From 22 to 24 October, the major economic powers of the future met in Kazan, Russia. This was the 16th BRICS Summit, which welcomed new members. Many of these countries have much in common with La Réunion, notably colonisation by a Western country and the West’s attempt to maintain its domination via a neo-colonial policy based on natives who agreed to be paid to ‘do the dirty work’.
The BRICS are now the engine of the global economy, the world has changed. There have also been major political changes. China and India are moving closer together to put an end to an old border dispute. Apart from ‘Témoignages’, no one is reporting this event as it should be. As far as world news is concerned, the Reunionese are bombarded with French news all day long and know nothing about what’s going on close to home, or about this world that has changed. This is one aspect of French neo-colonialism in Réunion.

Reunionese used by the West to serve its interests

The best-known manifestation of French neo-colonialism is the exclusion of the Reunionese from ownership of the main tools that create wealth on our island. Public transfers in the form of salaries, business aid and social benefits are spent in branches of mainly French companies. This allows Paris to indirectly help its companies: neo-colonialism transforms public aid from France into private profits that are largely repatriated to France.
This neo-colonialism also aims to make the Reunionese tools of French foreign policy, which is aligned with that of the United States. For the West, it is a question of hoping to maintain its hegemony in the face of the return to centre stage of major countries once colonised by the Europeans, the Americans or the Japanese.
Faced with this rebalancing of the world, which closes the parenthesis of 500 years of colonisation, ‘the West does not want to go down without a fight’, recalled Professor Habiyaremye, drawing lessons from the success of the BRICS Summit in Russia. To achieve this, the West is multiplying conflicts. The coup d’état in Ukraine in 2014 to turn it into a vassal of NATO has rekindled war in Europe, 30 years after the destruction of Yugoslavia, which did a great service to the member states of the European Union. The latest of these conflicts launched by the West is Israel’s bombardment of Gaza and then Lebanon, with aggression perpetrated by the Tel Aviv regime in Syria, Yemen and Iran. The West’s aim is to destabilise the Middle East, which is beginning to join the BRICS. After the United Arab Emirates became a member of this organisation, Saudi Arabia took part in the Kazan Summit and the President of Turkey, a NATO member, attended.

Military bases on La Reunion Island

In the Indian Ocean and the Pacific, this strategy is based on a network of military bases, of which La Réunion is a part: this is the Indo-Pacific axis. Its aim is to counter the return of China as the world’s leading economic power. This strategy has also suffered a serious setback with the rapprochement between China and India. This Indo-Pacific axis is in line with the idea that ‘the West does not want to go down without a fight’. La Réunion is the only territory in this large part of the world where the sovereignty of a Western country is not contested: Kanaky, New Caledonia, will become independent again in the near future, as will Polynesia; the French administration of Mayotte and that of the Malagasy islands in the Mozambique Channel are illegal and the subject of numerous disputes.
It is therefore essential to invest substantial resources in La Réunion, which will be the last bastion of the West’s anti-BRICS strategy in the Indian and Pacific oceans.

Building the factory of ignorance

French neo-colonialism operates on an intellectual level. The Reunionese must be persuaded that they are naturally Westerners, that the leaders of the West are the good guys while the Chinese and Russians are the bad guys.
This simplistic and inaccurate vision is reflected in the way the world news are treated on La Réunion. Not surprisingly, it is largely derived from dispatches from media owned by the French state or strongly linked to that country’s economic interests. The billionaires who own the main media in France are defending their interests, which coincide with those of the West, because for them, the BRICS countries are competitors.
All this means that manufacturing ignorance is one of the weapons of French neo-colonialism. The world has changed, the hegemony of the West is coming to an end, but the Reunionese must not be informed. They must be kept in an imaginary world dominated by the values of a bygone past. This helps to keep our country underdeveloped, because it prevents the Reunionese from seeing that the BRICS countries can be far more responsive and supportive partners than Paris and Brussels in supporting La Réunion’s development in all areas: rebuilding the train, energy autonomy, transforming a dependent economy into a self-sufficient economy aiming for full employment, etc.

M.M.