Jean Chesneaux: Frenchman with a ‘different’ view of the Pacific

Press, 6 February 1986, Page 17

Jean Chesneaux: Frenchman with a ‘different’ view of the Pacific

By

MAVIS AIREY

Professor Jean Chesneaux is no stranger to prisons. Like many Frenchmen, he is passionately concerned for the dignity of his country, but he admits his views on how that dignity is best upheld rarely coincide with those of the establishment. . As a student, he was imprisoned for distributing antiNazi pamphlets during the German occupation. He supported the Algerians in their struggle against France. He was active in the radical movement of May 1968 in Paris and, more recently, in the 10-year struggle of the farmers of Larzac in Southern France against army plans to turn their land into a military camp. A former professor of East Asian history at the Sorbonne, he has also had a lifelong interest in Asia and the Pacific. His sympathy for the indigenous people of the region led him to campaign for the rights of the peoples of Indo-China and Vietnam when they were under French control, and for recognition of the Republic of China. He has for many years been criticial of French tests in the Pacific and of the French role in New Caledonia. He is chairman of a Kanak support and information group in Paris. Professor Chesneaux is touring New Zealand with sponsorship from the Foundation for Peace Studies to collect information and ideas he hopes will contribute to a better understanding by the French people of the problems of the Pacific. Together with a group of other prominent French citizens, he is sponsoring a symposium on “The Pacific: Myths and Realities” to be held

in Paris in May. He has also taken the opportunity to express what he describes as “a different French approach to the Pacific. The Rainbow Warrior blasting was definitely a signal that something was wrong with French policy in the South Pacific,” he says.

He tried to see the French agent, Dominique Prieur, during his visit to Christchurch. “I wanted to express my concern as a French citizen. I felt that dialogue in good faith would be helpful between a person like her and people like me who are just as concerned as her with the dignity of France but have reached a completely different conclusion about how this should be approached.

But prison rules are strict: visits are allowed only on Saturdays and by then he would have left for Wellington. Reflecting on prison life, he found himself thinking of the time he spent in prison in Vietnam, where conditions were so very different. During the Vietnamese rebellion against the French, fellow sympathisers with the Vietnamese cause arranged for him to visit the guerilla areas. “I

wanted to tell the Vietnamese people that many French people were saying they had a right to independence. It was a gesture of goodwill.” But this was not how the authorities viewed it when he was caught on his way back to Saigon by a French military patrol. He would have been tried for high treason, he believes, had the case not been so complicated.

To try him for complicity with a foreign state would have involved some recognition of Vietnam as an independent country, so he was only held in custody, never sentenced. “There were about 3000 Vietnamese in the prison,” he recalls. “I was privileged: I had, by their standards, proper food and a proper cell. “But practically every day some prisoners were shot. The whole prison sang farewell songs to them. It was very moving.” He does not consider himself a

pacifist in the traditional AngloSaxon sense. For 21 years he was a member of the French Communist Party, and pinned great hopes on “The Revolution.” He left the party in 1968, at the time of the invasion of Czechoslovakia, after years of increasing disenchantment with Commuunist Party policies. He adopted the philosophy of the May 1968 movement, which he has seen develop into a “broad-sided movement with the same type of approach as the Values Party here and the Greens in Germany.” He describes it as party bypassing the political establishment, concerned with issues that used not to be regarded as political, but which affect our Western society at large; issues such as the role of women, the danger of being too reliant on technology, concern for the environment, solidarity with the destitute masses of the Third World, and peace.

His dissatisfaction with the state of society has not changed since he was a member of the Communist Party, he says, but he is no longer convinced that revolution is the ultimate solution. One factor has been the “complete failure” of the socialist states. “They are not socialist, they are tyrannies — Russia, Cuba, even Vietnam, I’m sorry to say.” For him, peace now means

non-alignment "You can’t change society from a sudden burst of violence,” he maintains. "Sometimes violence is necessay — I can understand it in Nicaragua — but the most important factor is to change the whole pattern of society from the grass roots, not just the political structure and management of the economy.” He does not see violence as the solution to the situation in New Caledonia. "I believe a minority of white settlers are just dreaming of Kanak bashing, but many are more realistic. I am hopeful they will realise it is in their interests to accommodate the Kanaks. “I don’t stand for denial of the rights of the white settlers. But many have been there for generations, and I wish they were less Paris centred. “They have their vacations in Queensland, their money in Sydney, they eat New Zealand butter. As far as real life is concerned they are already living in the Pacific, so it is schizophrenic to have an ideology believing you are part of France. “Their primary ties should be with the Pacific, and the sooner they solve this contradiction, the sooner they will be able to accommodate the Kanaks.”

Imprisoned in Vietnam