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	Workers Vanguard No. 1001	27 April 2012

Down With French Colonial Repression!

Youth Revolt on Island of Réunion

The following is a translation of a March 9 leaflet issued by the Ligue Trotskyste de France, section of the International Communist League (Fourth Internationalist).

On the island of Réunion, a week of protests took place last month against high prices and racist colonial oppression—the daily lot of the majority, especially youth. Now the governor of this colony of French imperialism, the prefect Lalande, boasts about the results: 233 people arrested, 159 of whom were placed in police custody. Most of these are youth. Twenty people were put in jail, with sentences ranging up to three years (Libération, 27 February). Today, the island is no longer under the media spotlight, but repression has not let up: On March 1 three youth were sentenced to prison, one of them for one month and another for three, for having set fire to a trash can, which slightly damaged the door of a post office. A week later, a 36-year-old man was jailed for one month for throwing stones toward police. The police terror and speedy trials are reminiscent of the crackdown after the revolt in the French banlieues [suburban ghettos] in 2005, when youth rebelled against the racist police terror and oppression they experience daily under French capitalism. The LTF demands the immediate release of all youth arrested and imprisoned during the recent protests! Drop the charges! French troops, riot police: Out of Réunion!

Given the contempt of the French bourgeoisie for the masses in Réunion, including youth, a social explosion was to be expected. Sixty percent of young people on the island are unemployed, and they simply see no future before them. With the economic crisis, the situation is getting worse. Half the population of Réunion lives below the poverty line. In France, the need for labor has been declining for several decades, and the racist rulers of decaying French imperialism do not intend to spend any money to educate and train young people in the colonies. The situation is the same for working-class youth in France, especially for ethnic and racial minorities. In Réunion, illiteracy is widespread, affecting nearly one in four adults. This is particularly due to the island’s colonial status, under which French is the only official language, despite the fact that Creole is the mother tongue of the majority of the population. “French only” is a racist language policy. For full equality of all languages​​, with no special status for French!

What sparked the youth revolt in Réunion was in fact a protest by the National Federation of Truckers (FNTR), an employers’ organization, which blocked the fuel depot on the island to protest the exorbitant cost of petroleum products. The FNTR urged people to take to the streets to help it confront the cops. This action against the price of gasoline spread like wildfire, and the protests and riots spread from one city to another. The trucking bosses soon distanced themselves from the youth and left them defenseless against repression. Just hours after its call to action, the FNTR made a deal with the prefect and began to call on the truckers to end the blockades.

Youth as such have practically no social power. The labor movement of Réunion, as well as in France, must take up the fight against poverty and colonial racism imposed on the vast majority of islanders. There must be no illusions: if [Socialist Party candidate] François Hollande is elected president in May, this will in no way alter the endemic poverty and the daily struggle for survival by the majority of the island’s population. The last major riots, in the neighborhood of Le Chaudron, took place in 1991 under [Socialist president François] Mitterrand, and the crackdown was as harsh as today.

Some 175,000 people from Réunion live in France, representing a quarter of the population of the island. They are integrated into the working class, mainly in transportation and hospitals. The French labor movement as a whole, not just workers from Réunion, must protest the repression in Réunion. The iron fist of the state comes down hardest on France’s colonial subjects, as well as on minority youth, Roma [Gypsies] and undocumented immigrants. But with the economic crisis and deepening poverty, the bourgeoisie continually adds to its arsenal of repression and renews its attacks against all workers, who are the only ones with the social power to paralyze the country and cut off the flow of profits by carrying out strikes.

Ultimately, the only way to eradicate poverty and colonial oppression once and for all is to fight for international socialist revolution and to build a revolutionary party that is determined to lead the working class to power. The fate of the socialist revolution in Réunion is indissolubly linked with the struggle of workers in France and nearby South Africa to overthrow capitalism. A new generation of militant leaders will arise from today’s social struggles and those to come. It is crucial to fight for the right of self-determination of Réunion and the other remaining French colonies. As we are opposed to French colonialism, we would be in favor of independence. But we do not demand it now because at present the Réunion islanders (like the people of Guadeloupe and Martinique) do not aspire to independence, fearing that, in this period of imperialist depredations, their already precarious situation would worsen.

Socialist revolution will lay the basis for a rationally planned economy to produce what is needed, instead of producing for profit. It will allow a qualitative development of the productive forces and open the way for economic development that will truly end the struggle for survival in countries under the jackboot of imperialism. For a socialist federation of Southern Africa! For the Socialist United States of Europe!