Vanuatu’s government has condemned a “shameful, racist, and neo-colonial rant” made by a pro-France New Caledonian lawmaker.
Nicolas Metzdorf, a French politician from New Caledonia and a member of France’s National Assembly, made a social media post over the weekend calling out Vanuatu for “denouncing French sovereignty over Matthew and Hunter Islands at the UN”.
In a two-page letter intended to be satarical, Metzdorf mocks and ridicules Vanuatu’s economy, passport scheme and political ties with China, and shares a map depicting a redrafting of borders between Vanuatu and the French territory.
Metzdorf also addresses Vanuatu PM Jotham Napat as leading the “Condominium of the New Hebrides” – Vanuatu’s colonial-era name.
“Because of its insulting, neo-colonial and mocking tone towards Vanuatu as a sovereign nation, the Public Relations Officer has taken the liberty to respond, as the Government of Vanuatu will not, and should never stoop so low as to dignify such correspondence with a formal Prime Ministerial reply,” Vanuatu’s Ministry of the Prime Minister said in a statement.
“The letter should be condemned in the strongest terms for what it is: a shameful, racist, and neo-colonial rant that has no place in the 21st century.”
The statement said Vanuatu is not the New Hebrides, Matthew and Hunter islands are not France’s, and Metzdorf’s offer “is exactly what colonialism always was”.
“Do not lecture us about financial transparency, governance or humanitarian aid. This is coming from a deputy of a territory whose own financial mismanagement and corruption is well known, where after 170 years of colonisation, real people of [New Caledonia] still do not own their own country,” it read.
“You send us aid after a cyclone that your climate policies helped make worse, and then you expect gratitude and obedience.
“Vanuatu is a sovereign nation. We are not a French province. We are not an experiment for you to study. We are not a rock for your companies to exploit.”
The statement said Metzdorf’s letter should be condemned by Frace and should be forwarded to the Pacific Islands Forum and to the United Nations Special Committee on Decolonization as evidence of the colonial mindset that still exists within the French legislature.
