SYDNEY, May 16 (Reuters) - Armed forces were protecting New Caledonia’s two airports and port after a third night of violent riots that have killed four people, the Pacific Island’s top French official said on Thursday morning, adding at least four alleged instigators were under house arrest.
In three municipalities on the French-ruled island, gendarmes faced about 5,000 rioters, including between 3,000 and 4,000 in the capital Noumea, France’s High Commissioner Louis Le Franc said in a televised press conference.
Two hundred people have been arrested, and 64 gendarmes and police injured, while road barricades put up by the protesters were causing a “dire situation” for medicine and food for the population, he added.
Jeebus ! The number of people commenting here who don’t have any knowledge of the situation is annoying.
France vowed in the Noumea Accord of 1998 to gradually give more political power to New Caledonia. Since, under the agreement, New Caledonia has held three referendums over its ties with France, ALL rejecting independence. Now, the last referendum in 2021 had something like 94% people voting to stay French BUT the independentists had called for a boycott of the referendum, and so turnout was only about 44%. In 2018, New Caledonians rejected independence at 57%. In 2020 it was 53%. In both these votes, the turnout was 80+% .
So this is not a case of France imposing control on the local population, there seems to be at least a small majority of people who wish to stay French.
New Caledonians have French nationality, they vote in all french national elections (presidential, parliament, etc. ) and could absolutely vote in local elections if they moved to say Paris or Marseille.
The thing is, the electoral lists in New Caledonia were frozen in 1998, and so anyone who came to live there legally after that still can’t vote in local elections. This is now being reversed, allowing citizens who have lived there for at least 10 years to vote, and that’s why the independentist party is rioting. They fear the independentist vote would be diluted by these newcomers, which presumably would vote to stay French.
Edit : To add some context on the independentists, they are mostly of the Kanak people, the aboriginal population of the islands. Today, they represent about 41% of the ~300k people living in New Caledonia.They are usually poorer and benefit from a lesser level of education than Neocaledonians of European or mixed descent.