A Constitutional Reform Bill dedicated to New Caledonia was rejected on Thursday by the French National Assembly (Lower House) without debate, by a gathering of opposition parties by a score of 190 to 107.

The rejection came in the form of the endorsement of a preliminary Bill filed by a left wing opposition, Emmanuel Tjibaou, on behalf of the GDR group (Gauche démocrate et républicaine).

The “prior rejection motion” means that if the rejection motion is adopted, then it closes the current sitting on the matter and the Bill would then have to come back to the other House of Parliament, the Senate, following the “shuttle” rule.

• READ MORE: Thousands take to Nouméa streets ahead of French Parliament debate on New Caledonia
• Other Kanaky New Caledonia reports

Tjibaou, who is an indigenous Kanak pro-independence leader, is one of the two MPs representing New Caledonia in the Assembly.

The text was originally tabled for a vote to be held on 1 April 2026, but this was later delayed by one day, following an announcement by Speaker Yaël Braun-Pivet.

However, on Thursday, during a sitting that only debated motives from the government and its Minister for Overseas Naïma Moutchou, the rapporteur Philippe Gosselin and representatives from all parties present, it quickly became clear that most of the opposition parties were going to support the rejection motion, and vote against the text without further debate.

The sitting only lasted 01 hour 40 minutes.

Tjibaou, speaking in support of his rejection motion, stressed that the Constitutional Bill, in his view, was “not consensual”, because his party, the FLNKS (Kanak and Socialist National Liberation Front) was opposed to the text and that the Bill “did not seek to reach a compromise” between all stakeholders.

Tjibaou said this was in contradiction to the previous Matignon-Oudinot (1988) and Nouméa Accord (1998), which initiated a decolonisation process for New Caledonia.

The present Constitutional Bill derives from talks held in July 2025 and January 2026 between New Caledonia political stakeholders and the French government. This was on two occasions — in the small city of Bougival in July 2025 and later in January 2026 in Paris, at the French Presidential palace of Élysée, and the French ministry of Overseas territories in Rue Oudinot.

Hence the name of Bougival-Élysée-Oudinot (BEO) for a text and an expanded project.

The project also envisions the creation of a “State of New Caledonia”, with a correlated “New Caledonia Nationality” available to people who are already French citizens.

Other participating parties pro-France and pro-independence (two pro-independence members of FLNKS) have since split to create their own “UNI” (Union Nationale pour l’Indépendance).

They have maintained their commitment to the BEO process, including their legislative adaptation (in the form of a Constitutional Amendment and an “organic Law”, which would de facto become New Caledonia’s constitution).

Tjibaou: ‘a logic of assimilation’
But the BEO text, in August 2025, was unequivocally opposed by the FLNKS, one of the main components of the pro-independence movement.

The FLNKS later explained it saw these, as well as a planned process of transfer of more powers from Paris to Nouméa, was, in their view, just a “lure” of independence.

Tjibaou said on Thursday the text was at best “symbolic”.

“To us, this amounts to a perennial status within France… It’s a logic of assimilation… It cannot be compared to a decolonisation in accordance with the UN resolutions and the international law”, he told MPs.

He called on local elections to be held sooner than later, currently no later than 28 June 2026.

Tjibaou said it was ironic that “a pro-independence” should tell the Minister that “when our Kanak country is damaged, it is also France that is damaged”… Because “when you make decisions that are leading us to chaos, you are also jeopardising France’s place in the Pacific”, he said at the tribune.

Moutchou: ‘There is no other agreement’
Moutchou, in her reply, said the rejection of the Bill would have repercussions on New Caledonians’ everyday life.

She stressed what New Caledonians needed, after the riots of May 2024 and a severe economic downfall since, was “visibility”, especially on the part of economic stakeholders who needed stability in order to restore confidence and investment.

“There is no other agreement. The Bougival process was approved by 5 of the 6 political parties of New Caledonia.

“Some are mentioning the absence of FLNKS. I’ve always maintained the principles of transparency, dialogue information for all. And the door was never closed”, she said.

“And the politics of the empty chair cannot dictate the future of a territory.

“So what do we do? How much longer do we have to wait… To be responsible, we move on with those who are here… Consensus does not mean unanimity, consensus is not perfection, it’s a point of equilibrium”, she replied to Tjibaou.

“And while we have this text that is not perfect, but opens a way, those who say, ‘we will wait and see later’ risk bringing us back to a confrontational situation”.

Metzdorf’s disappointment
The other MP for New Caledonia, pro-France Nicolas Metzdorf, also took to the tribune to express disappointment.

“I don’t know what more we should do. After the 2024 riots, you asked us to find a political agreement. We did this and we made big concessions, we, the non-independentists. We did this for the good of New Caledonia.

“Then you said we had to meet again to further clarify… On Kanak identity and the self-determination process. So now we are back with two political agreements.”

“And now you are sending us back home without a debate… You know, New Caledonia may be far from Paris, but tonight, many are watching this debate on TV and they’re thinking ‘What will happen to us?”

“Many have lost their home, their work, but even worse, they have lost hope to live in peace in New Caledonia”.

“What I am asking (MPs) today is just to have the common decency to debate on this (Bill)… These agreements are being supported by the majority of New Caledonia’s political class (including the moderate pro-independence parties within the Union Nationale pour l’Indépendance), but also by the economic and business sector.”

“I’m asking for a vote on these accords and I’m asking to organise a consultation of New Caledonia’s people, because at the end of the day, we are the only legitimate ones to decide on our future.”

What now?
Following the rejection vote on Thursday, French Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu said all parties that had signed the Bougival-Elysée-Oudinot Accord would meet “next week”, because this is what was agreed in case of a deadlock.

Commenting on future options, Metzdorf told French media in Paris that “all options are now on the table”.

After the National Assembly’s rejection, another possibility was to bring the text back to the Upper House (the Senate).

Another option (that was almost implemented a few months ago, but later abandoned) would be to bring back a process of “consultation” directly in New Caledonia in the form of a de facto referendum for or against the Bougival process.

But the sensitive issue of who is eligible to vote at local elections remains for the looming provincial elections (which would now have to be held no later than 28 June 2026).

Pro-France parties are still determined to have those restrictions changed to allow the “frozen” electoral roll to be more open, if not fully “unfrozen”.

This could be the subject of separate negotiations between New Caledonia’s opposing parties in the coming days.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

New Caledonia has imposed a 50-year ban on deep-sea mining across its entire maritime zone in a rare and sweeping move that places the French Pacific territory among the most restricted exploration areas on the planet’s waters.

The law blocks commercial exploration, prospecting and mining of mineral resources that sits within Kanaky New Caledonia’s exclusive economic zone.

Nauru and the Cook Islands have already publicly expressed support for seabed exploration.

• READ MORE: Cook Islands environment group calls on govt to condemn Trump’s seabed mining order
• Other seabed mining reports

Sovereign island states discussed the issue earlier this year during last year’s Pacific Islands Forum, but no joint position has yet been agreed on.

Only non-invasive, scientific research will be permitted across New Caledonia’s surrounding maritime zone that covers 1.3 million sq km.

Lawmakers in the New Caledonian territorial Congress adopted a moratorium following broad support mostly from Kanak-aligned political parties.

“Rather than giving in to the logic of immediate profit, New Caledonia can choose to be pioneers in ocean protection,” Jérémie Katidjo Monnier, the local government member responsible for the issue, told Congress.

A ‘strategic lever’
“It is a strategic lever to assert our environmental sovereignty in the face of the multinationals and a strong signal of commitment to future generations.”

New Caledonia’s location has been a global hotspot for marine biodiversity.

Its waters are home to nearly one-third of the world’s remaining pristine coral reefs that account for 1.5 percent of reefs worldwide.

Environmental supporters of the new law argue that deep-sea mining could cause a serious and irreversible harm to its fragile marine ecosystems.

But the pro-French, anti-independence parties, including Caledonian Republicans, Caledonian People’s Movement, Générations NC, Renaissance and the Caledonian Republican Movement all planned to abstain from the vote the politically conservative bloc knew they could not win.

The Loyalists coalition argued that the decision clashed with the territory’s “broader economic goals” and the measure was “too rigid”, describing its legal basis as “largely disproportionate”.

“All our political action on the nickel question is directed toward more exploitation and here we are presenting ourselves as defenders of the environment for deep-sea beds we’ve never even seen,” Renaissance MP Nicolas Metzdorf said.

Ambassador’s support
But France’s Ambassador for Maritime Affairs, Olivier Poivre d’Arvor, had already asserted “the deep sea is not for sale” and that the high seas “belong to no one”, appearing to back the policy led by pro-independence Kanak alliances.

The vote in New Caledonia also coincided with US President Donald Trump signing a decree a week earlier authorising deep-sea mining in international waters.

“No state has the right to unilaterally exploit the mineral resources of the area outside the legal framework established by UNCLOS,” said the head of the International Seabed Authority (ISA), Leticia Carvalho, in a statement referring back to the United Nations’ Convention on the Law of the Sea.

Republished from the National Indigenous Times.

New Overseas Minister Manuel Valls, who was appointed yesterday as part of the new French government of Prime Minister François Bayrou, intends to tackle New Caledonia’s numerous issues in the spirit of dialogue of former Socialist Prime Minister Michel Rocard.

Rocard is credited as the main French negotiator in talks between pro-France and pro-independence leaders that led in 1988 to the “Matignon-Oudinot” agreements that put an end to half a decade of quasi-civil war.

At the time 26 years old, Valls was a young adviser in Rocard’s team.

• READ MORE: Other Kanaky New Caledonia crisis reports

Valls said Rocard’s dialogue-based approach remained his “political DNA”.

36 years later, now 62, he told French national broadcasters France Inter and Outre-mer la Première that the two priorities were economic recovery (after destructive riots and damage in May 2024, estimated at some 2.2 billion Euros), as well as resuming political dialogue between local antagonistic parties concerning New Caledonia’s political future.

On the economic side, short-lived former Prime Minister Michel Barnier had committed up to one billion Euros in loans for New Caledonia’s recovery.

But France’s Parliament has not yet endorsed its 2025 budget, “which poses a number of problems regarding commitments made by (Barnier).

On the political talks that were expected to start a lead to a comprehensive and inclusive agreement between France, the pro-independence and pro-France camps, Valls said his approach was “dialogue” with the view of “going forward.”

“We don’t have much time (…) We have to find a common path”, he said, adding future political solutions should be “innovative” for the French Pacific archipelago.

Initial schedules for those talks to take place foresaw an agreement to arrive some time at the end of March 2025.

But no talks have started yet.

The Union Calédonienne (UC), one of the main components of the pro-independence Kanak and Socialist National Liberation Front (FLNKS), said nothing could happen until it holds its annual congress, sometime during the “second half of January 2025”.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

France’s Supreme Court has overturned a judgment imprisoning pretrial in mainland France Kanak pro-independence leader Christian Tein, who is widely regarded as a political prisoner, reports Libération.

Tein, who is head of the CCAT (Field Action Coordination Unit) in New Caledonia was in August elected president of the main pro-independence umbrella group Kanak and Socialist National Liberation Front (FLNKS).

He has been accused by the French authorities of “masterminding” the violence that spread across New Caledonia in May.

• READ MORE: Can New Caledonia’s first female congress president bridge the divide amid civil unrest?
• Kanak activist Christian Tein’s imprisonment reversed by France’s highest court
• Other Kanaky New Caledonia reports

The deadly unrest is estimated to have caused €2.2 billion (NZ$3.6 billion) in infrastructural damage, resulting in the destruction of nearly 800 businesses and about 20,000 job losses.

In this new legal twist, the jailing in mainland France of Tein and another activist, Steve Unë, was ruled “invalid” by the court.

“On Tuesday, October 22, the Court of Cassation in Paris overturned the July 5 ruling of the investigating chamber of the Noumea Court of Appeal, which had confirmed his detention in mainland France,” reports NC la 1ère TV.

“The Kanak independence activist, imprisoned in Mulhouse since June, will soon have to appear before a judge again who will decide his fate,” the report said.

Kanak activists’ cases reviewed
The court examined the appeal of five Kanak pro-independence activists — including Tein – who had challenged their detention in mainland France on suspicion of having played a role in the unrest in New Caledonia, reports RFI News.

This appeal considered in particular “the decision by the judges in Nouméa to exile the defendants without any adversarial debate, and the conditions under which the transfer was carried out,” according to civil rights attorney François Roux, one of the defendants’ lawyers.

“Many of them are fathers, cut off from their children,” the lawyer said.

The transfer of five activists to mainland France at the end of June was organised overnight using a specially chartered plane, according to Nouméa public prosecutor Yves Dupas, who has argued that it was necessary to continue the investigations “in a calm manner”.

Roux has denounced the “inhumane conditions” in which they were transported.

“They were strapped to their seats and handcuffed throughout the transfer, even to go to the toilet, and they were forbidden to speak,” he said.

Left-wing politicians in France have also slammed the conditions of detainees, who they underline were deported more than 17,000 km from their home for resisting “colonial oppression”.

Total of seven accused
A total of seven activists from the CCAT separatist coalition are accused by the French government of orchestrating deadly riots earlier this year and are currently incarcerated – the five in various prisons in France and two in New Caledonia itself.

They are under investigation for, among other things, complicity in attempted murder, organised gang theft with a weapon, organised gang destruction of another person’s property by a means dangerous to people and participation in a criminal association with a view to planning a crime.

Two CCAT activists who were initially imprisoned have since been placed under house arrest in mainland France.

Tein, born in 1968, has consistently denied having incited violence, claiming to be a political prisoner.

New Caledonia’s mothballed nickel plant in Koniambo (north of the main island of Grande Terre) has announced it has started mass sackings of some 1200 staff, despite efforts to identify a potential buyer.

Koniambo (KNS-Koniambo Nickel SAS) operations had already been mothballed after the announcement, in February, from its major financier, Anglo-Swiss giant Glencore, that it wanted out.

KNS is jointly owned by Glencore (49 percent) and New Caledonia’s Northern province (51 percent).

• READ MORE: Other nickel mine industry reports

While making the announcement, Glencore signalled a 6-month delay in the implementation of its decision, including payment of salaries.

The same timeframe was also supposed to be used to find potential buyers for the shares owned by Glencore.

Glencore said in February that keeping its stake in KNS was no longer sustainable.

It also recalled that the plant, in more than 10 years of existence and operation, had never made a profit.

Staggering debt
Over the past decade, KNS had accumulated a staggering 13.5 billion euros (NZ$25 billion) in debt.

As the August 31 deadline looms at the end of the six-month respite, what had been the symbol of New Caledonia’s Northern province empowerment and wealth “re-balancing” of the French Pacific archipelago’s provinces is now faced with a bleak reality.

Koniambo’s wealth relies on the Tiébaghi nickel massif, believed to hold about one quarter of New Caledonia’s nickel reserves.

Koniambo: a highly political symbol
KNS was born from a political and financial deal, including France — the “Bercy Accord” signed in December 1997, just months before the political Nouméa autonomy Accord was signed in 1998.

The deal was de facto enacting the transfer of the Tiébaghi massif to New Caledonia’s Northern province and its financial arm, the Société Minière du Sud Pacifique (SMSP).

It was the financial translation of the will to restore some balance between the affluent Southern Province and the less favoured Northern Province of New Caledonia, mostly populated by the indigenous Kanak community.

Since the Koniambo project and its construction started, the new activity has had a stimulating effect on the whole region, especially in the small towns of Voh, Koné and Pouembout.

The number of local companies increased, as well as the population.

In announcing the official lay-offs on Friday, KNS still wanted to appear optimistic: “Even though we are pursuing the search process for a potential buyer, and that three groups continue to display an interest for our company, we do not have at this stage a finalised offer”, the company admitted.

“We are therefore compelled to go ahead with the collective lay-off process on economic grounds”.

‘Cold’ sleep process
Beyond August 31, only a group of about 50 workers will remain employed in maintenance work on what will then be described as “cold” sleep process.

“But the fact that three world-class groups are still in discussions show that Koniambo Nickel still represents a strong interest for potential takeovers”, an optimistic KNS vice-president Alexandre Rousseau, told public broadcaster NC la 1ère on Saturday.

On top of the wave of sackings announced by KNS, some 600 contractors relying on the plant’s activities have also lost their jobs since February.

Local unrest – world nickel crisis
The announcement comes as New Caledonia’s economy is in a critical situation.

It has suffered a major blow, on top of an already grave financial situation.

Since May 13, violent unrest has been ongoing in New Caledonia, with a backdrop of protests against French-proposed modifications of voters’ eligibility for provincial elections, regarded by pro-independence movements as a bid to reduce the political voice of the indigenous Kanak community.

Since the riots, destruction, looting and arson began, more than 700 businesses have been destroyed, 10 people killed (eight civilians and two French gendarmes), and the overall cost of the unrest has topped 2.2 billion euros (NZ$4 billion).

During the riots and unrest, nickel mining sites have been specifically targeted several times.

Entire nickel sector in crisis
New Caledonia’s nickel industry has also been in profound turmoil over past years.

Its other two plants — in the Southern province (Prony Resources) and historic operator Société le Nickel (SLN) in Doniambo near Nouméa — owned by French mining giant Eramet — are also on the verge of collapse.

The situation comes from a world nickel market now dominated by Indonesian units, which have started to produce nickel in mass quantities and at a much lower price.

The result was a collapse of the world nickel price — it slumped by 48 per cent in 2023.

New Caledonia’s production, in this context, was also regarded as too expensive, prompting efforts for a deep reform, especially on the cost structure such as electricity.

A French assistance plan proposed in 2023 by French Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire, including a 200 million euro (NZ$367 million) package, was declined by local authorities, who said too much was being asked by France in terms of strings attached to the massive funding loan.

The French-proposed reform also intended to diversify New Caledonia’s nickel buyers from an almost-entire reliance on Asian clients and instead turn to more European buyers, mostly car manufacturers for the purposes of production of batteries for electric cars.

Other plants on the verge of collapse
As a result of the combined effects of the current situation (the ongoing riots and the pre-existing nickel crisis), Prony Resources’ operations are at a standstill.

Eramet, which in recent months had made no secret of its desire to disengage from SLN, earlier reported a net loss of some 72 million euros (NZ$133 million) for the first half of the financial year.

New Caledonia’s nickel industry is believed to employ about 25 percent of the French Pacific archipelago’s workforce.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

As New Caledonia passes the one-month mark since violent and deadly clashes erupted on last month, there has been no clear path put forward by Paris as far as the Kanak and Socialist National Liberation Front (FLNKS) is concerned.

Eight people — including the leader of the Field Action Coordinating Cell (CCAT) Christian Téin — were arrested yesterday by New Caledonia’s security forces over the unrest since May 13.

According to the Public Prosecutor’s office, they face several potential charges, including organised destruction of goods and property and incitement of crimes and murders or murder attempts on officers entrusted with public authority.

• LISTEN TO RNZ PACIFIC WAVES: Listen to the people that were harassed in their houses” – French Ambassador to the Pacific Véronique Roger-Lacan
• New Caledonia police arrest pro-independence leader among 11 people over deadly protests – Al Jazeera
• French police raid pro-independence Kanak party HQ, arrest eight in crackdown
• Nouméa’s Tontouta International Airport reopened after civil unrest
• Other New Caledonia unrest reports

“All the unrest, all the troubles, is the result of the ignorance of the French government,” said New Caledonia territorial government spokesperson Charles Wea.

“We cannot have peace without the independence of the country. New Caledonia will always get into trouble if the case of independence is not taken into consideration,” he said.

But speaking in an exclusive interview with RNZ Pacific, the French Ambassador to the Pacific, Véronique Roger-Lacan, said there were options to resolve the ongoing conflict — but the violence needed to stop first.

Roger-Lacan said there was a national process to address the independence issue — that was through the controversial constitutional changes which has sparked the unrest.

Paris is also engaged with the UN Committee on Decolonisation (C24) where options of self-determination through independence or free association with an independent state are being discussed.

On top of that, Paris has met with the Pacific Islands Forum (PIF) heads, or troika, over the phone and said talks are underway to either organise a meeting with regional leaders soon, or at the PIF leaders meeting in Tonga in August.

Whatever the option, the FLNKS and the wider pro-independence movement want a robust process that leads to independence, said Wea.

Roger-Lacan said the forces were needed and she rejected claims that the territory was being “militarised”.

She stressed that the thousands of special forces deployed were “necessary” to contain the violence and restore law and order.

Territorial Route 1 has been blocked by barricades erected by the rioters, and Roger-Lacan posed the question: “How do you remove this type of barricade if you have no forces?”

They have called for the immediate withdrawal of the extra forces and a phasing down of security options.

Pacific Conference of Churches general secretary Reverend James Bhagwan told RNZ Pacific France’s heavy deployment of security forces looked like militarisation to him.

“We have seen far too much already these last few weeks to be fooled,” he said.

“We still have militias who are armed, we still have increasing numbers of security forces on the ground. That is militarisation whether it is formal or something that’s been organised in a different way.

“We are just calling it as we see it.

“We’ve also seen the way in which the French government treats that particular area, recognising that this is part of maintaining their colonies as part of the Indo-Pacific strategy, that there is a militarisation movement happening by the French in the Pacific.”

‘Get their facts right’
However, Ambassador Roger-Lacan vehemently disagrees with such claims, saying individuals such as Reverend Bhagwan need to “get their facts right”.

She said claims that the French state had militarised New Caledonia and the region, must be corrected because “it’s not true”.

“First of all, violence had to be stopped, and public order and law enforcement had to be resumed,” she said.

“I would like to suggest for those people [civil society] to watch the houses that were burnt, to listen to the people that were harassed in their houses, to listen to people who were scared of the violence.”

She said such comments were biased, doubling down that “reinforcement was needed”.

Intergenerational trauma
The French Ambassador to the Pacific said concerns that the death toll from the unrest was much higher than reported was also not true.

The death toll stands at eight, she said, adding that three state security officers and five civilians had died.

But some indigenous Kanaks have called for Paris to investigate the death toll, as they believe more young rioters were feared dead.

Roger-Lacan wants worried parents to know France had heard them and concerned parents could call the 24/7 hotline.

“With gendarmes in New Caledonia everywhere, they know all the families, they know all the tribes,” she said.

“It is not true that we don’t have the appropriate links with the whole population.”

Reverend Bhagwan believes it is naive to expect communities to simply trust France given the political history of the territory.

He said there was “intergenerational trauma” simmering under the surface, especially when Kanaks see French forces on their land.

“You can understand then why mothers are concerned about their children, and so to ignore that intergenerational trauma for people in Kanaky, is really a little bit of naivety on the French High Commissioner’s part,” Reverend Bhagwan said.

But one thing all parties agree on is that “force” is not the answer to solve the current crisis.

“Of course, force is not the answer,” Ambassador Roger-Lacan said, but added “force has to be used to bring back public order sometimes”.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

French President Emmanuel Macron’s surprise dissolution of the National Assembly and call for snap general elections on June 30 and July 7 has implications for New Caledonia.

Grave civil unrest and rioting broke out on May 13 in reaction to a controversial constitutional amendment, directly affecting the voting system in local elections.

The National Assembly decisively voted for the change on May 14. A few weeks earlier, on April 2, the Senate (Upper House) had approved the same text.

• READ MORE: History ‘replaying itself’ in Kanaky but Pacific solidarity growing, says Tau
• France’s snap election: what happened, why, and what’s next?
• Far right surges in EU vote, topping polls in Germany, France, Austria
• Other Kanaky New Caledonia reports

However, the proposed constitutional change — which would open the list of eligible voters to an extra 25,000 citizens, mostly non-indigenous Kanaks — remains in limbo, as it needs to go through a final stage.

This final step is a vote in the French Congress, during a special sitting of both the Senate and National Assembly with a required 60 per cent majority.

Macron earlier indicated he would summon the Congress some time by the end of June.

During a quick visit to New Caledonia on May 23, he said he would agree to wait for some time to allow inclusive talks to take place between local leaders, concerning the long-term political future of New Caledonia — but the end of June deadline still remained.

There is also a technicality that would make the adopted text (still subject to the French Congress’s final approval) impossible to apply in its current form: with a now dissolved National Assembly and snap elections scheduled on June 30 (first round) and July 7 (second round), the French Congress (which includes the National Assembly) will definitely not be able to convene before mid-July.

Yet, the constitutional law, as endorsed in its present form by both Houses, is formulated in such a way that it “shall come into force on 1 July 2024” (article 2).

Since last month, there have been numerous calls from pro-independence and pro-France parties, as well as religious and civil society leaders, to scrap the text altogether, as a precondition to the return of some kind of civil peace and normalcy in the French Pacific archipelago.

Similar calls have been issued by former French prime ministers who had been directly in charge of New Caledonia’s affairs.

‘The end of life of this constitutional law’ – Mapou
New Caledonia’s President Louis Mapou, in a speech at the weekend, mentioned the controversial text before Macron’s dissolution announcement.

Mapou said the current unrest in New Caledonia, mostly by pro-independence parties, had de facto “signalled the end of life of this constitutional law”.

But he also called on Macron to clarify explicitly that he intended to withdraw the controversial text, perceived as the main cause for unrest in New Caledonia.

He said that the text, which he said had been “unilaterally decided” by France, had “reopened a wound that has taken so long to heal”.

The constitutional law, he said, was “against the current of New Caledonia’s recent history”, and was “useless because it has to be part of a global project”.

“In my humble opinion, this constitutional law, therefore, cannot continue to exist.

“By saying (last month in Nouméa) that it will not be forced through, the French President too, between the lines, has signified its death and its slow abandonment . . .

“It is difficult to imagine that the President would still want to table this constitutional bill (before the French Congress),” Mapou said.

Does the dissolution now mean the proposed voting system change is dead?
What the French Constitution says is that all pending bills left unvoted on by the Lower House are cancelled because the dissolution signifies the end of the legislature and therefore of the current ordinary session.

In the particular case of New Caledonia’s constitutional text, which has already been passed by both Houses, the general perception is that it would probably “die a beautiful death” after being given the dissolution final coup de grâce.

Obviously, now that the French National Assembly has been dissolved, the French Congress cannot sit.

“We’re now in caretaker mode and all outstanding bills are now cancelled,” outgoing National Assembly President Yaël Braun-Pivet said on French public television France 2 on Monday.

Local political reactions
On the local political scene, a few parties have been swift to react, with the pro-independence platform FLNKS (an umbrella group of pro-independence parties) saying it was now preparing to run for New Caledonia’s two constituencies in the French National Assembly.

FLNKS is holding its national congress next weekend 15 June 15.

New Caledonia’s two seats are held by two pro-France (loyalist) leaders, Nicolas Metzdorf and Philippe Dunoyer.

Daniel Goa, president of the Union Calédonienne (UC, the largest and one of the more radical components of the FLNKS), said the “mobilisation” at the heart of the current civil unrest would not stop.

But in order to allow movement during the snap general election campaign which is due to start shortly, he said there could be more flexibility in the roadblocks.

The barricades still remain in many parts of New Caledonia, and especially the capital Nouméa and its suburbs.

“We will reinforce our representation at (French) national level,” Goa said, anticipating the results of the forthcoming snap general election.

But there are also concerns regarding the way New Caledonia’s current crisis will be handled during the “caretaker” period, and who will be in charge of the sensitive issue in the next French government.

A “dialogue mission” consisting of three high-level public servants stayed in New Caledonia from May 23 to last week.

It was tasked to restore some kind of talks with all local parties and economic, civil society stakeholders.

Last week, it returned to Paris to provide a report on the situation and the advancement of talks aimed at finding a consensus on New Caledonia’s political future.

When they left last week, they said they would return to New Caledonia.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

Kanak people in Aotearoa New Zealand are lamenting the loss of family and friends in Kanaky New Caledonia, following mass rioting and civil unrest since mid-May prompted by an electoral reform believed to threaten dilution of the indigenous voice.

A fono (meeting) at Māngere East Community Centre welcomed Kanak people who have been staying in Aotearoa since November last year and were here when the independence protests-turned-riots broke out on May 13.

The fono on the King’s Birthday holiday was in solidarity with the Kanak struggle for independence from France and drew connections between Kanaky, Aotearoa and Palestine.

• READ MORE:  Kanaky New Caledonia unrest: ‘Nobody talks about what’s happening here anymore’
• Force not the answer in Kanaky New Caledonia, says PANG
• Emmanuel Macron’s gamble on New Caledonia’s crisis
• Open letter to President Macron: End Kanak vote ‘unfreezing’ and complete decolonisation
• Other New Caledonia crisis reports

A young Kanak spoke at the fono in French which was translated by a French speaker on the night.

Te Ao Māori News has chosen not to reveal the identity of these Kanaks.

“We’re here but we’re not really here because most of us are hurt,” a young Kanak man said.

“Young brothers and sisters are being killed but we know that our brothers and sisters don’t have weapons.”

“Some of our families have been killed,” said another young Kanak man whose brother had died.

“It’s difficult for us ‘cos we’re far from our land, from our home.”

Officially, seven people had died during the unrest, four of them Kanak and two police officers (one by accident). However, there have been persistent rumours of other unconfirmed deaths.

Tāngata whenua on mana motuhake for all
Bianca Ranson (Ngāpuhi and Ngāti Kahu ki Whangaroa) was one of the speakers at the fono and spoke with Te Ao Māori News the following day.

Ranson is part of Matika mō Paretīnia, a solidarity group that organises in support of the Free Palestine Movement.

“One of the key messages that we were wanting to to get across or to be able to open up discussion around was settler colonialism . ..  whether that’s for us as tangata whenua here, with the current government, the attack that we’re seeing on our health, on education, whether it’s our treaty, the environment,” she said.

“But also you know when you really look at the tip of the spear, and of settler colonial violence that’s happening in other places around the world, the people of Palestine and the people of Kanaky are really on the frontline.”

Tina Ngata has also linked the struggles between Aotearoa and Kanaky and the shared visions of self-determination for Kanak and tino rangatiratanga for Māori, the French government derailing their decolonisation process and the “assimilation policies” that threaten Māori tino rangatiratanga and the right the self-determination.

Yasmine Serhan, a Palestinian raised in Aotearoa and speaker at the fono, said a highlight was Ranson inviting the Kanak community to her marae.

“I just thought that’s like the purest form of connection and solidarity to basically open your home up. Any activism that we do in Aotearoa is essentially the extension of the manaaki of tangata whenua,” she said.

“So seeing that in live action was really beautiful.”

The humanisation of resistance
Serhan also drew the connection between Kanaky, Aotearoa, and Palestine through the shared experience of settler colonialism and violent land dispossession.

“The space was set up to make it clear that our indigenous struggles aren’t in isolation and they’re not coincidental. They’re all interconnected and the liberation of one of us will lead to the liberation of all of us,” Serhan said.

“People who spoke from the Kanak community shared that they’re resisting with their bare hands. Basically, that is against an armed military force that’s been sent by France.

“It’s very similar to what’s happening in occupied Palestine, where they’re sending armed, Israeli occupational forces and people are resisting with their bare hands — basically, for their homes to be safe for their kids, for their schools, for their hospitals.”

Serhan emphasised the importance of fighting for the humanisation of resistance.

“The humanisation of our resistance happens when we share our stories, and when we continue to exist and be present in spaces.

“As a Palestinian person, my people have been resisting our erasure for 76 plus years, and for the Kanaks, it’s 150 years of living under French colonial rule.

“And we’re still here. We are the grandchildren, the mokopuna of ancestors that they’ve tried to erase and haven’t been successful in erasing.

“So our existence and presence here today is a very firm standing in our resistance.”

The barricades and unarmed Kanaks
One of the Kanaks who spoke at the fono said: “The French government has created organised militia. They have militias of local police to exterminate us.”

It was reported this week that France had deployed six more Centaures — armoured vehicles with tear gas and machine gun capabilities — to help police remove barricades.

However, a young Kanak at the fono said: “The barricades are built to protect the areas where people live. We got a video two days ago, 48 hours ago of the gendarmes, the French police, going into the suburbs where people live.

“They threw homemade gas bombs. People have found weapons from the militia, grenades, bombs and heavy artillery.”

Jessie Ounei, an Aotearoa-born Kanak woman told Te Ao Māori News there’s a lot of unchecked violence happening in Kanaky.

“It’s not being reported and the French forces are being left to their own devices.”

Ounei said there was a video released in the last few days of a young Kanak man who was going to the gas station and was shot in the face with a flash ball.

“There are right-wing civilians who see as a threat who want to . . .  I guess exterminate us is the nicest way to put that.

“I just want to say that they’re not being stopped and they’re not being addressed. That’s part of the reason why we have all these checkpoints and barricades, to keep our families safe.

“To keep our people safe. We have seen that it’s not the French forces that are going to keep us safe. We have to keep ourselves safe.”

Nuclearisation and militarisation of the Pacific
Ranson talked about imperialism regarding the extraction and exploitation of Kanaky resources that has directly benefitted the settlers and disregarded Kanak leadership or their care for the whenua.

Nickel mining in Kanaky started in 1864. Kanaks were excluded from the mining industry which has led to pollution, devastated forests, wetlands, waterways, and overall destruction of Kanaky’s biodiversity.

“There’s also the positioning of France in the wider Pacific,” Ranson said.

“We have to ask ourselves, why? Why is France in Kanaky? What does that serve in the overall agenda of the French colonial project.”

At the fono speakers made the connection between France and nuclearisation.

The French have undertaken nuclear tests in Fangataufa and Moruroa of French Polynesia which media had reported an estimated 110,000 people who had been affected by the radioactive fallout between the 1960s and 1990s.

In Aotearoa, Greenpeace was protesting the French nuclear tests in Moruroa with their protest fleet the flagship Rainbow Warrior was bombed by French spies in Opération Satanique which led to the death of Portuguese-Dutch photographer Fernando Pereira.

Ranson also mentioned the coalition government’s positioning of New Zealand.

“Whether it’s with AUKUS or strengthening our connections with US, there’s some serious, serious concerns that we as indigenous people have. The implications on tāngata moana throughout Te Moana Nui A Kiwa are immense if we are heading down the dangerous pathway of moving away from being a nuclear-free and independent Pacific.”

An article published by The Diplomat discussed New Zealand and France’s “shared vision for the Indo-Pacific”, which is the strategy launched by the Biden-Harris US administration in 2022 and has been more recently adopted by the French government.

The US has also conducted nuclear tests in the Pacific in the Bikini Atoll and the Marshall Islands, and is now part of the AUKUS security pact that will lead to nuclear proliferation in the Pacific and militarisation through advanced military technology sharing.

Opponents of AUKUS argue it compromises the Rarotongan treaty for a nuclear-free zone in the South Pacific.

Susanna Ounei, the late Kanak activist and mother of Jessie Ounei, has also made the connection between decolonisation and denuclearisation of the Pacific.

Susanna delivered a speech in Kenya 1985 as part of the United Nations Decade for women.

Ounei said the colonial government claimed there were 75,000 Kanaks when they arrived, but Kanaks said there were more than 200,000 and only 26,000 after French invaded. This indicated a mass genocide.

The future of Kanaky
When asked about her dreams for Kanaky, Jessie Ounei said she wanted an independent Kanaky.

“I want our people to choose and thrive. I want our people to have the resources to discover their gifts and share it with the world. I don’t want our people to make 90 percent of the incarceration rates or 70 percent of poverty rates.”

At the end of the night, one of the young Kanaks said: “We just want our freedom. Thank you very much for your support, we all have the same fight.

Said another Kanak youth: “We are so happy that you have a thought for the young Kanaks here. That you are with us. We’re not feeling that we’re left alone because you are behind us.”

Although much of what was discussed was heavy and saddening for those in the crowd, the night ended with the crowd dancing and cheering together in solidarity with each other’s struggles and the strength to keep resisting.

Te Aniwaniwa Paterson is a digital reporter with Te Ao Māori News.

A Pacific regional network has deplored what they call increasing brutality on Kanak youth in Kanaky New Caledonia and the deployment of thousands of troops.

New Caledonia has experienced a wave of violence with Nouméa the scene of riots, blockades, looting and deadly clashes since mid-May.

France has sent armoured vehicles with machine gun capability to New Caledonia to quell violence.

• READ MORE: Emmanuel Macron’s gamble on New Caledonia’s crisis
• Open letter to President Macron: End Kanak vote ‘unfreezing’ and complete decolonisation
• Other New Caledonia crisis reports

In a joint statement, endorsed by more than a dozen groups, including Pacific Elders’ Voice and Pacific Youth Council, the Pacific Network on Globalisation said “liberation” was the answer — not repression.

“The people of Kanaky New Caledonia have spoken, saying yet again, any and all attempts to determine the future relationship between France and the territory, by force, and without its people, will never be accepted,” the PANG statement said.

The group wants Paris to implement an impartial Eminent Persons Group (EPG) to resolve the crisis peacefully.

They also want Paris to withdraw the controversial electoral bill that prompted the violent turn of events in the territory.

‘Only pathway’
“The Pacific groups, and solidarity partners therefore strongly support the affirmation of the FLNKS and other pro-independence groups — that responding to the current crisis in a political and non-repressive, non-violent manner is the only pathway towards a viable solution,” PANG said in a statement.

A week after violence broke out in Kanaky New Caledonia on May 13, President Emmanuel Macron flew to the territory for a day to diffuse tensions.

He promised dialogue would continue, “in view of the current context, we give ourselves a few weeks so as to allow peace to return, dialogue to resume, in view of a comprehensive agreement”.

Following his departure, FLNKS representatives and other pro-independence voices were neither convinced of the effectiveness of his visit nor of the genuineness of his intentions, the PANG statement went on to say.

RNZ Pacific has contacted the French Ambassador for the Pacific, Véronique Roger-Lacan, for comment.

The news service has yet to receive a response.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

New Zealand Foreign Minister Winston Peters says “calm wise heads” are needed to sort out the crisis in New Caledonia.

A security force of more than 3000 personnel — more than half of them flown in from France — have returned to the capital Nouméa of the French territory to restore a sense of normalcy.

It comes after weeks of deadly unrest during which seven people were shot and killed, and others causing more than 200 million euros (NZ$353m) in damage.

• READ MORE: Three Nouméa police officers face prosecution after viral violent video
• Footage of French forces officer kicking Kanak man in head surfaces online
• Other Kanaky New Caledonia reports

But protests continue in the outskirts of Nouméa against the French government’s move to change New Caledonia’s electoral laws which pro-independent indigenous groups fear will dilute their political power.

Pacific Islands Forum chair Mark Brown wrote to the New Caledonia president to offer support, while Vanuatu’s climate minister Ralph Regenvanu blamed France for the crisis.

Speaking earlier this week as the final evacuation flight for New Zealand citizens and other nationals was about to depart from Nouméa, Peters would not be drawn on New Zealand’s position on Kanak aspirations for decolonisation.

“We think it’s wise for us to join with the Pacific Islands Forum, and have a statement we all agree to, rather than [New Zealand] … speaking out of turn,” Winston Peters said.

Long-term future
Peters said this was especially prudent given the views some members of the forum had been expressing in regard to New Caledonia’s long-term future.

“It’s not being reluctant to say something. But when you’re dealing with a major crisis of law and order and the destruction of property and businesses which will cost hundreds of millions of dollars to fix up, we need to keep our mind on that,” he said.

“And then, when we’ve got that under control, look at the long-term pathway forward to a peaceful solution. In the end, you would expect there to be agreed self-determination.”

From May 21-28, seven New Zealand flights helped to evacuate 225 New Zealanders and 145 foreign nationals from New Caledonia.

Peters paid tribute to the hardworking teams behind the joint NZ Defence Force and Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade (MFAT) operation which made the assistance possible.

Commercial flights into and out of New Caledonia remain closed until Sunday, June 2, and a nightly curfew is still in effect.

On Wednesday, New Caledonia’s public prosecutor confirmed three Nouméa municipal police officers were facing criminal charges after they were found to have engaged in acts of severe violence against a Kanak man they had just arrested.

The municipal police officers are not part or the French security forces that have been sent to restore law and order in New Caledonia, RNZ Pacific understands.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

By Kelvin Anthony, RNZ Pacific digital lead, and Margot Staunton, RNZ journalist

Police brutality will further escalate tensions between pro-independence activists and French security forces in New Caledonia, a senior church leader in Nouméa says.

On Tuesday night, video footage which shows a French security officer, who appears to have apprehended a Kanaky activist, then pushed the handcuffed man to the ground, before kicking him in the head and knocking him out.

The clip — shared on a Nouméa neighbourhood watch Facebook group — is being widely circulated online and has been shared almost 400 times (as on Wednesday 3pm NZT).

• READ MORE:  ‘I can’t just stand back’: Kanak pro-independence activist follows mum’s footsteps
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• Other Kanaky New Caledonia reports

According to sources, the incident occurred at the Six Kilometre district in Nouméa.

They are concerned it is due to actions like this that Paris has banned TikTok in New Caledonia so human rights abuses by the French security are not exposed.

RNZ Pacific has contacted the French High Commissioner’s office and the French Ambassador to the Pacific for comment, seeking their response to this footage.

Reverend Billy Wetewea from the Protestant Church of Kanaky New Caledonia told RNZ Pacific the police action was “not helping to bring calmness to the people on the ground”.

“Like this kind of action from the police is not helping in our people to not go into violence against [sic],” he said.

Reverend Watewea said the Kanak people on the ground had been advised to record all the movements of the security forces.

“Especially when police forces are starting to attack [indigenous pro-independence Kanaks].”

He said the footage that surfaced on Tuesday night was “not the first” such incident.

“Some other situations in videos has been recorded as well. The people in responsibility will take those issues to the court because that’s not acceptable coming from police to have this kind of behaviour.”

The death toll during two weeks of violent and destructive riots in New Caledonia has risen to seven.

In a statement, the French High Commission said 134 police officers had been injured and nearly 500 people had been arrested.

The state of emergency in the territory was lifted on Tuesday.

The statement said that while the state of emergency had been lifted, the ban on gatherings, the sale and transport of guns and alcohol, as well as the curfew, remained in place.

Resistance will continue
A Kanak pro-independence activist Jimmy Naouna predicts police brutality and riots will continue as long as New Caledonia is highly militarised.

A security force of 3000 remains in Nouméa with a further 484 on the way.

The economic cost as a result of the unrest is estimated to be almost 1 billion euros (US$1.8 billion).

Pro-independence alliance FLNKS member Naouna told RNZ Pacific the territory needed a political solution, not a military one.

“They keep sending in more troops but that won’t solve the issue,” he said.

“This is a political issue and it needs a political solution. The more you have the military and the police on the ground, the more violence there will be on both sides,” he said.

‘People want to be heard’
Wetewea told RNZ Pacific while the presence of the French army on the streets has eased tensions, the decisions made at the political level in Paris are not helping to calm the people on the ground.

He said the French President Emmanuel Macron is not listening to the indigenous people’s voices and the indigenous people have “had enough”.

“For the people on the ground, they have had enough,” he said.

“They want change. People want to be heard, people on the ground, people who are suffering in their houses. And we are facing now a situation that will be hard to recover from.”

Naouna said Macron’s visit to the territory was merely a “political manoeuvre”.

He said the pro-independence groups were expecting the French President to abate tensions by suspending and withdrawing the electoral reform bill.

“[Macron] is losing support in his own political groups. In France, coming up in June. He is losing support for the European elections.

“So, it is mainly for his own political gains that he has had to come to New Caledonia.”

Wetewea said there was a realisation in New Caledonia that the events were led by indigenous young people in the city who have been denied opportunities and discriminated against.

“That is the the part of the population that France was not taking care of for a long time, the part of the population that faced discrimination every day in schools, in seeking employment.

He said the young people expressed all of these frustration towards a system that did not acknowledge them.

“But looking more largely against the system that does not really incorporate or acknowledge our the Kanak people and their culture.”

‘Stifling free speech’
Asia Pacific Report editor and Asia Pacific Media Network (APMN) deputy chair Dr David Robie deplored what he called the “the French tactics of reverting back to the brutality of the crackdowns during the 1980s”.

“It’s no wonder the French authorities were quick to ban TikTok, trying unsuccessfully to stifle free debate and hide the brutality,” he said in response to the disturbing footage.

He said there was a need for dialogue and a genuine attempt to hear Kanak aspirations, and public goodwill, in a bid to reach a consensus for the future.

“If there had been more listening than talking by Paris and its ministers over the past three years, this crisis could have been avoided. But repression now will only backfire.

“The 1980s ended in the terrible Ouvéa massacre. Surely some lessons have been learnt from history? Independence is inevitable in the long run.”

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

There is an important story to be told behind the story Aotearoa New Zealand’s mainstream media has been reporting on in Kanaky New Caledonia. Beyond the efforts to evacuate New Zealanders lies a struggle for indigenous sovereignty and self-determination we here in Aotearoa can relate to.

Aotearoa is part of a whānau of Pacific nations, interconnected by Te Moana-nui-a-Kiwa. The history of Aotearoa is intricately woven into the broader history of the Pacific, where cultural interactions have shaped a rich tapestry over centuries.

The whakapapa connections between tangata whenua and tagata moana inform my political stance and commitment to indigenous rights throughout the Pacific. What happens in one part of the South Pacific ripples across to all of us that call the Pacific Ocean home.

• READ MORE:  Kanaky New Caledonia unrest: Macron lifts state of emergency ‘for time being’
• French repressive policies in New Caledonia have ‘betrayed’ Kanak hopes — David Robie video
• Amid Kanaky New Caledonia’s unrest, I saw first-hand the same colonial white privilege that caused it
• West Papua independence group slams French ‘modern-day colonialism’
• Other Kanaky New Caledonia reports

Since the late 1980s the Kanak independence movement showed itself to be consistently engaging with the Accords with Paris process in their struggle for self-determination.

The Nouméa Accord set out a framework for transferring power to the people of New Caledonia, through a series of referenda. It was only after France moved to unilaterally break with the accords and declare independence off the table that the country returned to a state of unrest.

Civil unrest in and around the capital Nouméa which has continued for two weeks, was prompted by Kanak anger over Paris changing the constitution to open up electoral rolls in its “overseas territory” in a way that effectively dilutes the voting power of the indigenous people.

Coming after the confused end of the Nouméa Accord in 2021, which left New Caledonia’s self-determination path clouded with uncertainty, it was inevitable that there would be trouble.

Flew halfway across world
That France’s President Emmanuel Macron flew across the world to Noumea last week for one day of talks in a bid to end the civil unrest underlines the seriousness of the crisis.

But while the deployment of more French security forces to the territory may have succeeded in quelling the worst of the unrest for now, Macron’s visit was unsuccessful because he failed to commit to pulling back on the electoral changes or to signal a meaningful way forward on independence for New Caledonia.

Paris’ tone-deafness to the Kanaks’ concerns was evident in its refusal to postpone the last of the three referendums under the Nouméa Accord during the pandemic, when the indigenous Melanesians boycotted the poll because it was a time of mourning in their communities. Kanaks consider that last referendum to have no legitimacy.

But Macron’s government has simply cast aside the accord process to move ahead unilaterally with a new statute for New Caledonia.

As the Kanaky Aotearoa Solidarity group said in a letter to the French Ambassador in Wellington this week, “it is regrettable that France’s decision to obstruct the legitimate aspirations of the Kanak people to their right to self-determination has led to such destruction and loss of life”.

Why should New Zealand care about the crisis? New Caledonia is practically Aotearoa’s next door neighbour — a three-hour flight from Auckland. Natural disasters in the Pacific such as cyclones remind us fairly regularly how our country has a leading role to play in the region.

But we can’t take this role for granted, nor choose to look the other way because our “ally“ France has it under control. And we certainly shouldn’t ignore the roots of a crisis in a neighbouring territory where frustrations have boiled over in a pattern that’s not unusual in the Pacific Islands region, and especially Melanesia.

There is an urgent need for regional assistance to drive reconciliation. The Pacific Islands Forum, as the premier regional organisation, must move beyond words and take concrete actions to support the Kanak people.

Biketawa Declaration provides a mechanism
The forum’s Biketawa Declaration provides a mechanism for regional responses to crisis management and conflict resolution. The New Caledonian crisis surely qualifies, although France would be uncomfortable with any forum intervention.

But acting in good faith as a member of the regional family is what Paris signed up to when its territories in the Pacific were granted full forum membership.

Why is a European nation like France still holding on to its colonial possessions in the Pacific? Kanaky New Caledonia, Maohi Nui French Polynesia, and Wallis & Futuna are on the UN list of non-self-governing territories for whom decolonisation is incomplete.

However, in the case of Kanaky, Paris’ determination to hold on is partly due to a desire for global influence and is also, in no small way, linked to the fact that the territory has over 20 percent of the world’s known nickel reserves.

Failing to address the remnants of colonialism will continue to devastate lives and livelihoods across Oceania, as evidenced by the struggles in Bougainville, Māo’hi Nui, West Papua, and Guåhan.

New Zealand should be supportive of an efficient and orderly decolonisation process. We can’t rely on France alone to achieve this, especially as the unrest in New Caledonia is the inevitable result of years of political and social marginalisation of Kanak people.

The struggle of indigenous Kanaks in New Caledonia is part of a broader movement for self-determination and anti-colonialism across the Pacific. By supporting the Kanak people’s self-determination, we honour our shared history and whakapapa connections, advocating for a future where indigenous rights and aspirations are respected and upheld.

Kanaky Au Pouvoir.

Teanau Tuiono is a Green Party MP in Aotearoa New Zealand and its spokesperson for Pasifika peoples. This article was first published by The Press and is republished by Asia Pacific Report with the author’s permission.

The coverage by the New Zealand media over the brutal crackdown in New Caledonia by the French on the indigenous Kanak people as they erupted in protest at France’s naked gerrymandering of electoral law has been depressingly shallow.

To date most mainstream NZ media (with the exception RNZ Pacific, Māori media and the excellent David Robie) have been focused on getting scared Kiwi tourists back home, very few have actually explained what the hell has been going on.

This sudden eruption of protest follows a corrupt new draft law French law allowing French people to vote after only 10 years living there.

• READ MORE: Other Kanaky New Caledonia reports

This law is a direct attack on Kanak sovereignty, it’s a purely gerrymandering response to ensure a democratic majority to prevent any independence referendum.

While no one else is allowed in there, as Asia Pacific Report reports the French are using heavy handed tactics…

Pacific civil society and solidarity groups today stepped up their pressure on the French government, accusing it of a “heavy-handed” crackdown on indigenous Kanak protest in New Caledonia, comparing it to Indonesian security forces crushing West Papuan dissent.

A state of emergency was declared last week, at least [seven] people have been killed — [five] of them indigenous Kanaks — and more than 200 people have been arrested after rioting in the capital Nouméa followed independence protests over controversial electoral changes

In Sydney, the Australia West Papua Association declared it was standing in solidarity with the Kanak people in their self-determination struggle against colonialism.

Don’t stand idly by
We should not as a Pacific Island nation be standing idly by while the French are giving the indigenous people the bash.

We need to be asking what the hell has France’s elite troops being doing while no one is watching. The New Zealand government must ask the French Ambassador in and put our concerns to them directly.

Calm must come back but there has to be a commitment to the 1998 Noumea Accord which clearly stipulates that only the Kanak and long-term residents prior to 1998 would be eligible to vote in provincial ballots and local referendums.

To outright vote against this as the French National Assembly did last week is outrageous and will add an extra 25,000 voters into the election dramatically changing the electoral demographics in New Caledonia to the disadvantage of indigenous Kanaks who make up 42 percent of the 270,000 population.

This was avoidable, but the French are purposely trying to screw the scrum and rig the outcome.

We should be very clear that is unacceptable.

Our very narrow media focus on just getting Kiwis out of New Caledonia with no reflection whatsoever on what the French are doing is pathetic.

Republished from The Daily Blog with permission.

A West Papuan independence group has condemned French “modern-day colonialism in action” in Kanaky New Caledonia and urged indigenous leaders to “fight on”.

In a statement to the Kanak pro-independence leadership, exiled United Liberation Movement for West Papua (ULMWP) president Benny Wenda said the proposed electoral changes being debated in the French Parliament would “fatally damage Kanaky’s right to self-determination”.

He said the ULMWP was following events closely and sent its deepest sympathy and support to the Kanak struggle.

• READ MORE: Man shot dead by police in riot-hit New Caledonia – media
• Open letter from Kanaky: Things are really bad, we need to speed up decolonisation
• Other Kanaky New Caledonia reports

“Never give up. Never surrender. Fight until you are free,” he said.

“Though the journey is long, one day our flags will be raised alongside one another on liberated Melanesian soil, and the people of West Papua and Kanaky will celebrate their independence together.”

Speaking on behalf of the people of West Papua, Wenda said he sent condolences to the families of those whose lives have been lost since the current crisis began — seven people have been killed so far, four of them Kanak.

“This crisis is one chapter in a long occupation and self-determination struggle going back hundreds of years,” Wenda said in his statement.

‘We are standing with you’
“You are not alone — the people of West Papua, Melanesia and the wider Pacific are standing with you.”

“I have always maintained that the Kanak struggle is the West Papuan struggle, and the West Papuan struggle is the Kanak struggle.

“Our bond is special because we share an experience that most colonised nations have already overcome. Colonialism may have ended in Africa and the Caribbean, but in the Pacific it still exists.”

Wenda said he was proud to sign a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with the FLNKS [Kanak and Socialist National Liberation Front] in 2022.

“We are one Melanesian family, and I hope all Melanesian leaders will make clear statements of support for the FLNKS’ current struggle against France.

“I also hope that our brothers and sisters across the Pacific — Micronesia and Polynesia included — stand up and show solidarity for Kanaky in their time of need.

“The world is watching. Will the Pacific speak out with one unified voice against modern-day colonialism being inflicted on their neighbours?”

“Only the struggle counts . . .  death is nothing.”  Éloi Machoro — “the Che Guevara of the Pacific” — said this shortly before he was gunned down by a French sniper on 12  January 1985.

Machoro, one of the leaders of the newly-formed FLNKS (Kanak and Socialist National Liberation Front) — today the main umbrella movement for New Caledonia’s indigenous Kanak people — slowly bled to death as the gendarmes moved in.

The assassination is an apt metaphor for what France is doing to the Kanak people of New Caledonia and has been doing to them for 150 years.

• READ MORE: Kanaky New Caledonia unrest: Macron ends day of political talks with both sides
• LISTEN TO RADIO WAATEA: Interview with Jessie Ounei and David Small
• Liberation for New Caledonia’s Kanak people ‘must come’, says media educator — Audio
• ‘You are not alone’ Pacific messages of solidarity for Kanaky
• Other Kanaky New Caledonia crisis reports

As the New Zealand and Australian media fussed and bothered over tourists stranded in New Caledonia over the past week, the Kanaks have been gripped in an existential struggle with a heavyweight European power determined to keep the archipelago firmly under the control of Paris.  We need better, deeper reporting from our media — one that provides history and context.

According to René Guiart, a pro-independence writer, moments before the sniper’s bullets struck, Machoro had emerged from the farmhouse where he and his comrades were surrounded.  I translate:

“I want to speak to the Sous-Prefet! [French administrator],” Machoro shouted. “You don’t have the right to arrest us.  Do you hear? Call the Sous-Prefet!”

The answer came in two bullets. Once dead, Machoro’s comrades inside the house emerged to receive a beating from the gendarmes.  Standing over Machoro’s body, a member of the elite mobile tactical unit said:  “He wanted war, he got it!”

Weeks earlier, New Zealand journalist David Robie had photographed Machoro shortly before he smashed open a ballot box with an axe and burned the ballots inside. “It was,” says Robie, “symbolic of the contempt Kanaks had for what they saw as the French’s manipulated voting system.”

Every year on January 12, the anniversary of Machoro’s killing, people gather at his grave. Engraved in stone are the words: “On tue le révolutionnaire mais on ne tue pas ses idées.” You can kill the revolutionary but you can’t kill his ideas.  Why don’t most Australians and New Zealanders even know his name?

Decades after his death and 17,000 km away, the French are at it again. Their National Assembly has shattered the peace this month with a unilateral move to change voting rights to enfranchise tens of thousands of more recent French settlers and put an end to both consensus building and the indigenous Kanak people’s struggle for self-determination and independence.

Thanks to French immigration policies, Kanaks now number about 40 percent of the registered voters. New Zealand and Australia look the other way — New Caledonia is France’s “zone of interest”.

But what’s not to like about extending voting rights?  Shouldn’t all people who live in the territory enjoy voting rights?

“They have voting rights,” says David Robie, now editor of Asia Pacific Report, “back in France.”  And France, not the Kanaks, control who can enter and stay in the territory.

Back in 1972, French Prime Minister Pierre Messmer argued in a since-leaked memo that if France wanted to maintain control, flooding the territory with white settlers was the only long-term solution to the independence issue.

Robie says the French machinations in Paris — changing the boundaries of citizenship and voting rights – and the ensuing violent reaction, is effectively a return to the 1980s — or worse.

The violence of the 1980s, which included massacres, led to the Matignon Accords of 1988 and the Nouméa Accords of 1998 which restricted the voting to only those who had lived in Kanaky prior to 1998 and their descendents. Pro-independence supporters include many young whites who see their future in the Pacific, not as a white settler colonial outpost of France.

Most whites, however, fear and oppose independence and the loss of privileges it would bring.

After decades of calm and progress, albeit modest, things started to change from 2020 onwards. It was clear to Robie and others that French calculations now saw New Caledonia as too important to lose; it is a kind of giant aircraft carrier in the Pacific from which to project French power. It is also home to the world’s third-largest nickel reserves.

How have the Kanaks benefitted from being a French colony? Kanaks were given citizenship in their own country only after WWII, a century after Paris imposed French rule.   According to historian David Chappell:

“In practice, French colonisation was one of the most extreme cases of native denigration, incarceration and dispossession in Oceania. A frontier of cattle ranches, convict camps, mines and coffee farms moved across the main island of Grande Terre, conquering indigenous resisters and confining them to reserves that amounted to less than 10 percent of the land.”

It was a pattern of behaviour similar to France’s colonies in Africa, Asia and the Caribbean.  Little wonder the people of Niger have recently become the latest to expel them.

Deprived of education — the first Kanak to qualify for university entrance was in the 1960s — socially and economically marginalised, subjected to what historians describe as among the most brutal colonial overlordships in the Pacific, the Kanaks have fought to maintain their languages, their cultures and their identities whilst the whites enjoy some of the highest standards of living in the world.

David Robie, author of Blood on Their Banner – Nationalist Struggles in the South Pacific, and a sequel, Don’t Spoil My Beautiful Face: Media, Mayhem and Human Rights in the Pacific, has been warning for years that France is pushing New Caledonia down a slippery slope that could see the country plunge back into chaos.

“There was no consultation — except with the anti-independence groups. Any new constitutional arrangement needs to be based around consensus.  France has now polarised the situation so much that it will be virtually impossible to get consensus.”

Macron also pushed ahead with a 2021 referendum on independence versus remaining a French territory. This was in the face of pleas from the Kanak community to hold off until the covid pandemic that had killed thousands of Kanaks had passed and the traditional mourning period was over.

Macron ignored the request; the Kanak population boycotted the referendum. Despite this, Macron crowed about the anti-independence vote that inevitably followed: “Tonight, France is more beautiful because New Caledonia has decided to stay part of it.”

Having created the problem with actions like the disputed referendum and the current law changes, Macron now condemns today’s violence in New Caledonia.  Éloi Machoro rebukes him from the grave: “Where is the violence, with us or with them?” he asked weeks before his killing. “The aim of the [law changes] is to destroy the Kanak people in their own country.”  That was 1985; as the French say: “Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose. The more things change, the more they stay the same thing.

A New Zealand solidarity action group has called on the New Zealand government to back indigenous independence calls in the Pacific and press both France to grant Kanaks sovereignty and Indonesia to end its rule in West Papua.

Catherine Delahunty, a former Green Party MP and spokesperson for West Papua Action Aotearoa, said today it would be good timing to exert pressure on Paris with French President Emmanuel Macron visiting the New Caledonian capital Nouméa this week.

“France is not living up to its commitments under the Noumea Accord and not meeting its responsibilities towards a country listed on the UN Decolonisation Committee,” she said in a statement.

• READ MORE: Liberation for New Caledonia’s Kanak people ‘must come’, says media educator — Audio
• President Emmanuel Macron to fly to New Caledonia within hours
• ‘You are not alone’ Pacific messages of solidarity for Kanaky
• Other Kanaky New Caledonia crisis reports

The West Papua Action Aotearoa network was standing in solidarity with the Kanak people who were struggling for independence from French rule, she said.

“The New Zealand government could show support for both the end of French rule in Kanaky and Indonesian rule in West Papua.

“Both these countries should withdraw their military and prepare to hand over executive power to the indigenous citizens of Kanaky and West Papua.”

Nouméa rioting ‘unsurprising’
Delahunty said that the rioting last week against the French authorities in Kanaky New Caledonia was “completely unsurprising” as the threats to an independent future by pushing through a a constitutional electoral bill to include more non-indigenous residents of Kanaky had caused outrage.

“Much like West Papua the colonial control of resources and government in Kanaky is oppressive and has created sustained resistance,” she said.

“Peace without justice maybe be temporarily restored but our government needs to call on France to do more than dialogue for the resumption of French control.

“Kanaky and West Papua deserve to be free.”

The split opening up in Israel’s “War Cabinet” is not just between Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his long-term rival Benny Gantz. It is actually a three-way split, set in motion by Defence Minister Yoav Gallant.

It was Gallant’s open criticism of Netanyahu that finally flushed Gantz out into the open.

What Gallant wanted from Netanyahu was a plan for how Gaza is to be governed once the fighting ends and an assurance that the Israel Defence Force will not end up being Gaza’s de facto civil administrator.

• LISTEN TO RNZ PACIFIC WAVES: ‘Liberation for New Cal’s Kanak people must come now’ – educator – Interview with Dr David Robie
• Déjà vu in New Caledonia: why decades of political failure will make this uprising hard to contain — Dr David Small
• Plane heading for New Caledonia to bring NZ visitors home
• Other Kanaky New Caledonia crisis reports

To that end, Gallant wanted to know what Palestinian entity (presumably the Palestinian Authority) would be part of that future governing arrangement, and on what terms.

To Gallant, that is essential information to ensure that the IDF (for which he is ultimately responsible) will not be bogged down in Gaza for the duration of a forever war. By voicing his concerns out loud, Gallant pushed Gantz into stating publicly what his position is on the same issues.

What Gantz came up with was a set of six strategic “goals” on which Netanyahu has to provide sufficient signs of progress by June 8, or else Gantz will resign from the war Cabinet.

Maybe, perhaps. Gantz could still find wiggle room for himself to stay on, depending on the state of the political/military climate in three weeks time.

The Gantz list
For what they’re worth, Gantz’s six points are:

1. The return of the hostages from Gaza;
2. The overthrow of Hamas rule, and de-militarisation in Gaza;
3. The establishment of a joint US, European, Arab, and Palestinian administration that will manage Gaza’s civilian affairs, and form the basis for a future alternative governing authority;
4. The repatriation of residents of north Israel who were evacuated from their homes, as well as the rehabilitation of Gaza border communities;
5. The promotion of normalisation with Saudi Arabia; and
   
6. The adoption of an outline for military service for all Israeli citizens. [Gantz has already tabled a bill to end the current exemption of Hadadim (i.e. conservative Jews) from the draft. This issue is a tool to split Netanyahu away from his extremist allies. One of the ironies of the Gaza conflict is that the religious extremists egging it on have ensured that their own sons and daughters aren’t doing any of the fighting.]

Almost instantly, this list drew a harsh response from Netanyahu’s’ office:

“The conditions set by Benny Gantz are laundered words whose meaning is clear: the end of the war and a defeat for Israel, the abandonment of most of the hostages, leaving Hamas-rule intact and the establishment of a Palestinian state.

“Our soldiers did not fall in vain and certainly not for the sake of replacing Hamastan with Fatahstan,” the PM’s Office added.

In reality, Netanyahu has little or no interest in what a post-war governing arrangement in Gaza might look like. His grip on power — and his immunity from criminal prosecution — depends on a forever war, in which any surviving Palestinians will have no option but to submit to Gaza being re-settled by Israeli extremists. (Editor: ICC Prosecutor Karim Khan has today filed an application for arrest warrants for crimes against humanity by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defence Minister Yoav Gallant, along with three Hamas leaders for war crimes.)

Statement of #ICC Prosecutor @KarimKhanQC: Applications for arrest warrants in the situation in the State of #Palestine https://t.co/WqDZecXFZq

— Int’l Criminal Court (@IntlCrimCourt) May 20, 2024

Gantz, no respite
Palestinians have no reason to hope a Gantz-led government would offer them any respite. Gantz was the IDF chief of staff during two previous military assaults on Gaza in 2012 and 2014 that triggered accusations of war crimes.

While Gantz may be open to some minor role for the Palestinian Authority (PA) in helping to run Gaza in future, this would require the PA to be willing to duplicate in Gaza the same abjectly compliant security role it currently performs on behalf of Israel on the West Bank.

So far, the PA has shown no enthusiasm for helping to run Gaza, given that any collaborators would be sitting ducks for Palestinian retribution.

In sum, Gantz is a centrist only when compared to the wingnut extremists (e.g. Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich) with whom Netanyahu currently consorts. In any normal democracy, such public dissent by two senior Cabinet Ministers crucial to government stability would have led directly to new elections being called.

Not so in Israel, at least not yet.

Counting the cost in Nouméa
A few days ago, the Chamber of commerce in Noumea estimated the economic cost of the ongoing unrest in New Caledonia — both directly and to rebuild the country’s trashed infrastructure — will be in excess of 200 million euros (NZ$356 million).

Fixing the physical infrastructure though, may be the least of it.

The rioting was triggered by the French authorities preparing to sign off on an expansion of the eligibility criteria for taking part in decisive votes on the territory’s future. Among other things, this measure would have diluted the Kanak vote, by extending the franchise to French citizens who had been resident in New Caledonia for ten years.

This thorny issue of voter eligibility has been central to disputes in the territory for at least three decades.

This time around, the voting roll change being mooted came hard on the heels of a third independence referendum in 2021 that had been boycotted by Kanaks, who objected to it being held while the country was still recovering from the covid pandemic.

With good reason, the Kanak parties linked the boycotted 2021 referendum — which delivered a 96 percent vote against independence — to the proposed voting changes. Both are being taken as evidence of a hard rightwards shift by local authorities and their political patrons in France.

An inelegant inégalité
On paper, New Caledonia looks like a relatively wealthy country, with an annual per capita income of US$33,000 __ $34,000 estimated for 2024. That’s not all that far behind New Zealand’s $US42,329 figure, and well in excess of neighbours in Oceania like Fiji ($6,143) Vanuatu $3,187) and even French Polynesia ($21,615).

In fact, the GDP per capita figures serve to mask the extremes of inequality wrought since 1853 by French colonialism. The country’s apparent prosperity has been reliant on the mining of nickel, and on transfer payments from mainland France, and both these sources of wealth are largely sealed off from the indigenous population;

The New Caledonian economy suffers from a lack of productivity gains, insufficient competitiveness and strong income inequalities… Since 2011, economic growth has slowed down due to the fall in nickel prices… The extractive sector developed relatively autonomously with regard to the rest of the economy, absorbing most of the technical capabilities. Apart from nickel, few export activities managed to develop, particularly because of high costs..[associated with] the narrowness of the local market, and with [the territory’s] geographic remoteness.

No doubt, tourism will be hammered by the latest unrest. Yet even before the riots, annual tourism visits to New Caledonia had always lagged well behind the likes of Fiji, and French Polynesia.

Over the past 50 years, the country’s steeply unequal economic base has been directly manipulated by successive French governments, who have been more intent on maintaining the status quo than on establishing a sustainable re-balance of power.

History repeats
The violent unrest that broke out between 1976-1989 culminated in the killing by French military forces of several Kanak leaders (including the prominent activist Eloï Machoro) while a hostage-taking incident on Ouvea in 1988 directly resulted in the deaths of 19 Kanaks and two French soldiers.

Tragically in 1989, internal rifts within the Kanak leadership cost the lives of the pre-eminent pro-independence politician Jean-Marie Tjibaou and his deputy.

Eventually, the Matignon Accords that Tjibaou had signed a year before his death ushered in a decade of relative stability. Subsequently, the Noumea Accords a decade later created a blueprint for a 20-year transition to a more equitable outcome for the country’s various racial and political factions.

Of the 270,000 people who comprise the country’s population, some 41 percent belong to the Kanak community.

About 24 percent identify as European. This category includes (a) relatively recent arrivals from mainland France employed in the public service or on private sector contracts, and (b) the politically conservative “caldoches” whose forebears have kept arriving as settlers since the 19th century, including an influx of settlers from Algeria after France lost that colony in 1962, after a war of independence.

A further 7.5 percent identify as “Caledonian” but again, these people are largely of European origin. Some 11.3% of the population are of mixed race. Under the census rules, people can self-identify with multiple ethnic groups.

In sum, the fracture lines of race, culture, economic wealth and deprivation crisscross the country, with the Kanak community being those most in need, and with Kanak youth in particular suffering from limited access to jobs and opportunity.

Restoring whose ‘order’?
The riots have been the product of the recent economic downturn, ethnic tensions and widely-held Kanak opposition to French rule. French troops have now been sent into the territory in force, initially to re-open the international airport.

It is still a volatile situation. As Le Monde noted in its coverage of the recent rioting, New Caledonia is known for its very high number of firearms in relation to the size of the population.

If illegal weapons are counted, some 100,000 weapons are said to be circulating in a territory of 270,000 inhabitants.

Even allowing for some people having multiple weapons, New Caledonia has, on average, a gun for every three or four people. France by contrast (according to Franceinfo in 2021) had only 5.4 million weapons within a population of more than 67 million, or one gun for every 12 people.

The restoration of “order” in New Caledonia has the potential for extensive armed violence. After the dust settles, the divisive issue of who should be allowed to vote in New Caledonia, and under what conditions, will remain.

Forging on with the voting reforms regardless, is now surely no longer an option.

Republished with permission from Gordon Campbell’s column in partnership with Scoop.

A New Zealand author, journalist and media educator who has covered the Asia-Pacific region since the 1970s says liberation “must come” for Kanaky/New Caledonia.

Professor David Robie sailed on board Greenpeace’s flagship Rainbow Warrior until it was bombed by French secret agents in New Zealand in July 1985 and wrote the book Eyes of Fire: The Last Voyage of the Rainbow Warrior.

He has also been arrested at gun point in New Caledonia while on a mission reporting on the indigenous Kanak uprising in the 1980s and wrote Blood on their Banner: Nationalist Struggles in the South Pacific.

• LISTEN TO RNZ PACIFIC WAVES: Kanak ‘liberation must be granted’
• Other Kanaky New Caledonia crisis reports

The Asia Pacific Report editor told RNZ Pacific’s Lydia Lewis France was “torpedoing” any hopes of Kanaky independence.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

ANALYSIS: By Denise Fisher

Monday night saw demonstrations by independence supporters in New Caledonia erupt into serious violence for the first time since the 1980s civil disturbances.

The mainly indigenous demonstrators were opposing President Emmanuel Macron’s imposition of constitutional change to widen voter eligibility unless discussions about the future begin soon.

The protests occurred the day before France’s National Assembly was to vote on the issue, and just after Macron had proposed new talks in Paris.

• READ MORE: New Caledonia unrest: Pro-independence calls for calm ‘to preserve peace’
• Curfew in New Caledonia after Kanak riots over French voting change plan
• ‘A lot of fire, violence’: Nouméa erupts as protests halt New Caledonia
• Independence for Kanaky: A media and political stalemate or a ‘three strikes’ Frexit challenge? – David Robie
• Other New Caledonia crisis reports

On Monday, May 13, in Noumea, as France’s National Assembly debated the constitutional change in Paris, their local counterparts in the New Caledonian Congress were debating a resolution calling for withdrawal of the legislation.

The debate was bitter, after months of deepening division between independence and loyalist parties and focusing as it did on one of the most sensitive issues to each side, that of voter eligibility. The resolution was passed, as independence parties secured the support of a small minority party to outnumber the loyalists.

Macron, in an eleventh hour bid to prompt all parties to participate in new discussions about the future, proposed on May 13 to hold talks in Paris, but only after the Assembly vote of May 14 (albeit before the next step in the constitutional amendment process, a meeting of both houses).

Independence party leaders had called on their supporters to demonstrate against the constitutional reform, to coincide with the National Assembly’s consideration of the issue. The evening of May 13 was marked by violence on a scale not seen in decades.

Burning of buildings, roadblocks
It included the burning of buildings and businesses, roadblocks preventing movement in and out of the capital, and the closure of airports and ports in some of the islands. Police were targeted with gunfire and stoning, resulting in 35 injured police.

As of yesterday, Tuesday May 14, people were being asked to stay at home, with a curfew imposed. France, which already had 700 police on the job in New Caledonia, has sent reinforcements to maintain order.

The violence immediately brought to the minds of leaders the bloodshed of the 1980s, termed “les événements”.

The French High Commissioner, or governor, suggested things were moving “towards an abyss” and cancelled some incoming flights to prevent complications from tourists being unable to access Noumea, while noting that the airport and main wharf remain open. He urged independence leaders to use their influence on the young to stop the violence.

The Mayor of Noumea, Sonia Lagarde, described the situation as “extremely well organised guerrilla warfare” involving “well-trained young people” and suggested “a sort of civil war” was approaching.

On the face of it, to an outsider, Macron’s plan to broaden voter eligibility to those with 10 years’ residence prior to any local election, unless discussions about the future begin, would seem reasonable.

He sees the three independence votes held from 2018–21 as legal, notwithstanding the largely indigenous boycott of the third. (Each referendum saw a vote to stay with France, although support was narrow, declining from 56.7% to 53.3% in the first two votes, but ballooning to 96.5% in the third vote boycotted by independence supporters.)

‘Radical’ for white Caledonians, ‘unconscionable’ for Kanaks
For New Caledonians, Macron’s positioning is radical. Loyalists see it as a vindication of their position.

But for independence parties, France’s stance has been unconscionable.  Independence leaders reject the result of the boycotted referendum and want another self-determination vote soon.

Some have refused to participate in discussions organised by France, although one of the most recalcitrant elements suggested some discussion would be possible just days before the violent demonstrations.

But they have all strongly opposed Macron’s imposing constitutional change to widen voter eligibility unilaterally from Paris. They were affronted by his appointment of a prominent loyalist MP as the rapporteur responsible for shepherding the issue through the Assembly.

They have instead been calling for a special mission led by an impartial figure to bring about dialogue.

More importantly, they see the highly sensitive voter eligibility issue as a central negotiating chip in discussions about the future. Confining voter eligibility only to those with longstanding residence on a fixed basis — not by a number of years prior to any local election as Macron is proposing — was fundamental to securing independence party acceptance of peace agreements over 30 years, after France had operated a policy of bringing in French nationals from elsewhere to outweigh local independence supporters who are primarily indigenous.

Differences have deepened
With the inconclusive end of these agreements, differences have only deepened.

Loyalist leaders have accused independence leaders of planning the violence. Whether it was planned or whether demonstrations degenerated, either way it is clear that emotions are running high among independence supporters, who feel their position is not being respected.

No sustainable solution for the governance of New Caledonia is possible without the cooperation of all parties.

It seems that, regardless of Macron’s evident intention of spurring parties to come to the discussion table, his plan has backfired. Discussions are unlikely to resume soon.

Denise Fisher is a visiting fellow at Australian National University’s Centre for European Studies. She was an Australian diplomat for 30 years, serving in Australian diplomatic missions as a political and economic policy analyst in many Australian missions in Asia, Europe and Africa, including as Australian Consul-General in Nouméa, New Caledonia (2001-2004). She is the author of France in the South Pacific: Power and Politics (2013). This article was first published by the Lowy Institute’s The Interpreter and is republished by Asia Pacific Report with permission.

Pro-independence militants and protesters clashed with police in downtown Nouméa this week as New Caledonia hosts three French government ministers.

The crowd — an estimated 2000 according to organisers, 500 according to police — had been called on Wednesday to voice their opposition to a French-planned constitutional amendment process which would include modification of New Caledonia’s electoral roll for local elections.

As the three French ministers were on official calls in various places, in downtown Nouméa police fired teargas to disperse the crowd.

• READ MORE: Other Kanaky New Caledonia reports

Five policemen were reported to have been injured, including one seriously hit by rocks, the French High Commission stated, adding five protesters had been arrested shortly afterwards.

The protest had been organised by Union Calédonienne’s self-styled “field action coordinating cell” (Cellule de Coordination des actions de terrain, CCAT), which consists of trade union USTKE and UC’s close ally, the Labour Party.

UC is the largest single party within the mostly indigeous Kanak socialist and nationalist front (FLNKS).

Later on Wednesday, the crowd was dispersed and it moved out of downtown Nouméa.

“It’s completely out of the question to ‘unfreeze’ the electoral roll,” UC president Daniel Goa, who was part of the crowd, told local media.

Pro-France politician Nicolas Metzdorf said in a statement: “This kind of call to hatred, directly from UC . . . must stop. Violent protests will not halt the electoral roll being ‘unfrozen’.”

Regular visitor
French Home Affairs and Overseas Minister Gérald Darmanin, who is now regarded as a regular visitor, arrived on Tuesday and this time was flanked with his newly appointed “delegate” Minister for Overseas, Marie Guévenoux, as well as French Justice Minister Eric Dupond-Moretti.

This is Darmanin’s sixth visit to New Caledonia in the past 12 months.

In a polarised context, many attempts by Darmanin to bring all parties around the same table in order to all agree on a forward-looking agreement have so far failed.

His previous visits were focused on attempting to bring about inclusive talks concerning New Caledonia’s political future which could involve an amendment to the French Constitution.

The amendment contains sensitive issues, including a revision of New Caledonia’s list of eligible voters at local elections, with a 10-year minimum residency period for any French citizen to be able to cast their vote.

FLNKS’ 2 major wings — diverging views
While the two main components of FLNKS (UC and PALIKA-Kanak Liberation Party) last weekend held separate meetings and announced diverging approaches vis-à-vis France’s proposed reforms, the pro-independence umbrella FLNKS has now rescheduled its Congress for March 23.

Even though most local parties in New Caledonia have started to exchange views on the sensitive subject, one of the main components of the pro-independence front FLNKS, the largest party Union Calédonienne (UC), has so far refused to take part in the bipartisan round tables.

After convening UC’s steering committee in Houaïlou, UC vice-president Gilbert Tyuienon earlier this week told a press conference the party intended once again to hold a series of actions through its recently revived “field action coordinating cell” (CCAT).

“We have asked [the CCAT] and its young members to take all steps on the field,” he said.

The thinly veiled threat materialised on Wednesday with CCAT militants, including members of the Labour Party and union USTKE, deploying banners opposing to the planned Constitution review being placed in the capital Nouméa, also sometimes with roadside burning of tyres in the suburban town of Mont-Dore.

Tyuienon also claimed that UC considered French-promoted political talks were “a failure” and labelled Darmanin’s travel to New Caledonia as “yet another provocation” and that the proposed text was potentially “destabilising [New Caledonia’s political] balances”.

“There is a formal opposition from UC to meet the ministers . . . we know who is responsible for this situation,” Tyuienon told reporters.

He said UC now demanded that the whole French constitutional amendment project be scrapped altogether — “or else we’re heading for big trouble”.

More nuanced views
PALIKA, after its own meeting last weekend, expressed more nuanced views: “We are involved in every dialogue venue regarding all the document drafts that have been put on the table,” spokesman Jean-Pierre Djaïwe told a press conference on Monday following its extraordinary general assembly in Canala.

“We can only regret that every time we are taking part in discussions, not all of New Caledonia’s political groups are represented. Because our objective, from PALIKA’s point of view, is to reach an agreement comprising all political parties,” he said.

Djaïwe, however, said the current draft document “sided too much in favour of the (pro-French) parties”, which could “be detrimental to the conclusion of an agreement between local players”.

He indicated that PALIKA’s current stance would remain valid at least until the “end of March” — when the FLNKS Congress takes place — and “after that, it will decide on its strategy”.

Over the past months, PALIKA and other components of the pro-independence umbrella have consistently advised their members not to take part in UC’s CCAT-organised actions and protests.

However, Darmanin has already indicated that he did not intend to touch New Caledonia’s institutional and political future as he wanted “the neutral and impartial [French] State to only talk with local political parties once they have reached an agreement”.

His schedule did not seem to include New Caledonia’s nickel industry crisis either, following the announcement last week that one of its three major companies, in Koniambo (KNS), will now be placed under “care and maintenance” mode (effectively mothballed by its major Anglo-Swiss financier Glencore).

Glencore earlier this week confirmed it would withdraw after a six-month “transition” period, leaving more than 1200 workers and another 600 sub-contractors without work.

The company, which owns 49 percent of Koniambo’s stock, justified its move saying this operation over the past 10 years had never been either profitable or sustainable and had accumulated losses to the tune of a staggering 14 billion euros.

Climate change agenda
Instead, Darmanin’s official agenda includes visits to sites affected by climate change and coastal erosion as well as announcements regarding the reinforcement of road safety (with the introduction of new latest-generation speed radars thanks to a 200,000 euro grant, to reduce the high number of road accidents and fatalities in New Caledonia.

Justice Minister Dupond-Moretti said his visit was focused on meeting the local judiciary and bar, but also New Caledonia’s custom and traditional justice players.

He will also officially open a new detention centre in Koné and provide more details regarding the construction of a 500 million euro new jailhouse in the suburbs of Nouméa, which is due to replace the overpopulated and ageing Camp-Est prison, where living conditions for inmates have frequently been denounced by human rights organisations.

After his stay in New Caledonia (February 21-22), Darmanin’s Pacific trip is also to include this time a stopover in Australia later this week (February 23-24), where he is expected to meet cabinet ministers to talk about Pacific “regional cooperation” between the two countries, as well as about this year’s Olympic Games in France.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

New Caledonian Joe Xulue has made history by becoming the first person of Kanak heritage to graduate from Harvard University in the United States.

During his graduation in Boston on June 6, he proudly wore the Kanak flag as he received a diploma in law — and photos of the moment have since gone viral, celebrated by fellow Kanaks across social media.

Xulue said his accomplishment is collective because it sets an example to fellow Kanaks.

• READ MORE: Other Kanaky New Caledonia reports

“It’s a win for all Kanak people,” said Xulue.

“I see it as a service — a way of giving back to my community — even by just going to Harvard . . . it can mean a lot to a young Kanak kid who is unsure of the dreams and aspirations that they have about themselves,

“When I was up there holding the flag, despite alot of the things that my people have gone through because of colonisation, it felt so proud to showcase how much we can achieve.

“Getting to Harvard wasn’t easy, I’ve had to go through more rejection than acceptance to get to where I am today.”

An avid New Caledonia pro-independence supporter, Xulue said his and other Kanak successes contributes to the indigenous movement for self-determination.

“It’s pretty clear that colonisation has dis-enfranchised so many of our people,” said Xulue.

“Young Kanaks like me are trying to change the narrative — to effectively reverse years and years of colonial rule, and policy guidelines and directions that have left us in a poor state.”

The French territory has seen recent political turbulence, with pro-independence supporters disputing a referendum in 2021 that rejected independence from France.

Political dissatisfaction is widespread among the Kanak people who inherit a history marred by war and oppression. The majority of native Kanaks, who make up over 41 percent of New Caledonia’s population, support independence.

Xulue is one of them, and he said getting a Harvard degree is one way of improving the socio-political condition of Kanaks.

“This idea of a neocolonial territory to exist in a world where we are supposed to be allowing countries to have independence is disconcerting,” he said.

“I find it so strange that a country like France will talk about equality and freedom for all, but won’t guarantee it to a nation like New Caledonia where they can clearly see the effects of colonisation on an indigenous group.

“On one hand, the French government talks about freedom and rights, but they don’t guarantee them to people who inherently deserve those rights.”

Harvard is a vehicle for change
Before going to Harvard, Xulue completed a law degree at Auckland University — a hub for Pasifika academics.

He applied to Harvard after being encouraged to do so by others including Samoan Harvard graduate Dylan Asafo.

A key focus of his study was creating cultural spaces to improve justice systems.

“My application was based on the idea of using indigenous ideas and practices, to shape the more traditional legal structures that we have in New Zealand,” said Xulue.

“That was the basis for why I wanted to study and I knew it would give a platform to the Kanak struggle for independence.

“We see alot of the ways that different tikanga practices are in the New Zealand justice systems . . . we see how changing the settings like allowing for the kaumatua to get involved or allowing for the marae for youth justice processes can occur . . . simple ways we can use indigenous knowledge within the current colonial hegemony.”

“I look at the law as a tool to effect positive change for our people . . . I think that’s what Harvard saw and why they accepted me into their university.”

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

New Caledonia’s largest pro-independence party has been told that France is “panicking” and afraid of losing New Caledonia.

The head of the Caledonian Union Daniel Goa briefed the party in Koumac after a week of meetings of a cross-section of New Caledonian politicians with the French government in Paris earlier this month.

Goa said Paris kept reneging on earlier undertakings by pressing ahead with efforts to undo the 1998 Noumea Accord on the territory’s decolonisation in order to maintain its international influence.

• READ MORE: Unfinished business over New Caledonian decolonisation – new challenges after ‘stolen’ referendum
• Other Kanaky New Caledonia reports

He said there was major incomprehension on part of the French government of what the bilateral talks in Paris were supposed to be about.

Goa said Paris wanted concrete decisions in circumstances favouring the French government.

However, Goa said the decolonisation process and New Caledonia’s accession to sovereignty would be discussed in New Caledonia.

He again warned France against opening up the restricted electoral roll used for provincial elections.

Bid to extend voting rights
Anti-independence parties have urged Paris to extend voting rights for the 2024 elections after the 2021 referendum saw a majority of voters reject full sovereignty.

The pro-independence side, however, largely abstained from the vote in 2021 because of the covid-19 pandemic and still refuses to recognise the result as the legitimate outcome of the decolonisation process.

Under the terms of the Noumea Accord voting in provincial elections is restricted to indigenous Kanaks and those who have been residents in the territory since 1998.

About 40,000 French citizens are excluded from provincial elections but can take part in France’s parliamentary and presidential elections.

Goa warned of what he called irreversible solutions if France imposed a change to the rolls, adding that there would be a risk of there never being any election.

He said the survival of the Kanaks hinged on this issue.

Goa said opening the roll to recent arrivals would create a new imbalance and extinguish the Kanaks’ vision of politics.

‘Colonial state’ opposed
He stressed that the Kanaks would no longer allow the colonial state to impose itself.

He said the French state was pushing the Kanaks to their last entrenchments, but they would be present in their own way to take responsibility to liberate their country.

Goa said the Kanaks’ sovereignty was no longer negotiable, adding that the land is not a land of France and will never be a land of France.

He said it was a shame to imagine the worst, but France was going against the “wind of history” as the United Nations kept calling for the eradication of colonialism.

Goa said France had to choose between moving in the direction of history or ending up in the “rubbish bin of colonial history”.

He put Paris on notice that a refusal to restore the territory’s sovereignty would drive the Kanak people to seek support elsewhere.

Goa said France did not and would not recognise the Kanaks’ rights, which would prompt the pro-independence camp to turn to new allies.

France ‘lonely in Pacific’
He said all major powers were around the Pacific rim but France, as only a small European country, was lonely in the Pacific.

Goa said the French army never defended New Caledonia when it was threatened, but only killed Kanaks, plundered their land, carried out punitive expeditions, brutally treated and displaced Kanak populations, and killed their elders.

He also castigated President Emmanuel Macron’s China policy, asking whether France could be trusted.

Goa said France still wanted to give the illusion of existing in a concert of nations but the President, out of clumsiness, had betrayed his European and American allies by pledging allegiance to China.

He said in the Pacific context, France would on one hand “sell” New Caledonia to China and on the other hand, France kept saying not to deal with China in whatever way, brandishing the “Chinese threat” as the worst thing that could happen.

Goa said with the French presidency and the country adrift, there was a risk for New Caledonia to be dragged into a void.

Backes slams Goa’s speech
Daniel Goa’s speech was criticised by a leading anti-independence politician, Sonia Backes, who regarded Goa’s comments about the electoral rolls as a call to violence.

Backes, president of the Southern Province and a junior member of the French government, told La Première television that Goa’s threats of action in case of changes to the rolls were unacceptable.

She also took issue with Goa’s warning that the Kanaks would ally themselves with other powers, should their ambition to attain independence be thwarted by France.

Backes said the anti-independence coalition had referred the speech to the public prosecutor for alleged calls for violence and sedition.

She wondered if Goa considered that those opposed to independence had no place on this world and could not be asked to discuss the future.

Backes said the other side needed to explain itself.

Institutions not functioning
She said her side had an interest in finding a consensus because New Caledonia’s institutions no longer functioned.

She added that it was no longer possible to have 45,000 people excluded from the rolls and do nothing for them while waiting for a possible consensus on how to open the rolls.

After the rejection of full sovereignty in three referendums and the expiry of the Noumea Accord, a new statute for New Caledonia has to be created.

While the pro-independence parties want Paris to give a timetable to full independence, the anti-independence parties want Paris to realign the territory with France.

After this month’s talks in Paris, discussions will be continued in Noumea in June when  French Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin plans his next visit.

His ministry said in May he would go to the United Nations in New York to discuss the situation in New Caledonia.

The territory has been on the UN decolonisation list since 1986, based on the Kanak people’s internationally recognised right to self-determination.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

RNZ Pacific

New Caledonia’s pro-independence FLNKS movement is holding its congress this weekend to prepare its position for the bilateral talks scheduled with French Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin.

The minister is due in Noumea next week to resume discussions on a new statute for New Caledonia after the rejection of full sovereignty in three referendums.

A senior member of the Caledonian Union, Dominique Fochi, told local television there have been divergent proposals from the different parties making up the Kanak and Socialist National Liberation Front (FLNKS).

• READ MORE: Other Kanaky New Caledonia politics reports

But he said there was so much at stake that there was no room for dissonant voices.

One of the parties, the Caledonian Union, has said negotiations with France are only worthwhile if they deal with the emancipation of the country.

This weekend’s 41st congress in Noumea will also host several international independence supporters, notably a pro-independence party in Spain’s Basque Country and the French Guiana nationalist MP Jean-Victor Castor.

New Caledonia has been on the UN Decolonisation List since 1986, based on the indigenous Kanak people’s internationally recognised right to self-determination.

Earlier this week, New Caledonia’s anti-independence parties walked out of a meeting at the French High Commission in Noumea to discuss the electoral rolls for next year’s provincial elections.

An Australian-based French law professor says it is up to the French people as a whole, and not the voters in New Caledonia, to decide the territory’s future statute.

Professor Eric Descheemaeker of the University of Melbourne’s Law School said New Caledonia’s three votes against full sovereignty meant that legally, the power to determine the future standing of the Pacific territory had reverted from New Caledonian voters to France as a whole.

In the three referendums between 2018 and 2021, a majority of New Caledonians rejected independence from France.

• READ MORE: Other Kanaky New Caledonia statute reports

However, the last and third referendum under the 1998 Noumea Accord was boycotted by the pro-independence parties after France refused to postpone the vote to 2022 because of the covid-19 pandemic’s impact on the indigenous Kanak population.

The pro-independence Kanak and Socialist National Liberation Front (FLNKS) has been adamant that it will not recognise the referendum outcome, describing it as a humiliation of the Kanak people.

Amid the political fallout, Professor Descheemaeker has argued in an article in the blog Jus Politicum that the French constitutional framework still applies.

He said the rejection of the proposed sovereignty meant that New Caledonia was subject to the French constitution with its definition of national sovereignty.

The text says “no section of the people nor any individual may arrogate to itself, or to himself, the exercise thereof”.

Process not binding
Professor Descheemaeker also said the referendum process granted by Paris was not binding because a vote for independence would still have had to be approved by the French legislature and in a referendum.

He said the 1988 referendum involving all of France approved the Matignon Accords that paved the way for a vote on independence in New Caledonia within 10 years.

It did not take place, and political leaders deferred a decision by signing the Noumea Accord in 1998, which extended the deadline by another two decades.

Professor Descheemaeker said that with the referendum outcome, the provisions from 1988 could no longer be used to claim a separate entitlement for voters in New Caledonian, similar to there not being one for Parisians.

The political discussions are due to resume later this month once the FLNKS movement, which is a signatory to the Noumea Accord, has held its congress.

Formal talks on a new statute are yet to be launched, but speaking in the French National Assembly last month, Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin ruled out any further voting on the issue for five years.

Days after the last referendum in 2021, the then-Overseas Minister Sebastien Lecornu said he planned to have a vote in New Caledonia on a new statute by June 2023.

Undertaking scuttled
But amid the political impasse and the absence of any substantive talks, the undertaking was scuttled.

The pro-French parties have said that with a new statute the restricted electoral rolls, which were brought in as part of the Noumea Accord process, must be opened to all French citizens.

Reserving voting rights in referendums and provincial elections to long-term residents and indigenous Kanaks, more than 40,000 French residents now lack full voting rights, being allowed to vote in French national elections only.

Professor Descheemaeker said that although there was no specific expiry date to the restrictions in New Caledonia, they would have to be reviewed.

He said the partial withdrawal of the right to vote from certain French citizens living in New Caledonia was contrary to the most fundamental constitutional principles.

He said the measures had only been validated by French and international authorities insofar as they were transitional.

Pro-independence parties are opposed to changing the rolls.

For them, the ringfencing of the electorate was an irreversible gain attained through the Noumea Accord.

They say this forms the bedrock of New Caledonian citizenship and identity as they pursue their campaign for an independent New Caledonia, which has been on the UN decolonisation list since 1986.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ. 

On the 61st anniversary of the first raising of West Papua’s symbol of independence — 1 December 1961 — the Morning Star flag:

We, the Indigenous caucus of the movement for self-determination, decolonisation, nuclear justice, and demilitarisation of the Pacific, call for coordinated action for key campaigns that impact the human rights, sovereignty, wellbeing and prosperity of Pacific peoples across our region.

As guardians of our Wansolwara (Tok Pisin term meaning “One Salt Water,” or “One Ocean, One People”), we are united in seeking the protection, genuine security and vitality for the spiritual, cultural and economic base for our lives, and we will defend it at all costs. We affirm the kōrero of the late Father Walter Lini, “No one is free, until everyone is free!”

• LISTEN TO RNZ MORNING REPORT: Activists, academics fight plans to put nuclear waste in Pacific Ocean

We thank the mana whenua of Ōtepoti, Te Ao o Rongomaraeroa, the National Centre for Peace and Conflict and Kā Rakahau o Te Ao Tūroa Centre for Sustainability at the University of Otago for their hospitality in welcoming us as their Pacific whānau to their unceded and sovereign lands of Aotearoa.

We acknowledge the genealogy of resistance we share with community activists who laid the mat in our shared struggles in the 1970s and 1980s. Our gathering comes 40 years after the first Te Hui Oranga o Te Moana Nui a Kiwa, hosted by the Pacific Peoples Anti Nuclear Action Committee (PPANAC) at Tātai Hono in Tamaki Makaurau.

Self-determination and decolonisation
We remain steadfast in our continuing solidarity with our sisters and brothers in West Papua, who are surviving from and resisting against the Indonesian genocidal regime, injustice and oppression. We bear witness for millions of West Papuans murdered by this brutal occupation. We will not be silent until the right to self-determination of West Papua is fully achieved.

We urge our Forum leaders to follow through with Indonesia to finalise the visit from the UN Commissioner for Human Rights to West Papua, as agreed in the Leaders Communiqué 2019 resolution.

We are united in reaffirming the inalienable right of all Indigenous peoples to self-determination and demand the sovereignty of West Papua, Kanaky, Mā’ohi Nui, Bougainville, Hawai’i, Guåhan, the Northern Mariana Islands, Rapa Nui, Aotearoa, and First Nations of the lands now called Australia.

Of priority, we call on the French government to implement the United Nations self-governing protocols in Mā’ohi Nui and Kanaky. We urge France to comply with the resolution set forth on May 17th, 2013 which declared French Polynesia to be a non-self-governing territory, and the successive resolutions from 2013 to 2022. The “empty seat policy” that the administering power has been practising since 2013 and attempts to remove Mā’ohi Nui from the list of countries to be decolonised have to stop. We call on France to immediately resume its participation in the work of the C-24 and the 4th Commission of the United Nations.

Nuclear justice
We grieve for the survivors and victims who lost their lives to the nuclear violence caused by over 315 nuclear weapons detonated in Marshall Islands, Australia, Kiribati, Johnston Atoll and Mā’ohi Nui by the United States, United Kingdom/Australia and France. The legacy and ongoing nuclear violence in our region is unfinished business and calls for recognition, reconciliation and reparations to be made by nuclear colonisers are long overdue.

We call for the United States, United Kingdom/Australia and France to deliver fair and just
compensation to Indigenous civilians, workers and servicemen for the health and environmental harms, including intergenerational trauma caused by nuclear testing programs (and subsequent illegal medical experiments in the Marshall Islands). The compensation schemes currently in place in all states constitute a grave political failure of these aforementioned nuclear testing states and serve to deceive the world that they are recognising their responsibility to address the nuclear legacy. We call for the United States, United Kingdom/Australia, and France to establish or otherwise significantly improve
accessible healthcare systems and develop and fund cancer facilities within the Marshall Islands, Kiribati/Australia and Mā’ohi Nui respectively, where alarming rates of cancers, birth defects and other related diseases continue to claim lives and cause socio-economic distress to those affected. The descendants of the thousands of dead and the thousands of sick are still waiting for real justice to be put in place with the supervision of the international community.

We demand that the French government take full responsibility for the racist genocidal health effects of nuclear testing on generations of Mā’ohi and provide full transparency, rapid assessment and urgent action for nuclear contamination risks. While the President of France boasts on the international stage of his major environmental and ecological transition projects, in the territory of Mā’ohi Nui, the French government’s instructions are to definitively “turn the page of nuclear history.” This is a white-washing and colonial gas-lighting attitude towards the citizens and now the mokopuna of Mā’ohi Nui. It is
imperative for France to produce the long-awaited report on the environmental, economic and sanitary consequences of its 193 nuclear tests conducted between 1966 and 1996.

We proclaim our commitment to the abolition of nuclear weapons and call all states of the Pacific region who have not done so to sign and ratify the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW), namely Australia, the Solomon Islands, Tonga, Papua New Guinea, the Federated States of Micronesia and the Marshall Islands. We urge Pacific nations along with the world’s governments to contribute to the international trust fund for victims of nuclear weapons implemented by the TPNW. We urge Aotearoa/New Zealand and other states who have ratified the TPNW to follow through on their commitment to nuclear survivors, and to create a world free from the threat and harm of nuclear weapons through the universalisation of the TPNW. There can be no peace without justice.

We oppose the despicable proposal of Japan and the Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) to dump 1.3 million tonnes of radioactive wastewater next year in 2023, and support in solidarity with the citizens of Japan, East Asian states and Micronesian states who sit on the frontlines of this crisis. This is an act of trans-boundary harm upon the Pacific. We call on the New Zealand government and others to stay true to its commitment to a Nuclear Free Pacific and bring a case under the international tribunal for the Law of the Sea against the proposed radioactive release from TEPCO’s Fukushima Daiichi planned from 2023 to 2053.

Demilitarisation
We condemn the geopolitical order forced upon our nations by imperial powers, who claim to be our friends, yet treat our islands as collateral damage and use financial blackmail to bully us into submission. We demand that the United States remove and remediate all military bases, infrastructure, debris and nuclear and chemical waste from the Pacific. Of priority is the US-owned nuclear waste storage site of Runit Dome on Enewetak Atoll which threatens nuclear contamination of the ocean and marine-life, on which our lives depend. Furthermore, we call for all remaining American UXOs (unexploded ordnances) from World War II in the Solomon Islands, which cause the preventable deaths of more than 20 people every year to be removed immediately!

We support in solidarity with Kānaka Maoli and demand the immediate end to the biennial RIMPAC (Rim of the Pacific) exercises hosted in Honolulu, Hawai’i. We urge all the present participating militaries of RIMPAC to withdraw their participation in the desecration and plunder of Indigenous lands and seas. We support in solidarity with the Marianas and demand an end to munitions testing in the Northern Marianas and the development of new military bases. We rebuke the AUKUS trilateral military pact and the militarisation of unceded Aboriginal lands of the northern arc of Australia and are outraged at Australia’s plans to permit further military bases, six nuclear-capable B52s and eight nuclear-powered submarines to use our Pacific Ocean as a military playground and nuclear highway.

We call on all those committed to ending militarism in the Pacific to gather and organise in Hawai’i between 6-16 June 2024, during the Festival of the Pacific and bring these issues to the forefront to renew our regional solidarity and form a new coalition to build power to oppose all forms of military exercises (RIMPAC also returns in July -August 2024) and instead promote the genuine security of clean water, safe housing, healthcare and generative economies, rather than those of extraction and perpetual readiness for war.

We view colonial powers and their militaries to be the biggest contributors to the climate crisis, the continued extractive mining of our lands and seabeds and the exploitation of our resources. These exacerbate and are exacerbated by unjust structures of colonialism, militarism and geopolitical abuse. This environmental destruction shifts the costs to Pacific and Indigenous communities who are responsible for less than 1 percent of global climate emissions.

As Pacific peoples deeply familiar with the destruction of nuclear imperialism, we strongly disapprove of the new propaganda of nuclear industry lobbyists, attempting to sell nuclear power as the best solution for climate change. Similarly, we oppose the Deep Sea Mining (DSM) industry lobbyists that promote DSM as necessary for green technologies. We call for a Fossil Fuel Non-proliferation Treaty to be implemented by the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and for safe and equitable transition to better energy solutions. We reject any military solution for the climate crisis!

We recognise the urgent need for a regional coordinator to be instituted to strategise collective grassroots movements for self-determination, decolonisation, nuclear justice and demilitarisation.

Our existence is our resistance.

We, the guardians of our Wansolwara, are determined to carry on the legacy and vision for a Nuclear Free and Independent Pacific.

• More information

French Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne says her meeting with New Caledonia’s anti-independence leaders in Paris marks the beginning of discussions on the future status of New Caledonia.

The meeting was called as the decolonisation process under the 1998 Noumea Accord had concluded with rejection of full sovereignty in last December’s third referendum on independence from France.

All key parties were invited to chart the next step, but the pro-independence Kanak and Socialist National Liberation Front (FLNKS) — who reject the third referendum as they did not participate because of the covid-19 pandemic — stayed away from the gathering, labelled the Convention of Partners.

• READ MORE: Other reports on New Caledonian decolonisation

In September, the Overseas Minister Jean-Francois Carenco said the FLNKS would be at the Paris talks.

In comments after the meeting, Borne said she was delighted with the spirit of responsibility and consensus of the exchanges, describing them as “faithful to the tradition of the agreements of 1988 and 1998”.

She said as a transition period begins, the delegates noted the need to base their reflections on the lessons of experience.

Borne said they agreed to launch an audit of the decolonisation to assess the support given to New Caledonia by the French state since 1988 with regard to the international law.

Broaden the discussions
She said it was agreed to broaden the scope of the discussions beyond the institutional questions, by also addressing the vital subjects for the future of New Caledonians.

These include equal opportunities and social cohesion, economic development and employment, energy sovereignty and ecological transition as well as common values and reconciliation.

Borne said working groups would be organised in Noumea by the High Commissioner in November.

The work is expected to be concluded in mid-2023, with her adding that it would only succeed if all political forces contributed to it.

Last year, Paris announced plans for a new referendum in June on a new statute, but the project has been deferred in the face of the pro-independence parties’ refusal to engage in the process outlined by France.

To progress negotiations, Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin will travel to New Caledonia in November together with Carenco, who in September was the first French minister to visit Noumea since the formation of the Borne government in June.

Got ‘best they could’
One of New Caledonia’s members of the French National Assembly, Nicolas Metzdorf, said they got the best they could in the absence of the pro-independence politicians.

He said with a timetable and a working method, he hoped they would come back to the discussion table.

Metzdorf said if they wanted to add working groups of their own, they had every opportunity to do so.

None of the parties making up the FLNKS attended the talks in France because in part they refuse to recognise the vote as the legitimate outcome of the decolonisation process.

The FLNKS has signalled that its discussions with Paris will have to centre on ways to complete the territory’s decolonisation.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

Louis Kotra Uregei, an emblematic and radical figure in the independence struggle in New Caledonia, has died aged 71, announced the Union of Kanak and Exploited Workers (USTKE) in a statement.

Nicknamed LKU or “Loulou”, this representative of New Caledonian militancy died on Thursday night after a long illness.

Originally from the small island of Tiga, in the Loyalty archipelago, Louis Kotra Uregei founded USTKE, the very first independence union, in 1981.

• READ MORE: Nouvelle-Calédonie : Louis Kotra Uregei, fondateur de l’USTKE, est décédé
• Future of Kanaky New Caledonia
• Other reports on the Kanak independence movement

Three years later, the USTKE participated in the creation of the Kanak and Socialist National Liberation Front (FLNKS).

In 1988, the day after the hostage-taking in Ouvéa, which killed 21 people, Uregei had been part of the independence delegation sent to Paris to negotiate with the French State and signed the Matignon-Oudinot agreements.

While the USTKE became the second largest trade union force in New Caledonia, Uregei, known for his outspokenness and his radical methods, gradually moved away from the FLNKS and approached anti-globalisation circles.

‘Man of conviction’
In 2007, he founded the Labour Party, in the presence of José Bové, of which he would be the representative at the congress, from 2009 to 2019.

The independence party and member of the FLNKS Caledonian Union paid tribute on Friday to “an independentist leader, who did not mince his words . . .  and who knew how to remind today’s generation of leaders where and how it had to be fought to be heard on the national and international stage”.

The French High Commissioner in New Caledonia, Patrice Faure, hailed the memory of “a committed activist and a man of conviction”.

France’s new Minister for Overseas Territories Jean-François Carenco was told to “find a solution” to the political impasse in New Caledonia.

Carenco started his visit at the Assembly of the Loyalty island region, to the west of the mainland.

He was greeted in local Kanak customary way, after which the party made its way to the site of the Easo Cliffs, a favoured tourist destination.

• READ MORE: France defers referendum on new statute for New Caledonia Kanaky
• Other New Caledonia politics reports

Congress member Wali Wahetra said the minister’s speech mentioned a right to sovereignty as it is written in the French Constitution.

“It was pretty positive, but that is the goal of the meeting. He talked about the right to self-determination which I greatly appreciated.

“He also said that it’s a right that is inscribed in the constitution, that stays — that will continue to stay and will come.

“Mr Carenco said in his speech that President Macron told him to ‘find the solution’.

‘We need a dialogue’
Wali Wahetra also said Carenco discussed that New Caledonia had signs of identity and signs of sovereignty but also the right of a referendum.

She said that the pro-independence parties were not planning another referendum

“We needed a dialogue, because the anti-independence parties are still holding onto the referendum date of July which has been proposed by Mr Lecornu.

“However, we are not on this calendar at all and we absolutely don’t want another referendum as part of France.”

Carenco has deferred the referendum date from July 2023. He said a vote would happen once everybody was ready, noting there had been no dialogue for two years to advance the issue.

The minister was due to meet the New Caledonian territorial government President Louis Mapou’s party, National Union of Independence, and the Kanak and Socialist National Liberation Front (FLNKS).

‘Not an option’
He has been touring all three provinces of New Caledonia to meet each pro-independence camp.

Anti-independence groups say the date of the referendum on a new statute for the territory “is not an option but an engagement”.

They have written to Carenco to remind him that French President Emmanuel Macron has validated a new statute and that New Caledonians have a clear constitutional path.

The head of the anti-independence party Popular Movement Caledonia, Gil Brial, told La Premiere television that Carenco’s response did not match France’s obligation to commit to the July 2023 date.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

The President of New Caledonia’s Congress Roch Wamytan is set to be re-elected for another one-year term after the party holding the balance of power said it would again vote for him next week.

The ethnic Wallisian and Futunan party, Pacific Awakening, has confirmed its decision to vote for Wamytan of the pro-independence Caledonian Union, saying there was a need for stability to advance reforms.

The party has three of the 54 seats, with the anti-independence camp holding 25 and the pro-independence parties 26.

• READ MORE: Other New Caledonia politics reports

It said that 30 years of political bipolarity over the question of independence from France has led to growing problems in everyday life, be it in terms of employment or cost of living.

Earlier this week, the anti-independence parties named the MPC (Caledonian People’s Movement) leader Gil Brial as their candidate for Tuesday’s election of a Congress president.

When politicians of the newly formed Pacific Awakening party were first elected in 2019, they vowed to foster a balance of power by supporting an anti-independence candidate to lead the government and a pro-independence candidate to be in charge of the Congress.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

The holding of New Caledonia’s third and final referendum on independence from France during the covid-19 pandemic last year is being challenged in the European Court of Human Rights.

Les Nouvelles Calédoniennes reports a voter wants France to be convicted in the court in Strasbourg for holding the vote in December despite pleas for its deferral.

Pro-independence parties had repeatedly asked for the vote to be postponed to this year because of the impact of the covid-19 outbreak on the indigenous Kanak people.

• READ MORE: Other reports on the New Caledonia independence votes

Paris dismissed the concerns.

More than 96 percent of the electorate rejected independence in the December vote, which was marked by a low turnout after the pro-independence parties called on their supporters to abstain.

The pro-independence side continues to refuse to accept the result as the legitimate outcome for the people to be decolonised.

Last month, France’s highest administrative court rejected a claim by the Kanak customary Senate that the impact of the pandemic was such that the referendum outcome was illegitimate.

The court found that neither constitutional provisions nor the organic law made the validity of the vote conditional on a minimum turnout.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

There have been mixed opinions from New Caledonia’s communities after the third and final referendum returned a 96 percent vote against independence.

While anti-independence parties welcomed the victory, the pro-independence Kanak side refuse to recognise the result.

The turnout of potential voters was especially low among the Kanak community because most Kanaks abstained from the voting process.

• READ MORE: New Caledonia votes to stay with France, but it’s a hollow victory that will only ratchet up tensions
• Why New Caledonia’s final independence vote could lead to instability and tarnish France’s image in the region
• Betrayal of Kanaky decolonisation by Paris risks return to dark days

In the two previous referendums before the boycott — in 2018 and 2020 — the result was very close with the pro-independence vote rising.

Turnout at this year’s referendum was estimated at only 43.87 percent of the eligible electorate, compared to 85.69 percent in the 2020 plebiscite.

Aile Tikoure, an activist from the pro-independence Palika Party, says many Kanaks boycotted the referendum because France refused to postpone it until next year, despite the covid pandemic.

“No, no I haven’t voted. Instructions were clear from the party, I didn’t vote,” he says.

“I don’t consider this as an act of war. The government didn’t speak to the Kanaks — that is no respect for our fight.

“They still haven’t understood us after 30 years of dialogue that this country would be nothing without us. They want to do this without us. It’s an insult. We feel left out from any political discussion.”

Boycott was ‘a victory’
Another pro-independence activist, Florenda Nirikani, says the boycott was a victory.

“I would say it’s a victory from the performance of our Kanak community and a good performance — the word has been followed at 56 percent,” she says.

“Now that victory is over we are at a stage where people are asking what do we do now?

“We are at a stage of questioning. Two days after the referendum there a lot of people that ask me well what do we do now. We were prepared for the 97 percent that said no.

“We are here to say we Kanaks are proud that the level of absence in the referendum was a good victory.”

Florenda Nirikani does not expect to see violence as a result of the referendum result.

However, pro-independence activists have made it clear that there will be no negotiating with the current Macron government. The French presidential elections are due in April.

No talking to French officials
“No, things have stayed calm and I don’t think we will see violence. However, in the days or the weeks to come there will be some questioning from the activists.

“There has been a word out not to talk to a single French government official so negotiations will not happen between Kanaks and the current French government.

“[French Overseas Minister Sebastien] Lecornu [has been] here in New Caledonia last week. The customary Senate has refused to meet with him and some customary officials have boycotted meetings.

“The position expressed is that no Kanak represententatives will meet with the current government,” Nirikani says.

Negotiations between the Kanaks and French state are not expected to resume before next year’s French presidential election.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

A committee has been set up in New Caledonia to support the re-election of French President Emmanuel Macron although he is yet to announce whether he will again seek office next April.

The committee is headed by the mayor of Noumea Sonia Lagarde, who said Macron’s support for New Caledonia had been “flawless”.

More than 96 percent voted against independence in last Sunday’s vote, which was boycotted by the pro-independence camp because of the impact of the pandemic.

• READ MORE: Other New Caledonia independence reports

She said that if New Caledonians voted in three referendums to stay with France, it was due to Macron’s commitment.

However, in both the previous referendums in 2018 and 2020 contested by the pro-independence supporters, the defeat in the plebiscites was narrow, with only 10,000 votes separating the two sides last year.

In 2017, in the decisive second round of the last presidential election, Macron secured 53 percent of New Caledonia’s votes against 47 percent for Marine Le Pen of the National Rally.

In the mainly anti-independence Southern Province, only 46 percent voted for Macron.

In the first round, he came a distant third behind Francois Fillon and Le Pen, with just 13 percent support.

French military vehicle vandalised
A French military truck has been destroyed in an arson attack in the north of New Caledonia.

Prosecutors say two individuals carrying a canister of petrol entered a parking area in Poindimie and set the truck alight.

Another vehicle had been doused with petrol but the two were chased away by an officer on guard before they could set it on fire.

He used an extinguisher to prevent the rest of vehicle park catching fire.

Prosecutors say investigators are being sent from Noumea to track down the two suspects.

If caught and convicted, they risk jail terms of up to 10 years.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

France’s Overseas Minister Sebastien Lecornu has called on New Caledonia’s political parties to draw up proposals on a new statute for the territory within the French republic, following last Sunday’s referendum.

More than 96 percent of New Caledonians voted against independence in a referendum boycotted by Kanaks with barely 43 percent of voters taking part, less than the number who voted for independence last year.

It was the last of three referendums, which concluded the 1998 Noumea Accord on the territory’s decolonisation.

• READ MORE: New Caledonia votes to stay with France, but it’s a hollow victory that will only ratchet up tensions

The accord’s provisions on the territory’s institutional make-up remain in place until a new statute has been adopted.

While the anti-independence camp and Paris welcomed the referendum result, the pro-independence parties said the vote was bogus and that they would not recognise its outcome.

They plan to challenge its legitimacy both nationally and internationally.

After previously saying they would not enter any talks with France until after next year’s presidential election, the Palika Party has now excluded any talks on what it called an “umpteenth accord” for a statute for New Caledonia within France.

Lecornu accepts pro-independence parties’ delay
Lecornu accepted the pro-independence parties’ position to refuse formal talks until after the French election.

However, Philippe Gomes of the anti-independence Caledonia Together Party said the New Caledonia question should not be put on stand-by until the French election.

He said it was all very well to accommodate the pro-independence camp, but a balance must be struck to include the anti-independence side.

The pro-independence side said it did not feel bound by the plan to draw up a new statute by June 2023, which was to be put out for a vote.

Pacific Awakening, a mainly Wallisian party that holds the balance of power in New Caledonia’s Congress, said a final statute should be proposed that would offer shared sovereignty.

Lecornu wrapped up his New Caledonia visit yesterday, and said there will be a broad consultation of civil society and the public for a stocktake and to hear about their aspirations.

Call to deport academic condemned
New Caledonia’s pro-independence FLNKS party has come to the defence of a Noumea law professor targeted by an online petition.

The petition seeks the deportation of Professor Mathias Chauchat to France, and was launched by pro-French supporters in New Caledonia and immediately signed by hundreds of people after Monday’s televised post-referendum debate.

Dr Chauchat had outlined instability emanating from Sunday’s controversial referendum, and pointed to France’s decolonisation record, which is marked by violence.

In a statement, the FLNKS said it rejected threats and attacks on intellectuals, adding that France prides itself as the home of human rights.

It said calls to live together should not only be in a political programme, but be part of everyday gestures and deeds.

And that New Caledonia needed its intellectuals to free itself from the country’s dependence on France.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

The French government’s decision to press ahead with the third and final referendum vote for self-determination in Kanaky New Caledonia was “unjust and unfair” for the Indigenous Kanak people, says a coalition of nine pan-Pacific civil society groups.

The groups have also accused the French state of “colonial manoeuvring in the middle of a health crisis” to gain a “premeditated outcome”.

“This process has been unjust, culturally insensitive, disingenuous and falls completely short of the spirit of the Noumea Accord. This referendum is clearly null and void,” said a statement by the Pacific Civil Society Organisations (CSO).

• READ MORE: France’s New Caledonia policy labelled a ‘catastrophe’ by left leader
• New Caledonian referendum result rejected – not wish of ‘silent majority’
• New Caledonia votes to stay with France, but it’s a hollow victory that will only ratchet up tensions
• Why New Caledonia’s final independence vote could lead to instability and tarnish France’s image in the region
• Betrayal of Kanaky decolonisation by Paris risks return to dark days

“Despite numerous calls from state and non-state actors to postpone the referendum to 2022, the French government used its colonial manoeuvring in the middle of a health crisis — where almost half the population has tested positive for covid-19 — to arrive at a premeditated outcome.”

The statement said the referendum was not consultative and it did not serve the “common good of the Kanaky population, who exercised their right to not participate in the pseudo-referendum”.

“This non-participation of pro-independence indigenous people should have been a clear signal to France of the public mood, recognising that the poll results cannot be received as the genuine resolve of the Kanak people.

“Unfortunately, it appears that there is a blindspot in Paris, where the results of the referendum are being celebrated as the legitimate will of the Kanaky New Caledonia population – although over 103,480 or more than 56 percent of the registered did not participate in the vote.

Call for UN to ‘void’ referendum
“We join the Indigenous people of Kanaky and other pro-independence activists and organisations in the region, such as the Melanesian Spearhead Group, in calling for the United Nations to declare the outcome of the referendum null and void.

“We also call on the Pacific Islands Forum Ministerial Committee as observers to New Caledonia to ensure an independent, candid and just observation report of the referendum vote is made public.”

The civil society coalition statement is enorsed by the Diverse Voices and Action (DIVA) for Equality, Fiji; Fiji Council of Social Services; Fiji Women’s Rights Movement; Global Partnership for the Prevention of Armed Conflict–Pacific; Melanesian Indigenous Land Defence Alliance; Pacific Conference of Churches; Pacific Network on Globalisation (PANG); Peace Movement Aotearoa; and Youngsolwara Pacific.

A leftwing candidate in the French presidential race, Jean-Luc Melenchon, says the outcome of New Caledonia’s independence referendum is a catastrophe.

He held a news conference after several leading French politicians welcomed Sunday’s overwhelming rejection of independence, with just 3.5 percent voting for it.

Melenchon, leader of the France Unbowed (La France Insoumise) party, said the government had destroyed the consensus process of the 1998 Noumea Accord by imposing a referendum date and triggering a huge abstention by the pro-independence side.

• READ MORE: New Caledonian referendum result rejected – not wish of ‘silent majority’
• New Caledonia votes to stay with France, but it’s a hollow victory that will only ratchet up tensions
• Why New Caledonia’s final independence vote could lead to instability and tarnish France’s image in the region
• Betrayal of Kanaky decolonisation by Paris risks return to dark days

The third and last vote was marked by a turnout of 43 percent, which was about half of last year’s figure and meant an illegitimate outcome of a meticulous, decades-long decolonisation process.

He said he now hoped the government would not go from what he described as one “brutality” to the next and warned against imposing change.

Melenchon said President Emmanuel Macron was wrong to claim right after the plebiscite that the accord was no longer legally valid.

“The current statute of New Caledonia is in the French constitution. it cannot be changed without changing the constitution. Therefore the territory’s government and assembly remain the legitimate institutions,” he said.

Melenchon said by pushing through the referendum, the government made a serious error and had returned the territory to the rifts of the late 1980s.

“We are now in what is being considered a conflict zone by the Anglosaxon alliance of New Zealanders, Americans and Australians. If the French government thought it could get rid of a problem by being more present and quicker in the Cold War it wants to have with China, it has made a big mistake,” he said.

Lecornu acknowledges divisions
French Overseas Minister Sebastien Lecornu said the binary dimension of New Caledonia’s politics, as seen after Sunday’s independence referendum, satisfied no-one.

Speaking in Noumea, he said the legal validity of the vote could not be questioned because under the Noumea Accord, there was no obligation to vote and no quorom.

However, he said politically speaking, the abstention by the pro-independence camp showed a division.

The minister, who had set the referendum date despite objections by pro-independence leaders, said the vote was a historic moment.

Lecornu planned to meet the New Caledonian government and Congress this week to discuss the government’s financial situation.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

Kanaky New Caledonia is holding a final referendum on independence from France today. But not everyone wants to see the vote go ahead

The third and final independence referendum in the French Pacific territory has descended into controversy, with Indigenous Kanak leaders and Pacific Island nations calling for a delay or boycott.

France says the vote is legitimate and can go ahead today, despite a year-long mourning period for the dead from covid-19 and restrictions impacting campaigning.

• READ MORE: Betrayal of Kanaky decolonisation by Paris risks return to dark days
• Independence for Kanaky: A media and political stalemate or a ‘three strikes’ Frexit challenge? — Backgrounder
• I support Kanaky New Caledonian independence – but why I’m not voting
• Other New Caledonia referendum reports

It is the culmination of a 30-year peace process in the territory, which is 17,000km from Paris but only 1500km from Australia.

“Politically it’s binary, and it’s one way or the other, and how do you unify the whole country when it’s one way or the other? And that’s when it suddenly becomes an issue,” says Frederic Folliard, a New Caledonian citizen living in Brisbane.

He supports self-determination but is worried after all these years that the process will fail.

• Stefan Ambruster’s video report
• Stefan Ambuster’s text report

After three decades of frustratingly slow progress but with a measure of quiet optimism over the decolonisation process unfolding under the Noumea Accord, Kanaky New Caledonia is again poised on the edge of a precipice.

Two out of three pledged referendums from 2018 produced higher than expected — and growing — votes for independence. But then the delta variant of the global covid-19 pandemic hit New Caledonia with a vengeance.

Like much of the rest of the Pacific, New Caledonia with a population of 270,000 was largely spared during the first wave of covid infections. However, in September a delta outbreak infected 12,343 people with 280 deaths — almost 70 percent of them indigenous Kanaks.

• READ MORE: Independence for Kanaky: A media and political stalemate or a ‘three strikes’ Frexit challenge? — Backgrounder
  
• I support Kanaky New Caledonian independence – but why I’m not voting
• Other New Caledonia referendum reports

With the majority of the Kanak population in traditional mourning — declared for 12 months by the customary Senate, the pro-independence Kanak and Socialist National Liberation Front (FLNKS) and its allies pleaded for the referendum due this Sunday, December 12, to be deferred until next year after the French presidential elections.

In fact, there is no reason for France to be in such a rush to hold this last referendum on Kanak independence in the middle of a state of emergency and a pandemic. It is not due until October 2022.

It is clear that the Paris authorities have changed tack and want to stack the cards heavily in favour of a negative vote to maintain the French status quo.

When the delay pleas fell on deaf political ears and appeals failed in the courts, the pro-independence coalition opted instead to not contest the referendum and refuse to recognise its legitimacy.

Vote threatens to be farce
This Sunday’s vote threatens to be a farce following such a one-sided campaign. It could trigger violence as happened with a similar farcical and discredited independence referendum in 1987, which led to the infamous Ouvea cave hostage-taking and massacre the following year as retold in the devastating Mathieu Kassovitz feature film Rebellion [l’Ordre at la morale] — banned in New Caledonia for many years.

On 13 September 1987, a sham vote on New Caledonian independence was held. It was boycotted by the FLNKS when France refused to allow independent United Nations observers. Unsurprisingly, only 1.7 percent of participants voted for independence. Only 59 percent of registered voters took part.

After the bloody ending of the Ouvea cave crisis, the 1988 Matignon/Oudinot Accord signed by Kanak leader Jean-Marie Tjibaou and anti-independence leader Jacques Lafleur, paved the way for possible decolonisation with a staggered process of increasing local government powers.

A decade later, the 1998 Noumea Accord set in place a two-decade pathway to increased local powers — although Paris retained control of military and foreign policy, immigration, police and currency — and the referendums.

In the first referendum on 4 November 2018, 43.33 percent voted for independence with 81 percent of the eligible voters taking part (recent arrivals had no right to vote in the referendum).

In the second referendum on 4 October 2020, the vote for independence rose to 46.7 percent with the turnout higher too at almost 86 percent. Only 10,000 votes separated the yes and no votes.

Expectations back then were that the “yes” vote would grow again by the third referendum with the demographics and a growing progressive vote, but by how much was uncertain.

Arrogant and insensitive
However, now with the post-covid tensions, the goodwill and rebuilding of trust for Paris that had been happening over many years could end in ashes again thanks to an arrogant and insensitive abandoning of the “decolonisation” mission by Emmanuel Macron’s administration in what is seen as a cynical ploy by a president positioning himself as a “law and order” leader ahead of the April elections.

Another pro-independence party, Palika, said Macron’s failure to listen to the pleas for a delay was a “declaration of war” against the Kanaks and progressive citizens.

The empty Noumea hoardings – apart from blue “La Voix du Non” posters, politically “lifeless” Place des Cocotiers, accusations of racism against indigenous Kanaks in campaign animations, and the 2000 riot police and military reinforcements have set a heavy tone.

And the damage to France’s standing in the region is already considerable.

Many academics writing about the implications of the “non” vote this Sunday are warning that persisting with this referendum in such unfavourable conditions could seriously rebound on France at a time when it is trying to project its “Indo-Pacific” relevance as a counterweight to China’s influence in the region.

China is already the largest buyer of New Caledonia’s metal exports, mainly nickel.

The recent controversial loss of a lucrative submarine deal with Australia has also undermined French influence.

Risks return to violence
Writing in The Guardian, Rowena Dickins Morrison, Adrian Muckle and Benoît Trépied warned that the “dangerous shift” on the New Caledonia referendum “risks a return to violence”.

“The dangerous political game being played by Macron in relation to New Caledonia recalls decisions made by French leaders in the 1980s which disregarded pro-independence opposition, instrumentalised New Caledonia’s future in the national political arena, and resulted in some of the bloodiest exchanges of that time,” they wrote.

Dr Muckle, who heads the history programme at Victoria University and is editor of The Journal of Pacific History, is chairing a roundtable webinar today entitled “Whither New Caledonia after the 2018-21 independence referendums?”

The theme of the webinar asks: “Has the search for a consensus solution to the antagonisms that have plagued New Caledonia finally ended? Is [the final] referendum likely to draw a line under the conflicts of the past or to reopen old wounds.”

One of the webinar panellists, Denise Fisher, criticised in The Conversation the lack of “scrupulously observed impartiality” by France for this third referendum compared to the two previous votes.

“In the first two campaigns, France scrupulously observed impartiality and invited international observers. For this final vote, it has been less neutral,” she argued.

“For starters, the discussions on preparing for the final vote did not include all major independence party leaders. The paper required by French law explaining the consequences of the referendum to voters favoured the no side this time, to the point where loyalists used it as a campaign brochure.”

‘Delay’ say Pacific civil society groups
A coalition of Pacific civil society organisations and movement leaders is among the latest groups to call on the French government to postpone the third referendum, which they described as “hastily announced”.

While French Minister for Overseas Territories Sebastien Lecornu had told French journalists this vote would definitely go ahead as soon as possible to “serve the common good”, critics see him as pandering to the “non” vote.

The Union Calédoniènne, Union Nationale pour l’independence Party (UNI), FLNKS and other pro-independence groups in the New Caledonia Congress had already written to Lecornu expressing their grave concerns and requesting a postponement because of the pandemic.

“We argue that the decision by France to go ahead with the referendum on December 12 ignores the impact that the current health crisis has on the ability of Kanaks to participate in the referendum and exercise their basic human right to self-determination,” said the Pacific coalition.

“We understand the Noumea Accord provides a timeframe that could accommodate holding the last referendum at any time up to November 2022.

“Therefore, we see no need to hastily set the final referendum for 12 December 2021, in the middle of a worldwide pandemic that is currently ravaging Kanaky/New Caledonia, and disproportionately impacting [on] the Kanak population.”

The coalition also called on the Chair of the Pacific Islands Forum, Prime Minister Voreqe Bainimarama to “disengage” the PIF observer delegation led by Ratu Inoke Kubuabola. Forum engagement in referendum vote as observers, said the coalition, “ignores the concerns of the Kanak people”.

‘Act as mediators’
The coalition argued that the delegation should “act as mediators to bring about a more just and peaceful resolution to the question and timing of a referendum”.

Signatories to the statement include the Development Alternatives with Women for a New Era, Fiji Council of Social Services, Melanesian Indigenous Land Defence Alliance, Pacific Conference of Churches, Pacific Network on Globalisation, Peace Movement Aotearoa, Pasifika and Youngsolwara Pacific.

The Melanesian Spearhead Group (MSG) secretariat has called on member states to not recognise New Caledonia’s independence referendum this weekend.

Fiji, Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands and Vanuatu, which along with the FLNKS are full MSG members, have been informed by the secretariat of its concerns.

In a media release, the MSG’s Director-General, George Hoa’au, said the situation in New Caledonia was “not conducive for a free and fair referendum”.

Ongoing customary mourning over covid-19 related deaths in New Caledonia meant that Melanesian communities were unable to campaign for the vote.

Hopes now on United Nations
“Major hopes are now being pinned on a Kanak delegation of territorial Congress President Roch Wamytan, Mickaël Forrest and Charles Wéa who travelled to New York this week to lobby the United Nations for support.

One again, France has demonstrated a lack of cultural and political understanding and respect that erodes the basis of the Noumea Accord – recognition of Kanak identity and kastom.

Expressing her disappointment to me, Northern provincial councillor and former journalist Magalie Tingal Lémé says: “What happens in Kanaky is what France always does here. The Macron government didn’t respect us. They still don’t understand us as Kanak people.”

Dr David Robie covered “Les Événements” in New Caledonia in the 1980s and penned the book Blood on their Banner about the turmoil. He also covered the 2018 independence referendum.

A late legal bid to postpone Sunday’s independence referendum in New Caledonia has reportedly failed.

A leading anti-independence leader and president of New Caledonia’s Southern Province, Sonia Backes, said the highest French administrative court had rejected an urgent submission to defer the third and final independence referendum until next year.

The submission was filed by 146 voters and three organisations, arguing that campaigning has been hampered by the covid-19 pandemic.

• READ MORE: ‘Unthinkable’ referendum on New Caledonia independence challenged
• Emmanuel Macron’s dangerous shift on the New Caledonia referendum risks a return to violence
• Other Kanaky New Caledonia referendum reports

They said it was therefore “unthinkable” to proceed with such an important plebiscite.

In a post on social media, Backes said the vote would go ahead.

For weeks pro-independence parties have unsuccessfully lobbied Paris to delay the vote and they now say they will neither take part in the vote nor recognise its result.

France, which deems the pandemic to be under control, last week flew in almost 250 magistrates and judicial officials to oversee Sunday’s vote.

It also flew in about 2000 extra police, including riot squads, to provide security for the referendum.

A pro-independence delegation from New Caledonia has left for New York to raise its opposition to the referendum with the United Nations.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.