Colonized people are 100 times more likely to die in California, the world’s fifth largest economy, than in Oceania where the mean Gross Domestic Product ranks 183rd globally. Out of California’s population of 39.5 million, slightly below the Oceania population of 42.67 million, 3,700 have died from COVID-19. The COVID-19 death toll in the Pacific Islands is 121 lives.
Excluding Australia and Hawaii, the population of Oceania is about 21 million. Out of these countries, all of the deaths have been in New Zealand where 21 of the 1,504 people infected with the COVID-19 colonialvirus have died and 1,461 have recovered.
There have been no cases reported in Samoa or Tonga. Of the 104 cases reported in French Polynesia, Fiji, New Caledonia and Papua New Guinea, all but three have recovered and there have been no deaths.
More Pacific Islanders have died from COVID-19 in California than in all of Oceania, including Australia where the Black Indigenous population made up less than one percent of the infections.
With 317,000 residents, Pacific Islanders comprise less than one percent of California. As of May 22, 28 Pacific Islanders had died from COVID-19-related symptoms in California. According to Josie Huang of the LA News Journal, The Pacific Islander death rate of 71 per 100,000 people is 12 times the rate of whites in Los Angeles County.
Other Pacific states have similar rates for Pacific Islanders including Washington, Oregon and Utah. There has even been a large outbreak in the Marshall Island community in Arkansas where many people work in the meat industry.
For Pacific Islanders, self-determination is the cure
Some sectors of white power have labeled COVID-19 the “Chinese Virus” but its spread internationally has been linked to a parasitic colonial tourist system. The outbreak in the United States has been linked to Italy, not China. The students in San Diego, California who tested positive returned from study abroad programs in Italy and other areas of Europe, not China.
Before any of the Western industrial nations, the people of Samoa moved to protect their communities when the novel coronavirus outbreak became global news.
Pacific Islanders are not any more protected from health issues in Oceania than in the U.S. The Pacific has the highest level of Type 2 Diabetes globally. In 2009, the Black Indigenous people of Australia suffered greatly from H1N1. In 2019, a measles outbreak infected 6,000 of the 200,000 people and killed 83 people, mainly children.
It is because of this history that their communities took COVID-19 seriously and implemented preventive measures. People of the Pacific Islands have protected their communities by halting the deeply parasitic tourism industry that has rendered the entire region as the global elite’s playground for 500 years.
Pacific Islanders in the United States are aware of their contradictions.
In California, liberal politicians have applauded themselves and claimed victory, spiking the ball on the 20-yard line. Cities are moving towards reopening.
Pacific Islanders have used their churches and community centers to raise consciousness and increase testing.
In clear analysis of the health issues that result from the colonial contradictions, Dr. Raynald Samoa, an endocrinologist and professor at City of Hope hospital in Duarte, California notes: “The pandemic is unmasking the current conditions of poor health access and lower socioeconomic conditions.”
Organize The People’s War and Uhuru Movement in the Pacific Islander community
The colonialism and slavery of the Pacific Islands is linked to the colonialism and slavery of Africa and the Americas.
These disparities prove the correctness of the African Internationalist teachings of Chairman Omali Yeshitela of the African People’s Socialist Party and African Internationalism.
Pacific Islanders are included in the African nation. Descendants of early migrants of Africa, Chairman Omali writes that the people of the Pacific Islands “experience a sense of sameness, a subjective connection to Africa, mainly because of skin color that helps to define their imperialist-inspired impoverished and oppressed state of existence.”
As Chairman Omali Yeshitela noted in the 1984 inauguration of the African People’s Free Health Clinic, the problem Africans face with health care is not a medical problem but a political and economic problem. The indigenous people of the Pacific Islands learned from previous outbreaks and have protected their communities from the spread of the coronavirus.
As in Africa, it is clear that a COVID-19 outbreak in the Pacific Islands would have devastating effects. This is why the fact that Oceania communities have attacked the virus at its colonial core cannot go overstated.
This also underscores the need for Africans and Pacific Islanders to unite in the United States where they live in the same communities, experience the same conditions and have maintained close cultural ties.
Africans and Pacific Islanders, join The People’s War!
Build InPDUM branches, Build African Charge Genocide (ACG) Working Groups, Charge the U.S. with Genocide against African, Indigenous and all colonized people. Visit InPDUM.org more more info and to get involved and sign the Africans Charge Genocide petition at AfricansChargeGenocide.org.
Build Project Black Ankh! Visit DevelopmentForAfrica.org/Healthcare for more info and to get involved.
Fight The People’s War!
