Accepted by the government, this “high-level investigation mission” was to help resolve the crisis that has been shaking the archipelago for three months.
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A postponement without a date announced, a few days before its launch. The Pacific Islands Forum announced, Wednesday, August 21, the postponement of its mission ““high-level investigation” in New Caledonia, due to a dispute between the Caledonian authorities and Paris. This Forum, which brings together 18 Pacific States and associated territories, including the archipelago and French Polynesia, thus wanted to help resolve the crisis, which has been shaking New Caledonia for three months and which has left eleven dead.
This mission encountered “issues relating to the regularity of procedure and protocol which must be resolved”the Forum further states in a press release. The president of the Congress of New Caledonia, the independence activist Roch Wamytan, was particularly upset that France was trying to impose its program on the mission – which he considers as “an unacceptable form of humiliation” according to his comments reported by New Zealand radio RNZ.
The French government had accepted the principle of this mission, requested, according to the Forum, by the president of the Caledonian government, the elected independence leader Louis Mapou. Since the examination in the French Parliament of a draft electoral reform in New Caledonia, riots have broken out in the archipelago, denouncing in particular a marginalization of the indigenous Kanak population.
