A chocolate factory and a soda bottling plant burned down. Molotov cocktails were thrown at police and prisoners took guards hostage. Five people dead. As protests against French control raged this week in New Caledonia, the South Pacific archipelago saw some of the most intense violence since a civil war decades ago.
“I’m in shock, I can’t move,” Lizzie Carboni, a writer who lives in Nouméa, the capital, said by telephone as the fourth night of protests began on Thursday. When she checked on her parents, Carboni said her mother told her: “We never wanted to talk to you about what happened in 1984, but it’s happening again.” »
France annexed New Caledonia, located about 900 miles off the east coast of Australia, in 1853. It built a penal colony and, over time, shipped more foreigners to exploit the mines of New Caledonia. vast reserves of nickel. This ultimately made the indigenous Kanaks a minority in their own territory.
The most serious challenge to French rule occurred in the 1980s, when French troops were ordered to quell a violent uprising. Dozens of people died in the clashes that followed. To end the fighting, French authorities agreed to put New Caledonia on the path to independence.
But the situation has changed in France in recent years with the intensification of struggles for influence between the United States and China for influence in the Pacific. French officials fear that China could gain influence in an independent New Caledonia, just as it has sought to do in other countries in the South. Pacific countries like Vanuatu and the Solomon Islands.
French President Emmanuel Macron visited New Caledonia last July and outlined his vision for the Pacific outpost.
“New Caledonia is French because it chose to remain French,” Mr. Macron told a crowd of independence opponents. ” No return. No stuttering.
Four decades after the end of the civil war, independence sentiment and resentment against French settlers remain strong in New Caledonia, now semi-autonomous.
In the 1980s, France agreed to hold a referendum on independence within ten years – a bet that a growing Kanak middle class would choose to remain French. As the new century dawned, the vote was postponed for two more decades. But French authorities agreed to freeze the electoral rolls so that new arrivals to New Caledonia, seen as more likely to support maintaining French rule, would not influence the vote. France also agreed to hold three referendums instead of one, a nod to the possibility of violent protests.
In the first, held in 2018, the pro-independence camp performed surprisingly strongly, garnering 43% of the vote despite fears that New Caledonia’s beleaguered nickel-dependent economy could not survive without financial aid. from France. Two years later, 47 percent voted for independence.
The third and final referendum took place after the coronavirus pandemic, which devastated many Kanak communities. Local mourning customs prohibit political activity and indigenous leaders urged Mr. Macron to delay the 2021 vote. When it went ahead as planned, many Kanaks boycotted it in protest and the vote was postponed. been massively in favor of remaining in France.
Independence leaders have called for a new vote, but negotiations with French authorities have reached an impasse. And Mr. Macron’s government has backed an amendment to the French Constitution that would allow some people who have lived in New Caledonia since 1998 to vote in the territory, calling it progress toward full democracy.
While pro-independence sentiment is long-standing in New Caledonia, the latest series of protests began on May 4 with a commemoration of the death of Jean-Marie Tjibaou, a Kanak leader assassinated by a disgruntled nationalist after negotiating an end to the war civil. war. The protests have spread to New Caledonia’s 140 islands, home to around 270,000 people.
In an interview last year, Mr. Tjibaou’s son, Joël Tjibaou, said France did not understand the depth of feeling in the country.
“When you see our country, you understand why we are fighting for independence,” he said. “White people came here, stole our land, stole our customs, don’t respect us.”
On Monday, the lower house of the French Parliament debated the constitutional amendment, which has already been adopted by the Senate. When it became clear that the proposal would pass, protests in New Caledonia, notably those in Nouméa, turned violent, according to Adrian Muckle, who teaches history at Victoria University of Wellington in New Zealand.
“We are in a state of civil war,” Sonia Backès, the territory’s most prominent anti-independence political figure, wrote to French President Emmanuel Macron on Wednesday. “Without massive and urgent intervention from the State, we will lose control of New Caledonia in the coming hours.”
Local authorities imposed a curfew, canceled international flights and mobilized 1,700 law enforcement officers. France has since deployed the army and is sending 1,000 additional police officers. The French government declared a state of emergency, placed 10 protest leaders under house arrest and banned the social media application TikTok in the territory.
Rioters killed a police officer and shot several others, according to French authorities. Another officer was accidentally shot and killed. At least 64 police officers were injured.
Authorities say calm has returned to Nouméa, but some residents say they are still afraid to go out.
“It’s too dangerous,” Fabrice Valette, who lives in the small town of Paita, north of Nouméa, with his partner and his one-year-old son, said on Friday. “We really don’t know how to get food, drinks or medicine. »
Many of the protesters appeared to be teenagers and young adults who concealed their identities with masks, three residents said in interviews. At roadblocks and in the streets, many demonstrators display the multicolored flag of Kanaky – as New Caledonia is called in the indigenous language – amid clouds of smoke coming from burned cars and buildings.
The organizer of the protests is a group called Field Action Coordination Cell, whose leaders have said they do not tolerate violence. Dominique Fochi, leader of the Paris-based group, warned that a French crackdown could backfire.
“We hope that sending additional resources there will not provide means of suppression, which would only make things worse,” he said.
The constitutional amendment must now be approved in a joint session of the French Parliament, scheduled for June.
On Friday, Roch Wamytan, president of the Caledonian Parliament, rejected Mr Macron’s requests for talks. He asked: “How can you discuss with the President of the French Republic in these conditions?
Nicolas Metzdorf, who represents New Caledonia in the French National Assembly, blamed the unrest on independence leaders. He recognized that there was a risk of a return to civil war.
Gérard Darmanin, the French interior minister, said Thursday that foreign interference from Azerbaijan had played a role in the unrest. (Relations between the two countries have been strained by France’s support for Armenia in its territorial dispute with Azerbaijan.)
Mr Darmanin did not provide details and Azerbaijan denied the allegation.
Some worry about escalating violence in a country where guns are plentiful – about one for every four people.
“Everyone has guns, so the situation can get worse very quickly,” said Mr. Valette, a resident of Paita. “I think it will be very difficult to unite people and form one country after this.”
Reporting on this story was supported in part by the Pulitzer Center.
