NOUMEA (Oceania Flash) – Over 300 women, unions and non government organizations representatives took to the streets of New Caledonia’s capital, Noumea, on Friday to protest against the recent dissemination of a racist Internet montage picture portraying a Kanak woman with a pasted monkey face, RFO reports at the week end.
The discovery of the digital document on the internal network of local branch of Caisse d’Epargne bank has last week sparked an intense controversy in the French Pacific territory.
During a sit-in in front of the bank’s Noumea headquarters, protesters had displayed banners that could read “no to anti-Kanak racism” and “no to anti-women racism.”
Kanak and Exploited Workers Union, USTKE, was one of the bodies mobilizing the protest.
Its women’s affairs leader, Marie-Pierre Goyetche, said although this sort of document could be seen as “the expression of an ordinary racism, we cannot remain silent on this sort of provocation.”
Caisse d’Epargne New Caledonia’s General Manager Jean-Pierre Flotat, who received a delegation in his office during the sit-in, assured those of his employees who had already been identified as being at the source of the dissemination would be “severely disciplined.”
