State of emergency lifted, curfew maintained and relative calm confirmed night after night: New Caledonia continued its fragile return to normal on Tuesday in the wake of an acute crisis, marked by seven deaths, roadblocks and damage.
In total, up to 3,500 law enforcement personnel will be deployed in this French archipelago in the South Pacific, which has been engaged in a process of emancipation since 1998. A draft constitutional law has triggered riots and there is no way out of the political crisis for the time being, due to lack of agreement between loyalists and separatists.
The night from Monday to Tuesday was “relatively calm,” wrote the High Commission of the Republic (state representative) in a press release.
No barricades were set up on Tuesday in the popular district of Montravel in Nouméa, mainly populated by the Kanak and Oceanian communities and which was at the forefront of the revolt.
In Apogoti, as in Païta and Dumbéa-sur-Mer, at each dam, the watchword seems to be the same: let it pass, even if detours are still necessary due to debris blocking the road, causing numerous traffic jams.
Worry
Stopped since May 14, Nouméa taxis are resuming service, the radio taxi association announced on Tuesday, the day after the resumption of road traffic in the area, which also generated long traffic jams.
The bus network which serves Nouméa and Greater Nouméa, however, remains paralyzed.
Another public service still affected by the dams is the collection of household waste.
But here too, a sign of a timid return to normal, the Nouméa town hall organized its very first collection tour on Monday since the outbreak of the crisis, for “only three neighborhoods”, according to the municipality.
Tuesday, the High Commission of the Republic, which reported “nearly 500” arrests, assured that the clearance was progressing in Nouméa in “the sectors of Magenta, Tuband and the Wallisian home”, and that “the progress of the cleaning and the security of the main roads allows access to adjacent streets that were previously blocked.
Access to the urban area hospital was freed on Monday and secured, but being “focused on emergency management and the resumption of vital care”, the management of the establishment on Tuesday called on Caledonians “not to travel to the Médipôle except in emergency cases”.
Nouméa international airport – La Tontouta –, closed to commercial flights since May 14, will remain closed at least until June 2. Schools will not reopen before mid-June.
The smell of cold ashes is everywhere in Païta, “the worry” too, according to Franck Goubaïrate, a 50-year-old logistics operator, who deplores the loss of thousands of jobs.
“We hope to return to normal life but we know very well that it will take a little time,” says Martin Hmaen, the same age, who works in a surveyor’s office in Païta, whose city center has been ravaged by riots. The two men have been unemployed for 15 days.
Macron and the referendum
French people and foreign tourists stuck on the archipelago must continue to be evacuated. Since the start of the crisis, 1,200 people have been evacuated by plane and 270 New Caledonian residents have been able to return, according to the High Commission.
The state of emergency, established on May 15, was lifted on Tuesday at 5:00 a.m. (2:00 p.m. Monday in Montreal).
The curfew remains in force and the sale of alcohol remains prohibited, as does the transport and carrying of weapons – estimated at around 100,000 in the archipelago populated by some 270,000 inhabitants.
The detonator of the unrest was the vote in Paris for a constitutional reform providing for expanding the local electorate to around 25,000 people established for at least ten years in New Caledonia.
The separatists are demanding the withdrawal of the reform, which has caused the worst violence on the archipelago in 40 years and awakened the specter of the “Events” which, from 1984 to 1988, had left nearly 80 dead and fear the plunge of the New -Caledonia in the civil war.
On Thursday, President Emmanuel Macron announced during an on-site visit that there would be “no forceful passage” but “no going back”. He made the end of the state of emergency conditional on a lifting of roadblocks, which is not the case everywhere.
Traveling to Berlin on Sunday, the head of state had to qualify his daily remarks The Parisian published the day before on the possibility of organizing a national referendum on the unfreezing of the electoral body, which sparked new tensions on the island. This possibility arises from a simple “reading of the Constitution” and is “not an intention”, he assured.
Emmanuel Macron wants to give priority to a “global agreement”, including in particular the future of the nickel sector, essential to the economy of the archipelago. He leaves separatists and loyalists until the end of June to do so.