‘Deportation’ of activists from New Caledonia to mainland France throws fuel on separatist fire
The transfer of seven New Caledonian pro-independence activists to prisons in mainland France following the recent unrest has fuelled a new wave of violence in the French Pacific territory since Saturday. The group behind the recent protests is now making the return of these “political prisoners” a new condition for peace on the troubled archipelago. Gilles Caprais reports from New Caledonia’s capital Nouméa.
It is unacceptable in the extreme for the French to transfer political prisoners to the French mainland off New Caledonia and the manner in which they were arrested was equally unacceptable…
The last time the CCAT tried to organise a press conference, on Wednesday June 19th, the police seized the opportunity to arrest several of its leaders. This was the first item on the agenda for the next such gathering. “These political deportations are colonial practices that have been carried out before in history,” says Dominique Fochi, secretary general of the Caledonian Union (UC), the leading independence party, which created the CCAT in November 2023 before later involving other political and trade union organisations.
…arresting Leaders at a press conference and then transferring those leaders off the Island?
FFS!
The coverage by the New Zealand media over the brutal crack down in New Caledonia by the French on the indigenous people as they erupt in protest at France’s naked gerrymandering of electoral law has been depressingly shallow.
To date most mainstream NZ media (with the exception of Māori media and the excellent Dr David Robie) have been focused on getting scared Kiwi tourists back home, very few have actually explained what the hell is going on!
This sudden eruption of protest follows a corrupt French law allowing French people to vote after only 10 years living there.
This law is a direct attack on Kanak sovereignty, it’s a purely gerrymandering response to ensure a democratic majority to prevent any independence referendum.
While no one else is allowed in there, the French are using heavy handed tactics…
Pacific civil society and solidarity groups today stepped up their pressure on the French government, accusing it of a “heavy-handed” crackdown on indigenous Kanak protest in New Caledonia, comparing it to Indonesian security forces crushing West Papuan dissent.
A state of emergency was declared last week, at least six people have been killed — four of them indigenous Kanaks — and more than 200 people have been arrested after rioting in the capital Nouméa followed independence protests over controversial electoral changes
In Sydney, the Australia West Papua Association declared it was standing in solidarity with the Kanak people in their self-determination struggle against colonialism.
…we should not as a Pacific Island Nation be standing idly by while the bloody French are giving the indigenous people the bash!
We need to be asking what the hell has France’s elite troops being doing while no one is watching! The New Zealand Government must ask the French Ambassador in and put our concerns to them directly.
Calm must come back but there has to be a commitment to the 1998 Noumea Accord which clearly stipulates that only the Kanak and long-term residents prior to 1998 would be eligible to vote in provincial ballots and local referendums. To outright vote against this as the French National Assembly did last week is fucking outrageous and will add an extra 25 000 voters into the election dramatically changing the electoral demographics in New Caledonia to the disadvantage of indigenous Kanaks who make up 42 percent of the 270,000 population.
This was avoidable, but the French are purposely trying to screw the scrum and rig the outcome.
We should be very clear that is unacceptable.
Fuck our very narrow focus on just getting Kiwis out of New Caledonia with no reflection whatsoever on what the French are doing!
Fuck the French!
Martyn – Poor New Caledonia…the French Government is not especially open to new ways of doing things.
Macron obviously wants to leave his mark on French politics. But could he not use a new crayon? Is this a special French Realpolitik? I thought that mainland France was having talks with the citoyens of Nouvelle-Caledonie* and they have been juggling with the matter for some time – the name Fosse comes to mind.
The French Constitution has been revised many times. The current Constitution of France was adopted on 4 October 1958. It is typically called the Constitution of the Fifth Republic (French: la Constitution de la Cinquième République),[1] and it replaced the Constitution of the Fourth Republic of 1946 with the exception of the preamble per a 1971 decision of the Constitutional Council.[2] The current Constitution regards the separation of church and state, democracy, social welfare, and indivisibility as core principles of the French state. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constitution_of_France
I wonder if the feature of indivisibility leads to problems in decision-making affecting New Caledonia.
No individual and no part of the French population can assume the right to exercise sovereignty that belongs to French citizens as a whole. The people exercises its decision-making power through the representatives it has elected or by referendum.15 Tīh 2022
Principles of the Republic – elysee.fr
elysee.fr https://www.elysee.fr › french-presidency › principles-o…
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Caledonia
…The earliest traces of human presence in New Caledonia date back to the period when the Lapita culture was influential in large parts of the Pacific, c. 1600–500 BC or 1300–200 BC.[12] The Lapita were highly skilled navigators and agriculturists.[13]…
Pro-independence Kanak parties use the name (la) Kanaky (pron. [(la) kanaki]) to refer to New Caledonia, a term coined in the 1980s from the ethnic name of the indigenous Melanesian Kanak people who make up 41% of New Caledonia’s population….
In July 2010, the Congress of New Caledonia voted in favour of a wish to fly the Kanak flag of the independence movement FLNKS alongside the French tricolour, as dual flags of the territory. The wish, legally non-binding, proved controversial….
Another referendum was held in October 2020, with voters once again choosing to remain a part of France.[39] In the 2018 referendum, 56.7% of voters chose to remain in France. In the 2020 referendum, this percentage dropped with 53.4% of voters choosing to remain part of France…
Customary Authority (has many features and may be of interest to Maori in NZ/AO.)
This is an internal French problem. Let’s concentrate on our own house before we lecture others.
Google the French atrocities in Algeria and Indochina- they would have even made the Waffen SS blanch.
The West has tested their nuclear weapons in the Pacific including driving indigenous peoples from their home islands for that purpose, committed a terrorist attack in NZ (Rainbow Warrior), enslaved Pacific peoples (‘blackbirding’), and yet the Pacific countries are told that China is the real enemy, LOL!
We don’t hear much about nuclear energy growing. There have been two unexpected deaths of women preparatory to official meetings giving serious consideration of unhealthy management and/or unsatisfactory, unsafe design. This on top of Mururoa and reports of leakage. And what about Mururoa and the surrounding Pacific peoples? Here is info I have gathered for when you have time to dip into it, if you know little re what’s going on as I do.
About Mururoa or Moruroa: Recorded discovery by westerners in 1767. Used as atomic bomb testing site 1966. Had various ship visits. In 1826 was found deserted, so was it used as part of their Pacific ‘estate’ by the locals? In 1834 all but three inhabitants were killed. The atoll was largely uninhabited by locals in later years.
Blackbirding could have resulted in depopulation. Blackbirding ships began operations in the Pacific from the 1840s which continued into the 1930s…These blackbirded people were called Kanakas or South Sea Islanders…The demand for this kind of cheap labour principally came from European colonists in New South Wales, Queensland, Samoa, New Caledonia, Fiji, Tahiti, Hawaii, and New Zealand, as well as plantations in Peru, Mexico, and Guatemala. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackbirding
It is understandable that the Kanakas and indeed all Pacific Islanders on New Caledonia and other French territories could feel it is time to have more autonomy over their lives.
(Dick Scott’s book ‘Would a Good Man Die?’ illustrates provocations and insulting attitudes.)
…It’s the story of the murder of the highly authoritarian New Zealand administrator on Niue in the 1950s Cecil Hector Larsen and the subsequent fight to save the men responsible from the gallows. :Reviewer Jeremy Rose
https://books.scoop.co.nz/2008/07/05/pacific-elder-statesmans-reading-material/
About Dick Scott. https://newsroom.co.nz/2020/01/29/dick-scott-a-portrait-by-his-daughter/ And I’ll throw in this report about Scott and Parihaka free! Interesting example of our take on our own history and Maori. https://terangiaoaonunui.pukeariki.com/story-collections/taranaki-stories/dick-scott-his-own-parihaka-journey)
About Mururoa and tests:
France urged to clean up deadly waste from its nuclear …
The Guardian
https://www.theguardian.com › … Whakamāoritia tēnei whārangi
7 Pēp 2012 — 193 nuclear tests carried out on the Mururoa and Fangataufa atolls between 1966 and 1996 have left a dangerous legacy.
Is Mururoa atoll still radioactive?
50 years after Mururoa protests: Still no idyllic Pacific …
Nuclear tests at Moruroa and Fangataufa ceased in 1996 due to international protest, but the atolls remain restricted military territory 27 years after the tests. Scientists report about half of the radioactive strontium-90 and cesium-137 and all of the plutonium still remain in the archipelago’s air, water and soil.6 Hun 2023
50 years after Mururoa protests: Still no idyllic Pacific stopover
Yachting New Zealand
https://www.yachtingnz.org.nz › news › 50-years-after-
Environmental Effects of French Nuclear Testing
cyberplace.org.nz http://canterbury.cyberplace.org.nz › … Whakamāoritia tēnei whārangi
The 120 underground tests conducted at Moruroa have in effect turned it into a longterm waste dump. … In the case of a “safe” bomb, or a “successful …
French Nuclear Testing in the Pacific
jstor https://www.jstor.org › stable
7 Hūr 2023 — Mururoa rock. Underground tests are conducted at the bottom of shafts bored to a depth of 500 to 1,200 metres into the basalt core …
technical report – International Nuclear Information System (INIS)
International Atomic Energy Agency
https://inis.iaea.org › NCLCollectionStore › _Public PDF
certain safety trials) above and beneath the atolls of Mururoa and Fangataufa in the Tuamotu. Archipelago of French Polynesia. All French testing ceased on …
I note the French are very strong on nuclear power, and weapons. In a modern state needing energy, power there is likely to be a push to nuclear; the French have the know-how.
France has 18 commercial nuclear power plants with a total of 56 operable reactors.
https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/country-profiles/countries-a-f/france
Nuclear availability in France fell to a 30-year low in 2022 after a stress corrosion problem took a swathe of reactors offline, compounding the struggles of neighboring countries who had to cope with reduced gas flow from Russia.6 Hep 2023
Resurgent nuclear calms French winter power market – Reuters
https://www.reuters.com › business › energy › resurgent-…
As of early September 2022, 32 of France’s 56 nuclear reactors were shut down due to maintenance or technical problems. In 2022, Europe’s driest summer in 500 years had serious consequences for power plant cooling systems, as the drought reduced the amount of river water available for cooling.
Nuclear power in France – Wikipedia
https://en.wikipedia.org › wiki › Nuclear_power_in_Fran…
As of May 2024, there were 440 nuclear reactors in operation in 32 countries around the world. The United States had the largest number of nuclear power reactors in operation at the time, at 94 units.-3 rā i mua
Nuclear power plants in the world 2024 | Statista https://www.statista.com › … › Energy
What’s happening back at base in France? We should read this and see how the vote splitting goes – denicracy isn’t easy we all know.
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/world/520955/france-s-far-right-now-dominant-political-force
There will be much talk in the coming days of centrist and left-wing candidates standing aside in round two in order to concentrate the anti-RN vote – and much wailing about the disappearance of the old Front Républicain (when the other parties used to agree to keep out the far-right).
But it would take an upset of monumental proportions to overturn the only conclusion that can be drawn from this first round of voting, which is that RN is now indisputably the dominant political force in France.
Nonetheless, what remains to be decided over the next week is still quite significant.
It is the difference between a far-right government having a free hand because of an outright majority in the National Assembly and a far-right government unable to do very much at all because the Assembly is split.
Right now, the seat projections give the RN anything from 260 to 310. Given that 289 seats is an absolute majority, there is obviously a lot still to play for.
To limit the damage to their cause, French President Emmanuel Macron’s centrists and the left-wing New Popular Front alliance will call on their supporters to vote tactically in round two on 7 July. Even if their own candidate has been knocked out, voters will be urged to choose whoever it is in their constituency that is up against the RN.
Comments are closed.