Gideon Polya, ““Bastille Day 1779-2009. France, Occupation and Indigenous Genocide”, MWC News, 15 July 2009.
Bastille Day 1779-2009. France, Occupation and Indigenous Genocide
This week Francophiles celebrated anniversary of the storming of the Bastille on 14 July 1789, 220 years ago. However freedom for the French quickly became Gulag-style oppression for millions of people around the World that continues today.
The French were involved in the conquest, subjugation and genocide of millions of non-Europeans around the World in North and South America, Africa, Asia and the Pacific (for details of this history and its appalling avoidable mortality consequences see my book “Body Count. Global avoidable mortality since 1950”: http://mwcnews.net/Gideon-Polya ) .
In the Americas the French were involved in the decimation of the Indigenous People in what are now Canada, the USA, Haiti, Guadeloupe, Martinique, French Guiana and elsewhere (e.g. Mexico and Brazil) through imperialist meddling.
In Africa, the French enslaved a swathe of North African, Sahel, West African sub-Saharan and Indian Ocean countries, variously with dispossession, genocidal slavery and post-slavery “forced labor” - as well as invading other African countries (e.g. Egypt). The present-day former African victims of French imperialism include Algeria, Benin, Burkina Faso, , Cameroon, Central African Republic, Chad, Comoros, Congo (Brazzaville), Côte d’Ivoire, Djibouti, Egypt, Gabon, , Guinea, Madagascar, Mali, , Mauritania, Mauritius, Morocco, Niger, Réunion, Senegal, Togo, and Tunisia
In Asia, the French invaded, disempowered and dispossessed Indigenous People in what are now Lebanon, Syria, Bangladesh, India, Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam in addition to other genocidal adventures (e.g. in China).
In the Pacific, as in the Americas, the French decimated the Indigenous populations through introduced disease and dispossession, the victim countries being Vanuatu, Tahiti and New Caledonia, the latter 2 countries still being held by France against the wishes of the Indigenous People.
How many Indigenous People under the French died from slavery, brutal forced labor, deprivation and introduced disease? The short answer: hundreds of millions. The French are such an intellectual lot – for a devastating account of the “intellectual” basis for Western and French imperialism see Lindqvist, S. (1992), Exterminate All the Brutes (Granta Books, London, 2002).
A precise estimate can be given for excess deaths in the period since 1950, for which period the UN Population Division (see: http://esa.un.org/unpp/ ) provides detailed demographic data. For any country in a given period, excess death (avoidable death, avoidable mortality, excess mortality, deaths that should not have happened) is the difference between the actual deaths in a country and the deaths expected for a peaceful, decently governed country with the same demographics.
Summarized below is 1950-2005 excess mortality/ 2005 population (both in millions, m) and expressed as a percentage (%) for each country occupied by France as a Major Occupier in the post-1945 era and for France itself. The asterisk (*) below indicates a major occupation by more than one country in the post-WW2 era (e.g. France is involved in the genocidal occupation of Occupied Afghanistan but is a minor player in the US-led US Alliance; the UK and Apartheid Israel joined in the invasion of Egypt by France in 1956). Note that excess death doesn’t stop when the colonial power leaves the devastated country. In Africa, the only formerly French-occupied countries or territories with Western-style excess mortality rates are Mauritius (French colonized but ruled by UK from 1810-1968) and Réunion (an overseas Department of France).
France [3.275m/60.711m = 5.4%], Algeria [7.167m/32.877m =21.8%], Benin [3.267m/7.103m = 46.0%], Burkina Faso [6.810m/13.798m = 49.4%], Cambodia* [5.852m/14.825m = 39.5%], Cameroon* [6.669m/16.564m = 40.3%], Central African Republic [2.274m/3.962m =57.4%], Chad [5.085m/9.117m = 55.8%], Comoros [0.204m/0.812m =25.1%], Congo (Brazzaville) [1.085m/3.921m = 27.7%], Côte d’Ivoire [6.953m/17.165m = 40.5%], Djibouti [0.265m/0.721m = 36.8%], Egypt* [19.818m/74.878m = 26.5%], French Guiana [0.010m/0.187m = 5.3%], French Polynesia [0.018m/0.252m = 7.1%], Gabon [0.504m/1.375m = 36.7%], Guadeloupe [0.025m/0.446m = 5.6%], Guinea [5.185m/8.788m = 59.0%], Haiti* [4.089m/8.549m = 47.9%], Laos* [2.653m/5.918m = 44.8%], Madagascar [7.098m/18.409m = 38.6%], Mali [6.808m/13.829m = 49.2%], Martinique [0.022m/0.397m = 5.5%], Mauritania [1.294m/3.069m = 42.2%], Mauritius [0.064m/1.244m = 5.18], Morocco* [8.202m/31.564m = 26.0%], New Caledonia [0.017m/0.237m = 7.2%], Niger [6.558m/12.873m = 50.9%], Réunion [0.047m/0.777m = 6.0%], Senegal [4.457m/9.393m = 47.5%], Syria* [2.198m/18.650m = 11.8%], Togo [1.950m/5.129m = 38.0%], Tunisia [1.582m/10.042m =15.8%], Vanuatu* [0.037m/0.222m = 16.7%], Vietnam* [24.015m/83.585m = 28.7%], total = 142.291m/430.678m = 33.0%.
France has been a major, direct contributor to the post-1950 Global Avoidable Mortality Holocaust, being complicit in 142 million 1950-2005 excess deaths of Subjects or former Subject excess deaths out of a total of 1.3 billion (the World), 1.3 billion (the non-European World) , and 0.6 billion (the Muslim World) (for further details see: http://globalavoidablemortality.blogspot.com/ ).
The carnage wrought by France throughout the World after the liberation of cowardly Vichy France from the Nazi Germans (142 million excess deaths) is about twice the carnage wrought by the Axis powers in World War 2.
Unfortunately, the New Vichy France continues to subjugate, disempower, dispossess and ethnically cleanse Indigenous People through neo-colonialism in Africa; continued .occupation of a swathe of countries around the World (Guadeloupe, Martinique, Réunion, French Guiana, New Caledonia and Tahiti are overseas Departments of France); and its obscene participation in the US-imposed Afghan Genocide.
Pro-Zionist, war criminal French President Nicolas Sarkozy is a fawning puppet of US imperialism and has committed French forces to the continuing Afghan Genocide (post-invasion excess deaths 3-7 million) as well as diplomatically and financially supporting the ongoing Western occupations of Palestine and Occupied Iraq.
As of March 2009, in the Occupied Palestinian, Iraqi and Afghan Territories post-invasion non-violent excess deaths total 0.3 million, 1.0 million and 3.2 million, respectively; post-invasion violent deaths total about 10,000, 1.3 million and up to 4 million, respectively; post-invasion under-5 infant deaths total 0.2 million, 0.6 million and 2.3 million, respectively; and refugees total 7 million, 6 million and 4 million, respectively (with a further 2.5 million Pashtun refugees from NW Pakistan generated under Obama) – this constituting a Palestinian Holocaust, an Iraqi Holocaust and an Afghan Holocaust and a Palestinian Genocide, Iraqi Genocide and Afghan Genocide as defined by Article 2 of the UN Genocide Convention and egregious war crimes due in part to Occupier war criminal non-supply of life-sustaining food and medical requisites demanded unequivocally by Articles 55 and 56 of the Geneva Convention Relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War (for detailed documentation of sources see “Iraq invasion 6th anniversary. 2.3 million excess deaths”: http://mwcnews.net/content/view/29360/42/ and “Obama’s Afghan War – who is the worse terrorist, Obama or Osama?”: http://mwcnews.net/content/view/29546/42/ ).
A very dear relative successfully hid from the Nazis in World War 2 and was disgusted by the cowardice and nice war-time life of the collaborator French in Vichy France (although post-war she became a French teacher in a distant land). Of course the racist Vichy French identified Jews through their ID papers (as did Apartheid Israel-backed South Africa and as does US-, UK-, France- and Apartheid Australia-backed Apartheid Israel today). This French racism enabled the Nazis to round up French Jews with French complicity and murder 65,000 out of a 300,000 pre-war French Jewish population.
Tell everyone you can. History ignored yields history repeated – and France’s dirty genocidal history is being repeated today by holocaust-committing and holocaust-ignoring France, as well as by the UK, the US, NATO, Apartheid Israel and Apartheid Australia. France is famous for perfume – but no amount of perfume can drown out the stench of France’s cowardly, racist, genocidal, blood-soaked history that continues to this day.