EGN NEWS DESK
President Emmanuel Macron of France is making a shock journey to New Caledonia, a French territory within the South Pacific that has been gripped by lethal unrest for greater than per week, to carry talks with pro-independence leaders.
Six folks have died and lots of have been injured since demonstrations by the Indigenous Kanak folks turned violent early final week. The French authorities have despatched lots of of cops into New Caledonia, enforced a curfew and banned TikTok, however they’ve struggled to revive calm within the territory.
Some native leaders expressed doubts that Mr. Macron, who’s scheduled to reach on Thursday, may defuse the tensions. “Here comes the fireman after he set the hearth!” Jimmy Naouna, a spokesman for FLNKS, an alliance of pro-independence events, wrote on social media.
Many within the Kanak group have accused Mr. Macron and France of reneging on an settlement that had put New Caledonia on a doable path to independence. The supply of competition is an modification to the French Constitution that will unfreeze voter rolls in New Caledonia — a transfer that will probably tip a referendum on self-determination in France’s favor. Mr. Macron has refused calls to withdraw the modification.
His journey would be the first go to to the territory, the place about 270,000 folks stay, by a senior French chief since violence broke out final Monday. Mr. Macron will attempt to “renew the thread of dialogue” throughout the go to, Prime Minister Gabriel Attal informed the French Parliament on Tuesday.
In current days, the police have arrested about 300 folks and used armored automobiles to clear barricades in Noumea, the capital, and across the territory’s airport. Nicolas Mattheos, a police commander in New Caledonia, has stated some barricades had been booby-trapped with fuel canisters.
On Tuesday and Wednesday, navy planes from Australia and New Zealand evacuated lots of of overseas vacationers from New Caledonia.
“I nonetheless really feel like a prisoner,” Pierre, a resident of Noumea who requested that his final identify not be used for security causes, stated on Wednesday. “After 9 days, nothing has modified.”
The violence in New Caledonia has been among the most intense because the Nineteen Eighties, when a Kanak rebellion led to a civil struggle. The peace agreements that adopted referred to as for 3 independence referendums. The pro-independence sentiment was surprisingly robust within the first two and topped out at about 47 % of the vote. The Kanaks boycotted the third vote in 2021 after Mr. Macron refused to delay it throughout the pandemic.
The territory, whose economic system relies on nickel mining, has new strategic worth to France because the United States and China jostle for affect within the Pacific.
Leaders in New Caledonia have referred to as for holding one other vote, and the proposed constitutional modification in France has angered them. The measure should nonetheless be cleared by a joint session of the 2 homes of the French Parliament.
The particular particulars of Mr. Macron’s journey, together with whom he was going to fulfill with, weren’t instantly clear.
“The nation is in flames and blood and the president of the republic is arriving,” Roch Wamytan, the president of the New Caledonian Congress, who helps independence from France, informed native information media on Wednesday. “The format of this go to isn’t good.”
