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The Baku Initiative Group condemned the violation of the principles of the Olympic Games at the Olympics in Paris, Trend reports via the group's relevant statement, Azernews reports.

The Olympic Charter states that "the goal of the Olympic movement is to direct sport towards the harmonious development of humanity in order to promote a peaceful society that respects human dignity."

While President Emmanuel Macron and his Government present the 2024 Paris Olympics as a "moment of peace and hope," France's colonial and neocolonial policies tell a different story.

According to information obtained from representatives of political parties and movements struggling for independence in Polynesia, Corsica, Melanesia, the Caribbean, and the Antilles, there have been reports of discrimination in employment sectors and access to housing, as well as exploitation of natural resources and mass immigration organized under the French Government's auspices.

We would like to draw your attention to several issues that are entirely contrary to the spirit of the Olympics:

- Implementation of a weak economic development strategy benefiting French monopolists in the relevant territories: excessive food dependency (over 80% of food products come from France), high cost of living, poverty (50% of the population in French Guiana lives below the poverty line), and massive unemployment leading to various forms of unrest (violence, arms and drug trafficking) — all of which seriously endanger the future of these regions;
- Non-ratification of the 1989 Convention on Indigenous and Tribal Peoples (No. 169) (French Guiana);

- Establishment of French cultural hegemony and assimilation policies that push endangered local languages to the background and impose French educational programs on local children, which do not align with their wishes concerning their own history, geography, culture, or future;

- Occupation of lands (90% of the land in French Guiana is owned by the French state), control over millions of km² of exclusive economic zones (France is the world's second-largest maritime power with an EEZ of 11 million km²), and deportation policies affecting the youth of indigenous peoples in France leading to unprecedented demographic crises in Guadeloupe and Martinique and significant plundering of natural resources;

- Establishment of a two-tier colonial justice system that treats all resistance as criminal and protects corrupt officials (e.g., arrests of young people fighting against chlorodecone poisoning and land theft in Martinique and Guadeloupe, application of exceptional jurisdictions to Corsicans who do not recognize this status and unequal treatment, and the arrest of Mr. Herve Pinton, President of the Collective Justice Martinique Association);

- Empty chair policy after Polynesia was added to the list of countries to be re-decolonized;

- Refusal to allow local populations to participate in the Olympic Games under their own national flags;

- Utilization of territories against the will of local peoples by colonial Western states, especially in the Indo-Pacific zone (Polynesia, New Caledonia), the Caribbean-American zone, and Corsica (Solenzara base), for military preparedness as geostrategic military bases (French Guiana, Martinique, Guadeloupe);

- Non-compliance with the decolonization process required by the Nouméa Accord, resulting in an illegal referendum and the creation of a minority situation for the Kanak people on their own land, as well as numerous arrests and deportations of CCAT (Territorial Coordination Network) activists away from their homes and families.

Considering the above, we pose rhetorical and simple questions:

Can the Olympics, which are supposed to be a "moment of peace and hope" in the 21st century, be held in a country that subjugates peoples?

Can the host country of the Olympic Games not address the restrictions on freedom imposed on the Kanak people and release political prisoners? They too have the right to experience this "moment of peace" in their own homes, together with their young children.

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