The riots continued during the night of Tuesday May 14 to Wednesday May 15 in New Caledonia, causing the shooting death of one person, announced the High Commissioner of the Republic, Louis Le Franc. “Of the three injured admitted to the emergency room, one died, the victim of a gunshot. Not from a shot by the police or the gendarmerie, but from someone who certainly wanted to defend themselves,” he declared to the press, without giving other details.
“I let you imagine what will happen if militias start shooting at armed people,” continued Mr. Le Franc, deploring a situation that he described as “insurrectional” in the archipelago. “The time must be for appeasement (…), the call for calm is imperative,” insisted the state representative. The high commissioner also reported several “exchanges of buckshot between rioters and civil defense groups in Nouméa and Pata” and an “attempted intrusion into the [gendarmerie] brigade of Saint-Michel “.
The High Commission of the Republic announced, Wednesday in a new report, a total of 140 arrests in the metropolitan area of ??Nouméa alone. In view of the clashes that occurred during the night, schools “will remain closed until further notice”, announced the vice-rectorate of New Caledonia in the morning. La Tontouta airport remains closed to commercial flights for the moment. Since Monday, the French territory in the South Pacific has been experiencing its most serious violence since the 1980s.
New acts of vandalism
In the Nouméa metropolitan area, the curfew decreed by the High Commissioner of the Republic came into force on Tuesday at 6 p.m. local time (9 a.m. in France). But as night fell, acts of vandalism resumed. Several public infrastructures in the capital burned, noted a correspondent from Agence France-Presse (AFP). Damaged or charred cars were also visible everywhere in the streets, while trucks carrying mobile gendarmes, among other law enforcement agencies, crisscrossed the city.
On Wednesday morning, food shortages, due to lack of supplies to businesses, were glaring, leading to very long queues in front of stores. Some in Nouméa were stormed, others were almost empty, having no more bread or rice to sell, noted the AFP correspondent. In Tuband, a district of Nouméa, residents patrolled armed with sticks or baseball bats, some wearing hoods.
“A collective movement involving around fifty detainees”, which began on the night of Tuesday to Wednesday in the Camp-Est prison in Nouméa, was also “controlled” by the police, according to the Chancellery. “More than 70 police officers and gendarmes were injured,” said the Minister of the Interior and Overseas Territories, Gérald Darmanin, during questions to the government in the National Assembly. And “80 business leaders saw their production tools burned or destroyed,” he said.
The separatists play appeasement
In a letter sent Wednesday to Caledonian representatives after the Assembly vote, Emmanuel Macron condemned the “undignified and unacceptable nature” of the violence and called on the parties to “calm”.
On site, the separatists also denounced the violence, and called for “appeasement” while condemning the vote of the deputies. Speaking in a press release of “exactions” that it “regrets and wishes to denounce”, the Kanak and Socialist National Liberation Front (FLNKS) said “wishes for the withdrawal” of the government text “in order to preserve the conditions to obtain a global political agreement between Caledonian officials and the French State. However, having “not the objective of starving and aggravating the already difficult social and economic situation of families”, the independence movement called “for the lifting of roadblocks to allow [the] free access of the population to products, services and basic needs”.
The president of the Caledonian Union (independence) Daniel Goa asked the youth to “go home” and condemned looting and abuses. “The unrest of the last twenty-four hours reveals the determination of our young people to no longer let France do it,” he commented.
In front of the press, the pro-independence president of the territory’s government, Louis Mapou, “took note” of the reform voted in Paris but deplored an “approach which heavily impacts our ability to conduct the affairs of New Caledonia”.
“We appeal for calm,” continued Louis Mapou. “The mobilizations must take place within a framework,” continued the president of the customary senate, Victor Gogny. “For two days we have left this framework and the country is on fire. We need to come back to this framework and let everything calm down. »
In a letter addressed to the Head of State, the main figure of the non-independence camp, the former Secretary of State Sonia Backès, for her part asked the Head of State to declare a state of emergency , “in particular by engaging the army alongside the police and gendarmerie forces.” “We are in a state of civil war,” she lamented.
In fear of getting bogged down, elements of the GIGN, the RAID (its equivalent for the police), four squadrons of mobile gendarmes and two sections of the CRS 8, a unit specializing in the fight against urban violence, were mobilized . Reinforcements were being transported to the archipelago, announced Gérald Darmanin.
The government under fire
The Prime Minister, Gabriel Attal, called on Tuesday, during questions to the government, the political leaders of New Caledonia to “grasp [the] outstretched hand” of dialogue, confirming that the Congress of Parliament would not meet “immediately” after the vote on the constitutional bill criticized by the separatists, leaving an interval for discussions. “The important thing is appeasement. The important thing is dialogue. The important thing is to build a common, political and global solution,” he added.
The government is strongly criticized for its method in New Caledonia. “Rulers without understanding the history of the peoples of Grande Terre and the Loyalty Islands played with matches while despising the Kanaks (…) Caledonia Kanaky is on fire,” the leader of La France Insoumise (LFI), Jean-Luc Mélenchon.
“Nothing was unpredictable,” said the head of the LFI deputies, Mathilde Panot, during the question session to the government in the Assembly, also pointing to “an undeniable colonial fact” and judging that “bad decisions are accumulated since Edouard Philippe no longer managed the file”.
“The way in which France behaves with its former colonies is humiliating and degrading so yes, it provokes somewhat knee-jerk reactions,” said the national secretary of the Ecologists, Marine Tondelier, on Franceinfo.
Former Prime Minister Edouard Philippe sounded the alarm at the beginning of May, as did his predecessors Manuel Valls and Jean-Marc Ayrault, expressing concern, in comments reported by Le Monde, about the lack of recovery on the subject. by Matignon, historically responsible for the Caledonian file. But, after the no to independence during the referendums of 2018, 2020 and 2021, the file found itself on the table of the Minister of the Interior, Gérald Darmanin, targeted by criticism of the separatists despite seven trips to the island in recent months.
To calm the situation, several parliamentarians are calling for the creation of a new “dialogue mission” of which Gabriel Attal would be the “guarantor”. A request already defended in a transpartisan manner during the debates in the Senate at the end of March, where the left denounced the “coup de force” of a reform perceived as “a chopping block” locally.