆ Organización Anarquista de Tucumán -Argentina- (OAT)
☆ Organización Anarquista de Santa Cruz -Argentina- (OASC)
☆ Grupo Libertario Vía Libre (Colombia)

A report about a hikoi/march in opposition to the construction of a marina in Tamaki Makarau/Auckland in Aotearoa/New Zealand.

On the early sunny morning of the 19th of January 2022, around 150 Auckland residents gathered at
Queen’s Wharf in the Auckland CBD for a hikoi to the High Court in support of halting the development of
a large marina at Kennedy Point, Pūtiki Bay. It was also in support of the 32 Waiheke residents who were
served with a trespassing injunction for the marina’s construction site on Kennedy Point— their own
ancestral moana and whakapapa, back in November. The first hearing of the injunction issued by Kennedy
Point Marina, the developers of the marina, was held that afternoon.

Kennedy Point Marina had issued the injunction via the High Court back in November 2021 without notice
to the protesters or addressment with Iwi. The protester’s heinous crime; the act of peacefully
demonstrating against the ongoing degradation of Waiheke and the Hauraki Gulf’s marine health as a
whole, the stripping of whakapapa from Ngāti Pāoa and hapū , and the malicious and illegal
noncompliance with Te Tiriti o Waitangi from the developers and Auckland Council since 2017. The
approval under the Resource Management Act for the construction of the marina was done without the unanimous consent of
all iwi-group boards involved, with Auckland council approving the marina without the correct consultation
with all of Ngāti Pāoa representative boards to the crown, an illegal act in accordance with Te Tiriti.

The marina, an 8 hectare floating monstrosity that will berth 186 yachts, is being placed right in the
middle of a clean (-ish, for now) swimming and kayaking spot in Pūtiki Bay, and will forever harmoniously
contribute to the ongoing pollution that seeps from all the other 18 marinas in the Hauraki Gulf. The bay is
also notably a habitat for kororā, little blue penguins, who’s population in New Zealand has been in rapid
decline (70% decline since 1960s) due to such development’s pollution, climate change, and depletion of
the surrounding ecosystem. Although kororā are not yet endangered, they have an ‘at risk’ status by
conservation groups. According to the ‘State of our Gulf’ reports (Auckland Council’s very own 3-year
environmental gulf report), it is developments like this that heavily contribute to this degradation of such
habitats.
“Ports and marinas: Our commercial footprint is growing: adding visual clutter, affecting the seafloor,
changing marine communities, and providing a foothold for pests.”

– 2020 State of our Gulf Report

The reports are a hallowing reminder that the institutions that are expected to maintain and hold those
who do harm to the environment and aquaculture in contempt, are clearly either completely inept or
actively colluding with the destruction of marine life for commercial gain. Simple figures from graphs
from the 2020 report reveal the extent of damage to the fauna and biology of the gulf;
Despite the nature of the march, the crowd, made up of families, climate activists, rangatahi, students,
and local residents alike, were still in high spirits as they marched up from Queens Wharf through the city.
Signs such as “#ProtectPūtiki”, “Uphold the Rahui”, and “Protect our Kororā” were supplemented with loud
chants and waiata. Some signs reminded those of the physical and harmful reality of the developers’
actions; a “Hands off our wahine” sign resonated with stories from November in Pūtiki when one of the 32
protesters were charged with endangerment because the developers rammed her kayak with their boat
while she was protesting with her daughter— that the police restrained and physically removed kaitiaki
from their ancestral moana — and that the developers prioritised their profits over following Te Tiriti.

Once reaching the entrance to the High Court the protesters settled for korero. Whaea Kathryn, a lifelong
Waiheke resident, summed up the historical importance and sacredness the bay signifies as well as the
ecological influence the bay has on the gulf that surrounds Tāmaki Makaurau itself;

“What is sacred? Is it sacred that eight-hundred years ago Te Awara waka came through the headlands of
Pūtiki, that people from that waka then went south to the Bay of Plenty, but then some of them came back
and they settled that bay? […] What do we have in this country that are our historical taonga — that are our
sacred taonga? I think we have little more than places like that — places where huge battles were fought,
and that happened at Pūtiki as well. Places that have been continually occupied. Places where Pah sites
surrounded everything. Places where archeological sites are all around the bay. Places where burial sites
are all around the bay. Now Auckland council doesn’t consider that a sacred site, but if they don’t for Maori
people, what do they consider sacred? What is sacred for us? […] When we say ‘honour the Treaty’, partially,
that is what we are talking about.”

She continues on to describe the ecological importance of this shared space;

“[…] They could live there in that beautiful bay in which I was born—which I was fed from, which I spent my
whole life practically looking over—[because] there are all of these habitats. We’ve got deep muddy bits,
we’ve got the sea-grass meadows, we’ve got the mangrove swamps, we’ve got the shelly beaches, we’ve got
the rocky beaches, we’ve got deep water — tidal water. And we’ve got a whole heap of birds and fish, the fish
that I was fed from, the cockles, the oysters, the mussels that I was fed from — all of those things grow in
that bay and those people came here because it was such an ecological wonderland for them. All of these
streams come into the bay, it’s got basically the biggest watershed on the whole island.”

The singing of waiata as the hikoi made its way through Queen Street, up towards the High Court, felt like
deja vu in relation to so many other public spaces being land-grabbed by private enterprise in this country.
These controversies are not in isolation, but part of the insatiable desire of the wealthy class of New
Zealand for ownership and therefore profit of anything and everything, no matter the consequences.
These escapades for profit, with institutional law as its legitimising tool, do not even stop at the commons
— the air, the water, the habitable earth that is to be shared for all. These smaller community battles such
as #ProtectPūtiki and #ProtectIhumātao are pieces of a wider and continuous reminder of the capitalist
systems and its colonial roots that play their part in upholding the ideology that common spaces which
make up who we are and directly contribute to the health of society as a whole, are free to be
commercialised for the benefit of capital and profit, for those who already have so much of it. Everything
is for sale and is an opportunity to reap capital— even if that sale is of something that does not belong to
you and only benefits the few at the top while taking away the bare necessities for everyone else in their
own backyard. The crossover concepts of the collective ownership of the commons within Anarchist
manifest and mātauranga Māori are apparent here as much as they ever could be in Aotearoa.

À moins de deux mois du 3e référendum que l’État français a décidé d’organiser le 12 décembre, l’ambiance sur le Caillou est à la crispation entre l’ensemble du mouvement indépendantiste réclamant son report en 2022 et les forces dites «  loyalistes  » réclamant son maintien sur fond d’une position gouvernementale pour l’instant inchangée.

Après dix-huit mois de situation «  covid-free  » sur l’ensemble du Territoire kanak au prix de mesures très strictes acceptées par tous (isolement de la Grande Terre et des îles, restriction de circulation inter-îles et des entrées, quatorzaine obligatoire), le variant delta de la pandémie s’est invité sur le Territoire déclenchant une terrible vague de contamination avec plus de 250 décès en quelques semaines (ce qui équivaudrait à plusieurs dizaines de milliers de morts pour la France hexagonale  !) dont plus de 50 % concernant la communauté kanak et plus de 25 % la communauté océanienne, sur fond de comorbidité assez répandue (surpoids, diabète…).

Macron, partisan du maintien dans la France

Face à cette catastrophe sanitaire touchant très inégalement les différentes populations du Territoire, le gouvernement actuel dirigé par Louis Mapou, figure importante de la tendance Uni-Palika du FLNKS a pris des mesures à la fois raisonnées et très fortes (gestes barrières, port du masque, obligation vaccinale, passe sanitaire, confinement) montrant le sens des responsabilités de la part de dirigeants kanak, et obtenant l’accord quasi unanime de tous les courants politiques y compris opposés au Congrès de la Nouvelle-Calédonie.

Par ailleurs les communautés mélanésiennes et polynésiennes dans la douleur font preuve d’une parfaite obéissance aux restrictions des enterrements y compris en acceptant des sépultures provisoires près de Nouméa sans pouvoir accompagner leurs proches à leur tertre et/ou île d’origine, et en renonçant provisoirement à respecter leurs rituels de deuil coutumier longs nécessitant le déplacement de tribus entières.

Il en résulte bien humainement une quasi-impossibilité d’avoir la tête et l’énergie à l’organisation d’une campagne électorale référendaire  ; d’où l’unanimité du camp indépendantiste (toutes les tendances du FLNKS, ainsi que toutes les autres composantes – MNSK, PT, USTKE, Dynamic Sud – réclamant un report du référendum en 2022, la date limite prévue par les Accords de Nouméa étant avant octobre 2022.

Dans le même temps, les forces attachées au maintien du Territoire dans la République française, rassemblées dans « les Voix du Non », s’arc-boutent quasi unanimement sur la date prévue ayant parfaitement compris que, pour elles, la campagne se fait quasi toute seule en mettant l’accent sur les mesures exceptionnelles - et réelles ! - que le gouvernement français met en place pour faire face à la pandémie et à ses conséquences (réserve sanitaire massive venue de métropole, transfert de malades, aides aux entreprises et aux personnels) prouvant par avance tout l’intérêt de rester «  dans la France  » pour le futur.

Et certains de leurs leaders en rajoutent sur la nécessité d’enfin « purger » les Accords de Nouméa qui n’ont que trop durer, tout comme le sénateur Pierre Frogier, ancien compagnon de Pierre Maresca, ancien pied-noir pro-OAS (aujourd’hui décédé), de sinistre mémoire au temps des milices Lafleur, réclamant plus d’engagement de l’Etat français. Ce même Frogier est l’un des tenants d’une proposition de donner une autonomie accrue aux 3 Provinces actuelles en cas de victoire du Non à l’indépendance comme gage donné aux indépendantistes, tout en peinant à cacher le dangereux projet de partition qui en découlerait avec une Province Sud rassemblant 75 % de la population du Territoire (et la plus grande population kanak aussi) ainsi que 75 % de l’économie locale !

Une nouvelle et terrible épreuve pour le peuple kanak

Au niveau du discours, le gouvernement français est tout à sa soi-disant neutralité dans l’application stricte des Accords de Nouméa de 1998. Mais, en fait, insidieusement, il s’affirme clairement partisan du maintien dans la France («  La France serait moins belle sans la Nouvelle-Calédonie  !  », dixit Macron) en ayant il y a quelques temps produit le document sur les «  Conséquences du Oui et du Non  », totalement déséquilibré entre les avantages du Non et les risques du Oui. Et par ailleurs dans le grand projet d’Axe indo-pacifique cher à Macron depuis 2017, et récemment ridiculisé par le choix australien des sous-marins nucléaires étatsuniens, la Nouvelle-Calédonie est une pièce maîtresse sur fond d’avancée de la Chine dans nombre de nouveaux Etats indépendants du Pacifique.

Et Paul Néaoutyne, signataire des Accords de Nouméa ancien bras-droit de Jean-Marie Tjibaou et président de la Province Nord, a raison d’invoquer le respect de la parole donnée car, en 2019, Edouard Philippe avait aussi lui-même fait la proposition d’un référendum en septembre 2022, après les échéances présidentielle et législatives nationales pour éviter toute interférence.

Rappelons-nous l’attaque de la grotte d’Ouvéa en 1988 dans le cadre d’un bras de fer Chirac- Mitterrand dans l’entre-deux tours de la présidentielle ! Mais le gouvernement Castex a changé la donne préférant demander à son ministre des Outre-Mer, Sébastien Lecornu, d’organiser des « rencontres Léprédour » (du nom d’un îlot calédonien en face de Boulouparis, propriété du Haut-Commissariat, surnommée « l’île du Haussaire »), en vase clos avec des invités sélectionnés plutôt que de rester fidèle aux Comités des signataires réguliers à Matignon.

Certes il en va de la prérogative du gouvernement de fixer la date du référendum, mais, depuis des mois et bien avant la vague virale, le camp indépendantiste a fait connaître sa préférence pour 2022. Aujourd’hui, déjà 25 communes indépendantistes refusent d’organiser le scrutin du 12 décembre. Par ailleurs, internationalisant le problème, l’ambassadeur de la Papouasie-Nouvelle-Guinée auprès de l’ONU vient solennellement, au nom du groupe Fer de lance des Etats du Pacifique-Sud de demander au gouvernement français un report au nom de la situation sanitaire exceptionnelle actuelle sur le Territoire.

Boycott du référendum

Oui les boycotts anciens décidés par les Kanak rappellent des moments douloureux  ! Mais à chaque fois avaient-ils le choix devant des trahisons successives de la parole donnée et des projets authentiquement néocoloniaux  ? Les «  loyalistes  » ont beau jeu de tenter de faire peur à l’évocation de ces boycotts en prédisant déjà de funestes lendemains en cas de résultats faussés par la non-participation kanak, allant même jusqu’à demander l’application des résultats du 2e référendum du fait de l’impossibilité de tenir le 3e par la faute des Kanak  !

Alors ceux et celles qui risquent de provoquer des troubles à venir sont ceux et celles, gouvernement français compris, qui refusent de reporter le référendum en 2022, ne serait-ce que par respect pour la coutume de deuil du peuple kanak si durement touché par la pandémie (sans oublier tous les anonymes, la veuve du numéro deux du FLNKS Yéwéné Yéwéné, assassiné en 1989 en même temps que Jean-Marie Tjibaou, en est décédée ainsi que des fondateurs de l’USTKE).

Puissent l’humanité et la raison prendre le pas sur les calculs bassement politiciens  ; il en va du destin commun dans le Pays  ! Soutenons le peuple kanak, encore aujourd’hui dans une nouvelle et terrible épreuve, dans sa revendication d’une Kanaky- Nouvelle-Calédonie souveraine et indépendante dans le respect de toutes les composantes de sa population  !

Daniel Guerrier (ancien coprésident de l’Association information et soutien aux droits du peuple kanak (AISDPK)

Daniel Guerrier a coprésidé l’AISDPK dans les années 1980 avec Jean Chesneaux, Jean-Jacques de Felice et Alban Bensa, aujourd’hui tous trois disparus. Alban nous ayant quitté ce 10 octobre, l’auteur tient à saluer ici sa mémoire.

manif_kanak.jpg 0.06 Mb

This article was originally written at the request of our comrades in France, the Union Communiste Libertaire. A translation of this article into French will hopefully be published soon. It is intended to be a follow up to an article by the UCL entitled “1788 : Les générations volées de l’Australie coloniale”, which deals at length with the details of early colonisation and the Stolen Generation. As such, our article does not go into detail about these two things, and is directed more to a global audience instead of a domestic one that already knows about Indigenous struggles.

Indigenous struggles against capitalism in Australia: an overview

Note: this article was originally written at the request of our comrades in France, the Union Communiste Libertaire. A translation of this article into French will hopefully be published soon. It is intended to be a follow up to an article by the UCL entitled “1788 : Les générations volées de l’Australie coloniale”, which deals at length with the details of early colonisation and the Stolen Generation. As such, our article does not go into detail about these two things, and is directed more to a global audience instead of a domestic one that already knows about Indigenous struggles.

This article contains discussions of people now deceased.

The struggles of Indigenous people in Australia are of acute concern to anti-capitalists, not simply because they are victims of racism, but because this racism has resulted in them making up one of the most severely exploited sectors of the working-class in Australia. Participation in these struggles is doubly important, since it can head in two directions: one, towards reformism and the creation of a layer of Indigenous politicians and bourgeoisie to smother the struggle, or two, towards a deepening of the class struggle and a generalisation of these struggles that has the potential to inspire the rest of the working-class to fight.

The creation of the Indigenous working-class

Australian capitalism is built on the genocide of Indigenous peoples. By expropriating Indigenous lands and handing them over to settlers, the British empire created a class of Indigenous people that lived at the bottom of colonial society. The institution of private property was forced on Indigenous societies that were based on property being largely held in common. This entailed the replacement of Indigenous spiritualities with the Christian faith; the replacement of Indigenous legal systems with the British law; the replacement of the many Indigenous languages with English; the breaking-up of Indigenous families and their replacement with the European family model. When Australia secured independence, the responsibility for these tasks was formally transferred to the Australian government, continuing to the present-day. Of course, it should also be made clear that the colonial authorities attempted to do these things; they did not fully succeed, and Indigenous societies maintain continuity with their pre-colonial forms in a number of important ways.

Dispossessed Indigenous people formed a key part of the working-class in rural areas for many years. For decades they were effectively locked out of the skilled working-class and were forced to take the most humiliating jobs or subsist without work. Even children were effectively forced to work as domestic servants and as farm-hands. Under a “protectionist” framework, the Australian states and territories directly controlled Indigenous employment, with government “protectors” determining where Indigenous people worked, who they worked for, where they were permitted to travel and who they could socialise with.

The protectors also took control of their finances: in a number of states, employers paid the protectors the wages that the Indigenous people earned, to be deposited into a government bank account. In the state of Queensland, it was not until 1969 that all Indigenous workers were paid actual wages; prior to that, they were instead given rations and occasional “pocket money” by their protectors. The minimum wage for Indigenous people was in all cases drastically lower than that of the minimum wage for non-Indigenous workers, even if the Indigenous workers received their wages in full.

By World War II, the ground had started to shift significantly. The protectionist laws were loosened by successive struggles, like the 1946 Pilbara strike (mentioned in the previous article) or the 1966 Wave walk-off of Gurindji agricultural labourers at Wave Hill Cattle Station in the Northern Territory. In these instances, the Indigenous workers were supported by militant sections of the broader union movement; in the 1946 dispute, the Seamen’s Union refused to process wool from the Pilbara in support of the strikers, and in 1966 the Waterside Workers’ Federation took the lead in marshalling support.

In addition to these workplace struggles, the post-war era saw the development of a more assertive and combative Indigenous activist movement than had previously existed. These movements were linked in with wider international movements against racism – the Black American Civil Rights Movement inspired a number of student activists in 1965 to travel to rural Australian towns and protest segregated pubs, swimming pools and parks, and in the late 60s/70s the American Black Power movement inspired an Australian Black Power movement – which included the creation of an Australian Black Panther Party. In addition, the 1967 referendum approved a change to the Australian constitution that would grant Indigenous Australians full formal status as Australian citizens.

This era also saw a great cultural renaissance for Indigenous peoples: there were new attempts to preserve Indigenous languages and cultural sites, with programmes being developed to educate children in local Indigenous languages. These sorts of efforts continue to the present, though they are hamstrung by conservative politicians that want to emphasise learning “the national language” of English over all others.

The emergence of land rights

These activist struggles pushed the issue of Indigenous land rights onto the political agenda, with a number of changes taking place over the coming decades to establish a legal right of Indigenous peoples to the land they traditionally inhabited. Significant amounts of government-owned land were transferred to the administration of Aboriginal land councils, non-profit entities representing the relevant Indigenous peoples in the area. Disputes about Aboriginal land rights were funnelled off the streets, into parliament and into courtrooms. The 1992 Mabo vs. Queensland decision of the High Court of Australia established formally for the first time that Australia was not “terra nullius” – unoccupied land – prior to colonisation; this, combined with the Keating Government’s 1993 Native Title Act, opened the door for further land claims.

Whatever potential these new forms of land ownership had to change the Australian economy was formally nullified by the 1996 Wik Peoples vs. Queensland decision, which established that in cases where a native title claim conflicted with existing private property rights, it would be the private property right that would win out over the native title in the end. This largely diminished the fears of the powerful Australian rural capitalists that their landholdings would be given over to Indigenous peoples.

Because most land held under native title is not fit for commercial agriculture, Indigenous land holding bodies do not have many sources of income. Tourism can contribute some money, but not a lot; in such an environment, it is common to see rich mining companies sign agreements with local Indigenous owners to mine on their land in exchange for investment in their communities, the promises of jobs, scholarships for their youth, and so on, holding these communities hostage. Those landholders that reject these deals with the devil require immense solidarity from supporters in order to hold on.

In this, we can see how the shift from combative protests in the streets and workplaces to negotiations in parliament, in the courts and in corporate boardrooms has been a conscious response by the ruling class to contain the potential of Indigenous struggles. This mirrors the shift in the union arena from direct action to state arbitration schemes: it is not one that has occured for the benefit of the workers!

In both instances, control gets taken away from the people at the base, and is instead given to layers of bureaucrats and “community leaders” to make decisions, and lawyers to interpret the relevant legal codes, which are incomprehensible to most people. It’s no surprise that the layer of middlemen tends towards conservatism. The struggle is too important to be left to professionals!

Colonialism in its contemporary phase

Whilst formal state racism has diminished since the pre-WWII era, it still exists. In addition to direct state racism, there is the general brutality of the capitalist system towards the working class that Indigenous people suffer from more acutely, representing as they do some of the most exploited workers in the country: their rates of poverty, ill health, unemployment, and access to health and educational services are in all instances higher than those of other people in Australia. The social ills that derive from poverty and deprivation – like family breakdowns, child neglect, drug addiction and so on – flow from this also.

Though Indigenous peoples make up around 2% of the Australian population, they are around 30% of the Australian prison population – one of the highest rates of incarceration relative to population in the world. It is sadly common for Indigenous people to die whilst in police custody; a prominent example is that of David Dungay Jr., who was choked to death by prison guards at Sydney’s Long Bay prison in response to Dungay eating chocolate biscuits without permission in his cell. The prison guards have suffered no consequences as a result of their actions; they have been tacitly approved by the authorities.

As well as this, there is also the issue of ongoing removals of Indigenous children from their families by government caseworkers. Though the “Stolen Generation” policies have ended, Indigenous children are still removed at a drastically higher rate than non-Indigenous children – ten times higher, according to some statistics. In response to the acknowledged brutality of the Stolen generation, and as a result of activist struggles – such as those led by the group “Grandmothers Against Removals” – some states have adopted formal measures to try and keep Indigenous children within their families. However, the persistence of this higher rate of removals demonstrates that the problem of structural, racial oppression cannot be fixed with any amount of further government bureaucracy.

The most obvious form of official state racism came with the Northern Territory National Emergency Response, known colloquially as “the Intervention”. The Intervention was launched by conservative Howard government in 2007, after a government-fabricated media panic over alleged high rates of child abuse in Northern Territory Indigenous communities. The Intervention marked a return to the state protectionism of the previous century: the army was sent in, specifically racially discriminatory laws were implemented to ban drugs, alcohol and pornography in Indigenous communities, and welfare payments were placed under the control of a host of government agencies. Though some of the most authoritarian elements were withdrawn in 2012 when the Gillard Labor government introduced the Stronger Futures policy, many discriminatory laws remain.

Recent developments also demonstrate the way in which the Indigenous working-class population is used as a guinea pig for attacks that will later be applied to the wider working-class population. “Cashless Welfare Cards” were first trialled as part of the Intervention in the Northern Territory under the name of the BasicsCard. They are an Orwellian form of income management, replacing normal welfare payments with a debit card. These cards cannot be used to pay for goods and services deemed by the government to be restricted, like alcohol or gambling. Neither can they be used to withdraw cash. Trials of these cards are now being extended to non-Indigenous communities, like the predominantly immigrant Canterbury-Bankstown area of Sydney. These newer trials also include drug testing arrangements that punitively restrict welfare payments if the recipient is discovered to have drugs in their system.

It should also be made clear that state paternalism continues in employment; the most prominent example is that of the “Community Development Programme” (CDP), a “work-for-the-dole” programme set up primarily to target Indigenous youth living in rural areas. In order to receive meagre support payments, recipients are made to work twenty-five hours a week. The wages they receive are a fraction of the legal minimum wage, an arrangement permitted since CDP participants receive none of the legal protections that regular workers receive. People are regularly penalised for non-attendance and are docked their support payments as a result, naturally meaning that people who cannot attend – often those with poor physical and mental health, poor education, a lack of car and phone – receive no support payments whatsoever.

New forms of colonialism, new forms of resistance

Racism persists; so does resistance. In 2004, substantial riots ensued in the Sydney suburb of Redfern after a boy, T.J. Hickey, was killed when he fell from his bicycle after being pursued by a police vehicle. Again in 2004, the police station and courthouse on Palm Island was burnt to the ground by a crowd incensed at the death of a local Indigenous man, whilst he was in the custody of police.

Aside from these directly violent forms of resistance – which, all things considered, are rather exceptional in the Australian context – there have been countless mass protests against Indigenous oppression. Each year, tens of thousands march on the 26th of January against racism and in support of resistance. The 26th is Australia’s national day, marking the day the first British fleet landed in Sydney in 1788. Naturally, this is a day of celebration for Australian nationalists, but a day of resistance and mourning for everyone else.

In recent years – again demonstrating the international links Indigenous struggles have with struggles overseas – the movement has been energised by a domestic Australian Black Lives Matter movement against police brutality, inspired by the struggles of Black people in the USA against the police there. This movement has drawn new layers of people into the fight and made links with other struggles, both local and international, like those of African-Australians against the racism they face, and the struggles of Palestinians against Israeli domination.

Environmental destruction hits land and people

The increasing environmental destruction wrought by capitalism also hits Indigenous communities hard. An example of this can be found in towns like Walgett, situated in the Murray-Darling river basin of south-eastern Australia. Walgett is one of the hottest places in the country, with temperatures averaging over 35°C in summer. The town itself is inhabited mostly by Indigenous Australians, predominantly belonging to the Gamilaraay people, but the surrounding areas are occupied by a substantial number of cotton farmers. The class distinction between the two groups could not be more stark: in the town itself, poverty rates are intense, health and education services are poor, and crime rates are high, but among the farmers, there is no shortage of money. Some of the farmers are wealthy enough to have private planes and airstrips, and they pay to have their children educated at private boarding schools in Sydney and Brisbane.

In 2018/19, Walgett endured a severe water crisis. The main rivers in the area dried up, forcing inhabitants to rely on bore water. This bore water is poor quality, with the sodium levels in the water reaching dangerous peaks. In early 2019, the bore water pump failed and the town went dry; they relied on donated freshwater trucked in from outside until the pump was repaired. It is not an exaggeration to say that all of this can be pinned on capitalism: from the droughts that global warming makes more severe and more regular, to the administrative incompetence of local, state and federal governments, to the allocation of countless litres of water for resource-heavy but highly profitable cotton irrigation.

Formal native title arrangements offer little recourse, since even if native title is held by local Indigenous peoples, it only covers the land, not the water that flows through it. Water is big business and worth hundreds of millions of dollars; working-class Indigenous people are functionally locked out of owning it, even if the water is of fundamental cultural significance to them. The only way this and other Indigenous land issues could potentially be solved is through socialism – ending private property and returning the land (and water) to common ownership, allowing the phasing out of environmentally destructive practices like cotton farming, in favour of sustainable agriculture that suits Australian conditions.

The struggles around the protection of culturally important land shows the necessity of moving beyond state and capital for solutions to Indigenous oppression. In recent years, significant activist movements have sprung up to protest the destruction of important sites, like the sacred Djab Wurrung trees in Victoria threatened by the construction of a toll road, or the wildlife threatened by the Narrabri gas project in New South Wales. Following in the tradition of previous movements to protect heritage, like the movement that successfully stopped the Jabiluka mine in the Northern Territory, these movements have increasingly adopted direct-action tactics to achieve their goals. As an example, the road blockades to protect the Djab Wurrung trees reverberated across the country, inspiring many people who had never been politically active before to take up the fight.

Often, environmental non-government organisations push for legal action against the government and the relevant companies as part of the struggle, in temporary alliance with Indigenous communities struggling against the destruction of their lands. They do this even when they know they will lose – after all, the law is entirely stacked against us, and even when court cases do succeed, the major parties simply change the laws to undercut the courts’ decisions. Though the intentions of the environmental NGOs are often noble – they have the the idea that legal action can delay destructive projects while a mass movement is formed in the background – they still functionally constrain increasingly combative movements and divert them away from the arenas where they can most effectively push against the authorities, the streets.

Future trajectories

The struggles of Indigenous peoples in Australia are naturally close to our hearts, and we’ve written this article in the hope that they may inspire others overseas. We can’t ignore the developments in these struggles that naturally catch our attention, as anarchists: for instance, the persistent failure of governments to do anything substantial about Indigenous deaths in custody or removals of children has drawn a substantial number of people towards “de-carceral” politics, moving beyond slogans that are against merely this or that instance of racism. Instead, they tend towards the general, explicit goal of the abolition of prisons altogether – inadvertently recognising the anarchist viewpoint that prison brutality is not exceptional, but normal; it’s their entire purpose. Such a viewpoint naturally flows in productive directions, as people realise that the abolition of prisons itself is inconceivable without the abolition of capitalism and government altogether.

Similarly, Indigenous struggles have the potential to feed into the resistance of the wider working class, and vice versa. The overwhelming majority of Indigenous people are working class themselves, and if “Indigenous liberation” ceases to be a demand for Indigenous workers only and becomes something general to the working class, then the effects could be great. In this sense, there’s another similarity with the American situation: though large numbers of white workers are also shot by the police, it is generally the black working class, not the white, that takes the lead in confronting the authorities. Should the struggles of all workers combine – across racial, ethnic and national boundaries – then we’ll have made a great leap towards destroying the capitalist system itself. This text is our theoretical contribution to that effort.

Jul 12th 21

*Related Link: https://blackflagsydney.com/article/26?fbclid=IwAR076ISz5VdoCGQIydybX6ZZ96aHWtkq-IstYsU_0vHI9EItXEoOGOfw3Qg

In the Mozambican province wracked by a violent insurgency, the convenient labelling of those rising up against the predatory elite paints a picture that is far from reality.

When the uprising started in Cabo Delgado, Mozambique’s northernmost province, in 2017, the insurgents used the only weapons they had: their machetes. And they cut off the heads of local elites whom they accused of being allied to the leaders of the ruling Mozambique Liberation Front (Frelimo) in stealing the mineral wealth.

Forty years ago, there was another civil war in Mozambique, in which the Mozambique National Resistance (Renamo) committed atrocities such as burning people alive in buses. But Renamo had been trained by the apartheid military, many of whom were believing members of the Dutch Reformed Church, which was firmly supporting apartheid. Yet no matter that the trainers thought they were doing the work of God to defend white rule and how cruel the Renamo atrocities were, those who perpetrated them were never called “Christian terrorists”. Yet we insist on calling the insurgents in Cabo Delgado “Islamist terrorists”.

Labels are important and shape how we look at civil wars. We try to label the opposition with the current global enemy. Renamo was said to be fighting “global communism” so as not to be accused of defending white rule. Now the Mozambican government is said to be fighting “global Islamists” and not protecting an elite that refuses to share the ruby, mineral and gas wealth with local people. Thus the labels shape how we see the war.

Save the Children Mozambique issued a press release on 16 March about children “murdered by armed men” – carefully not labelling the insurgents. But most media reports of the press release called them Islamist and stressed links to the Islamic State. All civil wars are cruel and brutal. Amnesty International accused the insurgents of war crimes and “heinous acts of violence” on 2 March. The organisation and others use the local name for the insurgents, al-Shabaab, which simply means the youth (and has no links to other al-Shabaabs).

And Amnesty International also stressed that “al-Shabaab is primarily a homegrown armed group fighting over local issues, an insurgency sparked by the long-term underinvestment in the Muslim-majority province by the central government. The group uses jihadist ideology as an organising tool. While Islamist ideologies have been growing in Cabo Delgado for decades, the movement did not gain traction until the arrival of resource extraction industries that provide little subsequent benefit for the local communities.” Most local researchers support that position.

Grievance and outside intervention

Fifteen years ago I was the co-author of an Open University (United Kingdom) course and its textbook, Civil War, Civil Peace. One key point was that all civil wars have two things: a grievance serious enough that people feel they must kill to save their own lives, and outside intervention. In Cabo Delgado, the grievance is marginalisation and growing poverty and inequality as Frelimo oligarchs and the mining and gas companies do not share the wealth.

Outside intervention to support al-Shabaab has included the Islamic State, which provided some publicity as well as support, including training in 2019 and 2020 but apparently not in the past six months. On the government side, outside support came first from a Russian private military company, the Wagner Group, and then its South African counterpart, the Dyck Advisory Group.

United States “green berets” arrived on 15 March to train Mozambican marines. Portugal promises to send trainers, and the European Union and South Africa are also looking to provide support. On 10 March, the US formally labelled al-Shabaab, which it calls Islamic State of Iraq and Syria – Mozambique (Isis-Mozambique), as a foreign terrorist organisation.

All of the sudden support is not to assist Mozambique but to fight the new global enemy – Islam and the Islamic State. At the press conference on 11 March, John T Godfrey said that “we have to confront Isis in Africa”. His title is acting special envoy for the Global Coalition to Defeat Isis, which means his job depends on fighting it, and Mozambique is just another place to send troops as part of that war.

But the other speaker at the US press conference, Michael Gonzales, said that “addressing the socioeconomic drivers of the threat, countering Isis messaging, and providing greater economic opportunity and resilience of the community so that the attraction to violent extremism is lessened” was essential in Cabo Delgado. His title is deputy assistant secretary in the US Bureau of African Affairs, which shows he has a different perspective.

Pushing a narrative

The Frelimo leadership in Mozambique is pushing the foreign terrorism line very hard. And it does not want anyone suggesting that the insurgency is linked to the greed of the Frelimo elite, marginalisation of youths and Muslims, and growing poverty and inequality. In private, Frelimo is very clear: it wants support from individual countries and private military contractors that will provide military help and parrot the message of Islamic State terrorism.

In particular, Frelimo does not want the involvement of international organisations such as the Southern African Development Community, the EU or United Nations, which are big enough to issue reports pointing out the root causes of the insurgency. Mozambique wants humanitarian aid, but again it wants to be in charge. The UN has been waiting for more than four months for visas for 57 humanitarian experts for Cabo Delgado, UN resident coordinator in Mozambique Myrta Kaulard said on 5 March.

Of course religion plays a role in the war. Most, but not all, of the insurgents are Muslim and the original organisers are from Cabo Delgado, including local fundamentalist Muslim preachers. President Filipe Nyusi is from Cabo Delgado and is from the Makonde ethnic group and Catholic. Nyusi has had strong support from Pope Francis, who made an unprecedented visit to Mozambique during the 2019 presidential election campaign when Nyusi was standing against a Muslim candidate, Ossufo Momade of Renamo. And on 11 February the pope withdrew the outspoken Catholic bishop of Pemba, Luis Fernando Lisboa, whom Nyusi had publicly criticised because he was standing up for local people.

It is a nasty war on all sides. Amnesty International accused the Dyck Advisory Group of war crimes, including bombing civilians by apparently using Syria-style barrel bombs made from cooking gas canisters and dropped from helicopters on houses.

And Amnesty International cited government forces for war crimes. The most extreme was in Quisanga in March and April 2020, when the “permanent secretary’s house would come to be known to villagers as a place where government security forces took women to be raped, and men detained, beaten and, in some cases, summarily executed as well. Six witnesses described a mass grave behind the home, a ‘big hole’ under the trees, where people would be taken to be shot and dumped directly in the pit.”

Nyusi is commander in chief and is in much more direct control of his forces than the Islamic State is of al-Shabaab. And Nyusi is Catholic and the pope has intervened in the war. If we insist on citing “Islamic terrorism” because of the role of the Islamic State, should we be calling what happened in Quisanga “Christian terrorism”?

Hidden truths

In fact, neither label is correct. But again, labels are important. The 1980s civil war was in reality a Cold War proxy war, with the US backing apartheid South Africa to build up Renamo to fight the “communists” backed by the Soviet Union. Now Islam is the enemy and the US is back, fighting the Islamic State on Mozambican soil with the willing participation of Portugal and, probably, France and South Africa.

But the insurgency will not be stopped militarily. As Gonzales and many others stress, Islamist militants recruit young men with no jobs and who see no future; they stress that the government is stealing their future. Creating thousands of jobs for the poorly educated youth of Cabo Delgado would end the war, but that requires the gas companies and the Frelimo oligarchs who rule Cabo Delgado to use some of their profits to fund that job creation, and so far they have shown no interest. They would prefer the Islamic State to be blamed and that someone else fights the war.

The French company Total is developing a $20 billion gas liquefaction plant on the Afungi peninsula. Insurgents reached the gates of the project on 1 January and Total pulled out its staff. It told Mozambique it would only return when the Mozambique government could guarantee a 25km-radius secure zone around Afungi. That looks as if Total is happy to do gas production if the war can be kept out of sight. It has experience of this in Nigeria, where it has offshore wells and in the Niger Delta an insurgency has been going on for decades.

That is why labelling is so important. If this is treated as “Islamist terrorism” from the Islamic State outside of Mozambique, then Cabo Delgado will become like the Niger Delta and the war will continue indefinitely – with the gas companies in secure zones. But if jobs were created and marginalisation reduced, the war could be stopped. Sadly, it looks as if the gas companies, the Frelimo elite and the US building a new cold war would rather fight mythical global Islamist terrorists.

This article was first published by New Frame.