Justice for Fanywa
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by
admin
About the Campaign
A monument dedicated to Christopher Columbus in Martinique has been renamed in honour of the indigenous people after a successful protest. The struggle however is far from over for Fanywa Afua, as the courts have elected to punish the local activist for the very actions she took to bring about the historic change, on the Caribbean island.
In 2017 Fanywa, whose given name is Sandrine Toussay, overcame threats and bullying from onlookers to spray paint a plaque at the center of a large monument that glorified the 15th century Genovese navigator, en-slaver and mass murderer, which had been erected in the town of Carbet two years earlier, as a tourist attraction. In response to this courageous action and in light of the fact that monuments to Columbus are increasingly seen across the world as celebrating genocide, the City Council agreed to launch a public consultation.
Discussions quickly revealed the abject vulgarity of venerating the criminal at the scene of his crimes. The so-called “discovery of the New World” was exposed as an invasion and occupation of the Caribbean featuring one of the most brutal regimes of terror in all of known human history and something that should never be the subject of public reverential monuments. In December 2018 the Council passed a decree renaming the, “Place du débarquement de Christophe Colomb” the “Place du Mémorial du peuple Amérindien.”
It is deplorable that the legal machinery did not stop moving against the activist/heroine at this point. On the morning of June 17th 2019, the Cross Rhodes Freedom Project was present in Fort de France to lend support to Fanywa as the courts elected to fine her for defacing a public monument and refusing to submit to finger prints. Another charge of assaulting a police officer stemming from an interrogation by the Gendarmerie Nationale , in which eye witness accounts indicate that she was the one assaulted, was drooped.
Fanywa has courageously resolved not to pay the fine or to allow others to pay it for her. She has refused to appeal the case declaring that she is prepared to go to jail on the principle that “Caribbean people have already paid enough for the crimes committed by Christopher Columbus.” Her case is made all the more obscene by the fact that France has legislation providing penalties of up to €45,000 and a year in jail for those found guilty of denying, or “minimising” the crime of genocide which logically implies penalizing those who erect monuments to Columbus rather than those who take them down.
The Cross Rhodes freedom Project (CRFP) believes that Caribbean people should not have to accept reverential monuments to the likes of Christopher Columbus in the 21st century the organization has launched this petition calling on the relevant authorities in both Martinique and France to end this miscarriage of justice and expunge all charges from Fanywa’s record.