Baku Initiative Group issues statement on violation of Olympic Games principles in Paris

Although the French President Emmanuel Macron and his government present the Paris-2024 Olympic Games currently held in France as a "moment of peace and hope", French colonial and neo-colonial policies say the opposite.

Report informs that this was mentioned in the statement issued by the Baku Initiative Group (BIG) on the violation of the Olympic Games principles in Paris-2024.

The statement reads: "The Olympic Charter states that the goal of the Olympic movement is to direct sport to the harmonious development of humanity in order to promote a peaceful society that serves to protect human dignity.

According to information obtained from representatives of political parties and movements fighting for independence from Polynesia, Corsica, Melanesia, the Caribbean and the Antilles, discrimination in the employment sector and access to housing, as well as the exploitation of natural resources and cases of organized mass immigration under the patronage of the French Government have been registered".

In the statement, BIG drew attention to a number of situations that are completely contrary to the spirit of the Olympics:

- Poor economic development strategy in favor of French monopolists is implemented: excessive food dependence of the population (more than 80% of food products come from France), high cost of living, poverty (50% of the population in French Guiana lives below the poverty line) and mass unemployment leading to all kinds of unrest (violence, arms and drug trafficking) - seriously endanger the future of these territories;

- Non-ratification of the 1989 Indigenous and Tribal Peoples Convention (No. 169) (French Guiana);

- The establishment of hegemony of French culture and assimilation policy, which puts the increasingly endangered local languages ​​in the background and imposes French curricula on local children that do not correspond to their local history, geography, cultures, or future aspirations;

- Land occupation (90% of the land in French Guiana belongs to the French state), control of millions of km2 exclusive economic zone (EEZ) (France is the second largest maritime power in the world with an EEZ of 11 million km2), the decades-long deportation policy against indigenous youth caused an unprecedented demographic crisis in Guadeloupe and Martinique and greatly contributed to the plundering of natural resources;

- The establishment of a two-tier colonial justice that criminalized all resistance and protected the corrupt (arrest of young people who fought against chlordecone poisoning and land theft in Martinique and Guadeloupe, the application of exclusive jurisdictions and detention conditions for Corsicans who did not accept unequal treatment, the arrest of Mr. Herve Pinto, President of Kolektif Jistis Matinik (the Collective Justice Martinique Association);

- Empty seat policy after Polynesia was againincluded in the list of countries to be decolonized ;

- Preventing the local population from performing under the flag of their country at the Olympic Games;

- The use of territories against the will of the indigenous peoples as geostrategic military bases for war preparations by the colonial Western states, especially in the Indo-Pacific region (Polynesia, New Caledonia), as well as in the Caribbean-American region (Guiana, Martinique, Guadeloupe) and Corsica (Solenzara base) ;

- Failure to comply with the decolonization process, which is an obligation under the Noumea Agreement, thus making the Kanak people a minority on their land by holding an illegal referendum and expanding the electorate, as well as numerous arrests and deportations of CCAT (Field Action Coordination Unit ) activists.

"Considering the abovementioned, we ask rhetorical and simple questions; can the Olympic Games, which are a 'moment of peace and hope,' be held in a country that subjugates nations in the 21st century?

Couldn't the host country of the Olympic Games remove freedom restrictions in Kanaki and also release political prisoners? They have the right to experience this 'moment of peace' in their homes, together with their children," the statement underscored.