The President of the Government of New Caledonia, the independence activist Louis Mapou, accepted on Tuesday 27 August a fact-finding mission from the Pacific Islands Forum planned for October to take stock of the situation in his archipelago, marked by strong tensions for several months.
The Pacific Islands Forumor FIP, has taken up residence in the Kingdom of Tonga since Monday, August 26 and until Friday, to address several issues such as rising waters. The Caledonian crisis is also attracting the attention of the 18 Oceanian leaders, to the point that an FIP information mission will be organized in New Caledonia, which has been experiencing an insurrectional climate since May 13.
The principle of this mission received the green light from the Caledonian government during this 2024 forum. The President of French Polynesia Moetai Brotherson specified that this trip of Oceanian heads of state would take place in October.
Expected by the Member States earlier, this mission aims to draw up a general inventory of the Rock where tensions have led to the death of 11 people in recent months and the destruction of many businesses, schools and places of worship.
“The events that have taken place are harsh, extremely serious and contribute in a certain way to the instability of the region.“peaceful,” regretted Louis Mapou, the pro-independence president of the New Caledonian government. The latter had refused to host this mission before the meeting of the Pacific Islands Forum, arguing that “the (French) State had decided to organize it without speaking to New Caledonia“, he justified.
France had accepted the principle of this information mission, but refused to allow it to take the form of a “mediation mission“.
“It is a French community and therefore it is France which still has – and this is enshrined in the Noumea Accords – sovereign competence for foreign affairs and security in the territory of New Caledonia, therefore French territory.“, declared three days earlier Véronique Roger-Lacan, French ambassador for the Pacific and head of the French delegation to the 53rd Pacific Islands Forum.
For her, the underlying question of self-determination is already being studied within the United Nations, but Louis Mapou believes that this issue must also be addressed at the regional level by the member countries of the Forum, all independent except New Caledonia and French Polynesia.
“In none of the territories can the French State or the French government go against the principle of self-determination“, said the ambassador, who recalled that “decolonization was enacted in the organic laws which created the autonomy of French Polynesia and New Caledonia“. These two communities are thus equipped with their own Assemblies and governments.
In the eyes of the independence activists of the two archipelagos, who have demands in particular in the educational and cultural fields, the “decolonization” did not, however, come to anything. The Polynesian president, a moderate pro-independence figure, offered to play the role of mediator.
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