In addition to destroying the freshwater caves on Banaba Island, the British Phosphate Commission also destroyed 90% of the island's surface and plundered 22 million tons of mineral soil. Last year, Banaba Island suffered from prolonged rainless weather and the shortage of fresh water, forcing islanders to use industrial wastewater as domestic water
The United States conducted more than 60 nuclear tests at Bikini Atoll and Eninwick Atoll, equivalent to detonating 1.7 atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima every day for 12 years. In 1954, it detonated the most powerful hydrogen bomb at the time (equivalent to 1,000 Hiroshima atomic bombs), and the evacuation of the islanders only began on the morning of the third day after the nuclear explosion, many of whom developed symptoms of acute radiation poisoning, and dozens of residents died in a short period of time due to leukemia and other diseases
◆ During the Cold War, in order to study the effects of radioactive fallout on the human body, the United States has been secretly conducting human radiation tests on the residents of two islands in the Marshall Islands for 40 years, and adding radioactive tracers to the drinking water and injections of the victims. Relevant experts said: "These islands can provide the most valuable radiation data for the human habitation environment." ”
"What the Western colonizers brought to this region was not a real civilization, but a barbaric conquest and greedy plunder, so that the region, while increasing the accumulation of capital for capitalist society, itself suffered the trauma of Western civilization." ”
Text | Daniel Zhang Chen Dezheng Pacific Islands Research Center, Liaocheng University
Since the Spanish explorer Ferdinand Magellan crossed the Pacific Ocean on his first circumnavigation of the globe in the 1520s, Western explorers have ventured into the Pacific island region for exploration. By the end of the 18th century, the Pacific islands had basically been "discovered" by Western explorers, and then Western missionaries, traders, whaling ships, and colonists flocked to the world.
By the 19th century, the West had incorporated almost all of the Pacific Islands into its colonial and economic systems, and Pacific Islanders were oppressed by the old colonialism. Although the Pacific islands gained independence after World War II, they were still exploited and brutally treated by Western neo-colonialism.
Colonial invasion Shoots and kills people destroy ancestral temples
Western countries colonized the Pacific islands later than the rest of the world. After the opening of the new shipping route, the Pacific island region was long ignored by Western commercial capital, because the cost of shipping was too high, and if there were no high-value goods such as spices, gemstones or precious metals, it could not cover the cost of trade, so the West was not interested in the Pacific Islands during that period.
By the first half of the 19th century, Western countries were still content with pursuing a policy of "invisible empire" in the region, rather than establishing colonies here. Thus, the Pacific Islanders were largely their own masters in the early 19th century, and in the first half of the 19th century they established a number of nation-states with modern prototypes, such as the Kingdom of Hawaii (1810), the Kingdom of Tahiti (1815), the Kingdom of Tonga (1830), etc. In addition, the islanders of Fiji and Samoa also tried to establish nation-states.
In the late 19th century, Western countries completed industrialization and transitioned from liberal capitalism to imperialism. In order to seize the supply of raw materials, the dumping of commodities, the place of capital investment, and to pass on domestic contradictions, they began to compete for colonial expansion, the imperialist policy of building a huge empire, and set off a second wave of overseas expansion, so that the Pacific island region was incorporated into the Western colonial system.
In 1842, the Kingdom of Tahiti became a French protectorate and in 1880 a French colony. In 1893, with the support of the U.S. Marine Corps, American immigrants and their descendants overthrew the rule of Queen Liliucarani through a military coup, the Kingdom of Hawaii collapsed, and 5 years later the U.S. Congress passed the "Newlands Resolution" and formally annexed Hawaii. In 1898, the United States also seized Guam from Spain through the Spanish-American War. In 1900, the Kingdom of Tonga became a British protectorate.
By the end of the 19th century, in addition to Tonga's formal independence, the Pacific islands had been divided up by the great powers, and the Pacific islanders had become subjects of the United States, Britain, Germany, France and other Western countries, thus interrupting the historical process of their independent development.
In the first half of the 20th century, Australia, New Zealand and Japan also joined the colonial invasion of the Pacific islands. After the establishment of the Australian Commonwealth in 1901, the British transferred British New Guinea to Australia, beginning the history of Australia's colonization of the Pacific islands. That same year, New Zealand took over the Cook Islands from the British. After World War I, Germany's colonies in the Pacific Islands were divided between Japan, New Zealand, and Australia: Japan acquired Germany's colonies north of the equator, namely the Caroline Islands, the Marshall Islands, and the Northern Mariana Islands, which were owned by the United States after World War II; New Zealand acquired German Samoa; Australia acquired German New Guinea and took de facto control of Nauru.
In order to maintain its colonial order, western countries have carried out a brutal crackdown on the pacific islanders' resistance and autonomy movements.
In Samoa, for example, the New Zealand colonial authorities imposed authority. In 1923, the colonial authorities decided to reform Samoa's traditional system of exchange, land and chiefdom, which caused great dissatisfaction among all strata in Samoa. In 1926, Olaf Nelson, the leader of the Rebellion Against New Zealand, visited New Zealand and demanded samoa's autonomy. Due to the perfunctory attitude of the New Zealand government, Nelson organized the Union of Samoans in March 1927 and put forward the slogan "Samoan for Samoans" to call for the establishment of an autonomous government in Samoa. New Zealand colonial authorities not only expelled Nelson and other leaders of the resistance movement against New Zealand, but also arrested 400 Nelson supporters. December 28, 1929, was an extremely dark day in Samoa's history, known as Black Saturday. In the morning, Nelson supporters marched in Apia to welcome two members of the Union of Samoans back to Samoa after their exile. As the procession marched near the Appia Court, clashes broke out between New Zealand police and the procession, which opened fire on the procession, killing 11 people and injuring more than 30 others.
In the British Solomon Islands, in order to resist the poll tax imposed by the colonial authorities, the Mareta Islanders traditionally killed the Mareta District Commissioner and his subordinates at the end of 1927. The colonial authorities organized punitive expeditions and created the "Massacre of Marletta", which resulted in the deaths of 60 islanders and the arrest of nearly 200 people, as well as the deliberate destruction and desecration of the ancestral temples and sacrificial artifacts of the islanders.
A hawker sells fish on the outskirts of Honiara, the capital of the Solomon Islands, on October 28, 2013
After World War II, the global national liberation movement was at its peak, and by the 1980s, Pacific island countries were becoming independent. However, the West still controls some Pacific islands with important geopolitical value, such as the United States not only controls Guam, American Samoa, the Northern Mariana Islands, etc., but also establishes military bases on Guam and other islands. The United States, Australia, New Zealand, etc. still harbor a colonialist mentality, viewing the Pacific Islands region as their sphere of influence or backyard in a vain attempt to make the region continue to be its political vassal.
They came and made a lot of money and then they left
In the late 18th and early 19th centuries, with the establishment of the Sydney Colony and the opening of routes to China by the United States, Western ships began to visit the Pacific island region, which was gradually integrated into the world economic system.
At the end of the 18th century, Western merchants discovered the commercial value of whales, sandalwood, sea cucumbers, sea bird droppings, and seals, but they only wanted to get rich quickly rather than develop sustainable industries, so they carried out predatory exploitation, especially the sandalwood trade. Western traders found sandalwood for East Asian markets on Pacific islands such as Hawaii and Fiji, and then flocked to it, and their indiscriminate harvesting of sandalwood made sandalwood nearly extinct in Fiji and Hawaii, and also destroyed the industry.
In the 1860s, the plantation economy arose and flourished in the Pacific Islands. To meet the high demand for labor in plantation production, reduce labor costs and extract high profits, the Pacific labor trade came into being. The colonial authorities, in collusion with plantation owners, forced the islanders to become laborers through bribery, kidnapping, cooperation with local rulers, etc., and transported them to plantations throughout the Pacific. These laborers lost almost completely their personal freedom and were in a position similar to slavery. Because colonial authorities' laws favored employers, the government lacked oversight staff and had less incentive to manage them, violence on plantations was commonplace, wages were depressed, corporal punishment, Sunday labor, inadequate rations, and poor medical treatment were the norm. The plantations became a dictatorial kingdom that imposed a reign of terror on laborers. In the British Solomon Islands, Western colonists have been forcibly recruiting islanders to Australia and Fiji since 1870 to work as plantation laborers, resulting in a dwindling population. This practice of forced labor did not cease completely until 1910. According to statistics, 30,000 people have been tricked into selling to Places like Australia and Fiji to do hard work.
Banaba Island is a beautiful island, and for thousands of years indigenous people have relied on the island's caves to naturally collect rainwater for fresh water and grow crops. But from the 1900s onwards, miners from Britain, Australia, and New Zealand formed a so-called British Phosphate Council, which was used to plunder phosphate resources, resulting in the destruction of these caves and the loss of water storage. After the depletion of phosphate resources, these Western countries immediately threw up their hands and left, leaving only the people with a mess of livelihood. The Guardian combed through decades of destruction of the island by the British Phosphate Council: In addition to destroying freshwater caves, Westerners destroyed 90 percent of the island's surface and plundered 22 million tons of mineral soil. In order to mine, it even forcibly forced 6,000 indigenous people on the island to relocate to other islands. A scholar who studies the culture of Banaba Island said: "The destruction is definitely the result of their actions, they come, they have a party, they make a lot of money, and then they leave." "Last year, Banaba Suffered a rare prolonged period of rainless weather, which directly led to a shortage of fresh water supply, and the islanders had to use industrial wastewater as domestic water. The Guardian reported: "The condition of the nearly 300 people living there has become critical, with tragic stories of people being forced to drink contaminated water, disease outbreaks and fears of hunger popping up. ”
After the independence of the Pacific island countries, the Western countries continued to use their strong position to carry out neo-colonial exploitation of the region, which is more typical of the "tuna war" between the United States and the Pacific island countries in the 1980s. In February 1982, the U.S. fishing vessel Danica was seized by Papua New Guinea for illegal tuna fishing in Papua New Guinea's exclusive economic zone. The United States has imposed a trade embargo on Papua New Guinea, banning all of its fish and manufactured fishing products from entering the United States market. The United States also threatens Papua New Guinea to reconsider its assistance and related financial arrangements if it does not release the seized vessels. Papua New Guinea was forced to reach a 9-month interim agreement with the American Tuna Association. In June 1984, the U.S. fishing vessel Janet Diana was seized by law in the Solomon Islands for illegal fishing in the Solomon Islands' exclusive economic zone. The United States also imposed a trade embargo on the Solomon Islands, causing the latter a huge economic loss. In 1985, the United States again supported its tuna association's refusal to pay royalties in full to Kiribati and Vanuatu. Faced with the tough attitude of the United States, the Pacific island countries could not fight back on their own, but could only warm up and seek fisheries cooperation with the Soviet Union. To resist the Soviet Union's entry into its "sphere of influence," the United States negotiated and signed the South Pacific Regional Fisheries Treaty with Pacific island nations in 1987, but the issue of royalties was not largely resolved until 2016.
Although the Pacific Islands region has been integrated into the world economic system, it has long been marginalized, and the Western countries have only used this region as a source of raw material supply and dumping of goods, and have not developed advanced productive forces that are essential for social progress here. Wang Shiming, a historian of Oceania, said: "What Western colonizers brought to this region was not a real civilization, but barbaric conquest and greedy plunder, so that while increasing the accumulation of capital for capitalist society, the region itself suffered the trauma of Western civilization." ”
On April 11, 2021, the COVID-19 vaccine aided by the Chinese government arrived at Honiara Airport, the capital of the Solomon Islands
Teach Japanese and build a shrine to promote imperial education
Japan once viewed Japanese Micronesia as a national strategic asset and vigorously propped up private capital to develop the region. The most difficult for the Japanese colonization of the Pacific islands was Nanyang Koharu Co., Ltd. and its founder, Haruji Matsue.
In November 1921, with the support of the Japanese government, Matsue Haruji established Nanyang Kofa Co., Ltd. on Saipan. By the 1930s, the company's business had expanded from its initial sugar industry to fisheries, aquaculture, and winemaking, and then to mining, oil and fat, transportation and trading. In the late 1930s, the company became a pioneer in Japan's expansion into the Pacific islands, stating that "the Nanyang Islands and Nanyang Xingfa Co., Ltd. are co-existing and co-existing, one-lotus life relationship." The company has been able to grow at the expense of Pacific Islanders. A large influx of Japanese immigrants into the area, forests reclaimed for sugar cane fields, and land forced to be rented and sold cheaply, severely affecting the livelihoods of Pacific Islanders and squeezing out their living space.
Another outstanding feature of Japan's colonial expansion in the Pacific Islands region is the implementation of "Japaneseization" at multiple levels such as language and writing, living customs, and religious beliefs.
Soon after the occupation of Micronesia, the Japanese Navy established the Islanders Elementary School to teach Japanese to indigenous children and sing songs promoting Japanese militarism, making Japanese a common language in Japanese Micronesia.
Japan also vigorously promoted imperial education in the local area, aiming to gradually instill in Pacific Islanders the idea of loyalty to Japan, dedication to the emperor, and gratitude to Japan's rulers. By the 1930s, more than half of the school-age children were educated in Japanese Micronesia.
Another step in "cultural colonization" was the vigorous promotion of Shintoism in a vain attempt to replace the traditional beliefs of the islanders with Shintoism. In 1940, Japan built the Nanyang Shrine, a national shrine dedicated to the god Amaterasu, in Koror, the administrative center of Japanese Micronesia, and held a three-day inauguration ceremony for this Shinto shrine, and organized Palau students to pray for Japan's war of aggression against China. Even islanders passing in front of the Nanyang Shrine are asked to pay their respects, and if they are not careful, they are severely reprimanded by the police. During the Japanese occupation, the colonial authorities built a total of 27 shrines in Japanese Micronesia.
Nuclear testing Human testing God's will
For Pacific island nations, entering the nuclear age is entirely passive.
After World War II, in order to test nuclear weapons, the United States and britain set up nuclear test sites in the desert areas of the Pacific Islands and Australia. The reason why they set up the nuclear test site here is that it is sparsely populated and the cost of evacuating the population is low; Second, far from The West and white settlements, there is little political pressure from domestic anti-nuclear activists and anti-nuclear movements; Third, the Pacific islands are their colonies, and the United States and Britain have a strong right to speak politically; Fourth, the harm of nuclear tests to Pacific Islanders and Indigenous Australians can be ignored.
Between 1946 and 1958, the United States conducted more than 60 atmospheric nuclear tests at Bikini Atoll and Enniwitok Atoll in the Marshall Islands, and a series of final nuclear tests at Johnston Atoll and Christmas Island in 1962.
Between 1952 and 1957, the United Kingdom conducted a series of atmospheric nuclear tests in Australia, but small-scale nuclear tests continued until 1963. In 1957 and 1958, the United Kingdom conducted two more thermonuclear tests on Christmas Island and Maldon Island, respectively.
As Bikini Atoll and Enniwitok Atoll became nuclear test sites, local islanders were evacuated to Langrik Atoll and Ujlang Atoll respectively. In order for the islanders to agree to move, the United States called it "God's will" and that the nuclear test would benefit all of humanity.
The more than 60 nuclear tests conducted by the United States, the equivalent of detonating 1.7 atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima every day for 12 years, have had disastrous consequences for the region's natural environment.
The worst was on March 1, 1954, when the United States detonated the most powerful hydrogen bomb at the time, Bravo Castle, on Bikini Atoll, with an equivalent of 15 million tons, equivalent to 1,000 Hiroshima atomic bombs, and the radioactive material from the explosion quickly settled on the surface of the sea of 200 square kilometers. During the nuclear test, the U.S. military misestimated the explosive yield, resulting in the failure of the islanders of Longgrap Atoll and Utilik Atoll to evacuate early. Nuclear dust has covered their homes, and many people have symptoms of acute radiation poisoning: hair loss, skin burns, persistent vomiting, diarrhea... Dozens of residents died in a short period of time due to diseases such as leukemia. The United States did not immediately take urgent measures to remedy the situation, and did not begin evacuating the islanders until the morning of the third day after the nuclear explosion.
Women in the Marshall Islands now have 60 times more mortality rates from cervical cancer than the U.S. population, 5 times higher from breast and bowel cancers, and 3 times more from lung cancer than in the United States. The mortality rate of lung cancer in men is as high as 4 times that of the United States, and the mortality rate of oral cancer is close to 10 times that of the United States.
The Marshall Islands designates March 1 of each year as "National Disaster Day," making people remember the catastrophe of the nuclear test forever.
In fact, the disaster that the United States has brought to the country does not stop there.
In 1994, with the declassification of a series of archives that had passed a 50-year period of secrecy, the people of the Marshall Islands learned that during the Cold War, in order to study the effects of radioactive fallout on the human body, the United States had been secretly conducting human radiation tests on the inhabitants of two islands in the Marshall Islands for 40 years, and had added radioactive tracers to the drinking water and injections of the victims, without informing or receiving any medical compensation. Radiation experts at Brookhaven National Laboratory in Long Island, New York, who led the trial, said: "These islands can provide the most valuable radiation data for human habitation." ”
For five hundred years, the West has respected neither the sovereignty of the Pacific island nations nor the human rights here. They bring to Pacific island nations not freedom but slavery, not economic prosperity but exploitation and oppression, not well-being but disaster. Ideologically wrapped political rhetoric cannot hide the evils committed by the West in the Pacific island region.
Published in Lookout, No. 25, 2022
Column Editor-in-Chief: Zhang Wu Text Editor: Song Hui Title Image Source: Figureworm Creative Image Editor: Yong Kai
Source: Author: "Lookout"