Three prison staff were taken hostage, a car dealership set ablaze, schools and public services closed, and protest marches marked rioting across New Caledonia.
Socialist-led pro-independence supporters vented their anger over moves by the French National Assembly to introduce voting changes. The movement is concerned it will favour those who are against independence.
Schools, public services offices and airports are closed, and there are long queues outside shopping centres as people panic buy, in scenes reminiscent of the pandemic.
More than 200 fires have been lit, with a Porsche and Audi dealership and carbonated drinks company Le Froid among the businesses set ablaze and totally destroyed.
Protests today, which took place under heavy police security, involved an estimated 9,000 people according to police, but up to 30,000 according to the organisers. This was part of a pro-independence operation dubbed “Ten Days for Kanaky.”
Roadblocks are in place, and authorities have imposed a curfew from 6 p.m. until 6 a.m. in an attempt to restore order.
The trouble has been brewing since May 10, when police in Saint Louis and Saint Michel were fired on as they were attempting to clear road blockages. No one was killed, but 35 gendarmes were reported injured by stones and gunshots. Over the weekend and through to Monday, explosions could still be heard in Saint Louis.
“These shootings were carried out with high-speed rifles, large calibre weapons, with all the risks that this implies,” he said. “This form of extreme violence, with live ammunition fired at gendarmes who guarantee the safety of Caledonians, will call for a response from the state ... and that is why we are here.”
He announced he had called for reinforcements from Paris to maintain law and order, including more police, its SWAT group GIGN (Gendarmerie National Intervention Group) and RAID (Research, Assistance, Intervention, Deterrence).The High Commissioner warned that if officers were targeted again they would consider themselves in a situation of “legitimate defence” and would retaliate.
“So I’m warning these young people... They should stop using weapons against gendarmes,” he said. “I don’t want to see dead people in New Caledonia, but everyone should take their responsibility.”
Independence Movement
Independence has long been a contentious issue in New Caledonia, with the population almost evenly divided.Three referenda have been held, all with the same question: “Do you want New Caledonia to achieve full sovereignty and become independent?”
On Nov. 4, 2018, the “No” vote won with 56.67 percent. By October 4, 2020, it had shrunk to 53.26 percent.
The following year what was to be the third and final plebiscite was held as the islands were in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic. On Dec. 12 that year, the “No” vote rose to 96.5 percent.
But the participation rate was less than 44 percent—far below the other two referenda, which exceeded 80 percent, because the indigenous Kanaks mostly boycotted it in protest.
The high death toll from the Delta strain led to a series of large-scale, traditional mourning rites throughout Noumea, prompting them to ask France to postpone the referendum, which it was legally allowed to do, but it refused.
For the French government and the non-separatists, three victories for “No” meant the majority of New Caledonians had chosen to remain in the Republic.
For the pro-independence movement, led by the pro-independence Kanak and Socialist National Liberation Front (FLNKS), however, the matter is far from settled. Last year, they brought a case before the International Court of Justice.
Opposition to Proposed Electoral Reform
At issue currently is a complex reform proposed by France that would affect New Caledonian elections by changing who has the right to vote.Since the constitution was revised in 2007, only people registered on the electoral roll at the time of the Nouméa Accord of 1998 and their children have had the right to vote. That favoured French immigrants—who had flooded the province in the 1970s due to the economic boom driven by nickel prices—over the Melanesian locals.
The new legislation proposes changing that to people who were born in New Caledonia or have been domiciled there for at least 10 years.
The government claims it would extend eligibility to 12,441 Kanaks who do not vote and 13,400 non-natives who have been residing in the territory for more than ten years. Separatists fear that would further alter the balance of power between those in favour of independence and those against it.
After long defending the outcome of the referenda and holding one-sided meetings with local loyalists, French President Emmanuel Macron has now announced that the Bill would be put on hold after its adoption by the National Assembly and that he wanted to meet all “New Caledonian partners” in Paris.
However, this hasn’t placated the independence movement, which wants the Assembly to entirely scrap the proposed law.
If the law does pass the Assembly, because it is a constitutional amendment, it will then go before a special meeting of the two parliamentary chambers at Versailles. It would then need to be ratified by three-fifths of the votes.
Just last week, a delegation of French MPs returned from a fact-finding mission in New Caledonia and expressed concerns at the situation there, referring to an “increasing number of demonstrations” and a “notoriously armed population.”
They quoted local statistics citing the current official number of legally licensed firearms as 64,000, usually high-calibre weapons used for hunting, sports, and leisure activities.
“If we add to those the illegally obtained weapons, the official estimate is about 100,000 weapons in circulation,” the MPs wrote.
The territory’s population is around 268,500.
New Zealand’s Foreign Affairs Minister Winston Peters, who is on a five-country Pacific mission this week, has cancelled his visit to New Caledonia due to the unrest.
