A thousand additional police and gendarmes will be deployed in New Caledonia, a French archipelago in the South Pacific where the situation remains “very tense” on Thursday after three nights of violent riots, despite the deployment of the army and the establishment of ’emergency state.
The serious crisis which has shaken the archipelago since Monday caused a fifth victim on Thursday, with the death of a gendarme accidentally killed by a colleague during a security mission.
After two nights of conflagration against a backdrop of revolt against electoral reform, the night from Wednesday to Thursday was less violent but the situation remains “very tense”, declared Prime Minister Gabriel Attal from Paris, announcing new reinforcements in this archipelago colonized by France in the 19th century.
The government will “deploy a thousand additional internal security personnel, in addition to the 1,700 personnel who are already on site”, he detailed, deploring the persistence of “looting, riots, fires, attacks” for which the government wants the “heaviest” sanctions.
Army deployed, TikTok banned
Under the state of emergency, which has been in force since Thursday at 5 a.m. local time (2 p.m. Wednesday in Quebec) and authorizes the authorities to restrict certain freedoms, the army has deployed in the archipelago with in particular mission to “secure” the ports and airport of Nouméa, closed since Monday.
The social network TikTok, popular with the rioters, has for its part been banned on the archipelago.
The riots broke out Monday evening after a pro-independence mobilization against a constitutional reform of the electoral college, rejected by representatives of the indigenous Kanak people.
They left four dead, including a 22-year-old gendarme hit in the head by a shot on Wednesday. Two men aged 20 and 36 and a 17-year-old girl are also among the victims, according to authorities.
A second gendarme also died Thursday after being hit by an “accidental shot” from a colleague, according to the authorities.
In total, 64 gendarmes and police officers have been injured since Monday, according to a report on Thursday, and more than 206 people have been arrested.
Aborted dialogue
The “resumption of political dialogue” on the island that President Emmanuel Macron is calling for has hit a snag with the cancellation of a videoconference that the head of state was to hold with local elected officials on Thursday.
This meeting was canceled in particular because the “different actors did not wish[ent] not engage in dialogue with each other at the moment,” said the Élysée.
The return to order is a “prerequisite for the continuation of dialogue”, however warned Gabriel Attal on Thursday, while the government targeted certain separatists.
Ten “leaders” of the Field Action Coordination Cell (CCAT), the most radical fringe of the Kanak and Socialist National Liberation Front (FLNKS), were thus placed under house arrest, according to the Minister of the Interior, Gérald Darmanin , which evokes a “mafia” and “violent” organization.
In a press release published Wednesday, the leaders of the CCAT had argued that “the abuses committed […] were not necessary”, but that they were “the expression of the invisible people of society who suffer inequalities head on”.
Looting and fires
If the night from Wednesday to Thursday was less violent, the Nouméa area was once again the prey of looting and fires. This is where local residents began to organize the protection of their neighborhoods and erected makeshift barricades. Due to a lack of supplies in stores, food shortages cause very long queues in front of stores.
Violence, “we have to go through it, to blow up because we are not heard,” said a young resident, who refused to give his name.
The rioters “live with the feeling of being excluded, anger, failure and they are only waiting for an opportunity” to fall into violence, Daniel Goa, the president of the party, said on Radio France Internationale (RFI). separatist Caledonian Union (UC), judging them “without political conscience”.
A point of tension for the separatists, the constitutional reform project drawn up by the government aims to expand the electorate in provincial elections to all native Caledonians and residents for at least ten years. Supporters of independence judge that this thaw risks “even further minoritizing the indigenous Kanak people”.
Without making a direct link to the violence, the Minister of the Interior also accused Azerbaijan of interference in New Caledonia, with Baku responding by denouncing “unfounded” accusations.
Azerbaijan, at odds with Paris, invited the separatists from New Caledonia and other French overseas territories to Baku in July 2023.