Arrested with other independence activists, Christian Tein is the most visible figure of the Kanak insurrection last May.
Spokesperson for the Field Action Coordination Unit, he was placed in pre-trial detention and transferred to a prison in Mulhouse.
A decision which sparked new riots in New Caledonia.
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Their indictment seemed inevitable, but their incarceration in French prisons surprised everyone and sparked new riots. Seven of the eleven independence activists who were arrested last week were placed in pre-trial detention in mainland France overnight from Saturday to Sunday for their role in the insurrection which paralyzed New Caledonia for several weeks, causing the deaths of nine people and countless damages.
Among them: Christian Tein, the spokesperson for the Field Action Coordination Unit (CCAT), one of the most prominent figures in the mobilization against electoral reform, which separatists fear will marginalize the indigenous population. kanak in their own archipelago. Charged in particular with complicity in attempted murder and criminal association with a view to preparing a crime, he was imprisoned in Mulhouse.
A committed family
A pro-independence leader listened to on the ground, the stocky man with the soft face is not a newcomer in pro-independence circles. “Among the Tein, we are born with the Caledonian Union stamp, that’s how it is”jokes an activist from the UC, the oldest political party in the territory, quoted by AFP.
The father, Emmanuel Tein, grand chief of Ouen Island, attached to the commune of Mont-Doré in the southern suburbs of Nouméa, was himself elected from the UC to the territorial assembly and to the municipal commission , ancestors of the congress and the commune. The older brother, Tani Tein, today president of the customary council of the grand chiefdom of Mont-Doré, was involved in politics in the 1980s. As for the nephew, Dimitri Tein Qenegei, he is also one of the activists of the CCAT placed in pre-trial detention in France.
Fueled by the independence cause
Christian Tein belongs to the Kanak tribe of Saint-Louis. It is from this territory, in the commune of Mont-Doré, both tribe and neighborhood, that the protest against the unfreezing of the electoral law started, an independence stronghold where the protest remained the most heated until the end. The special correspondent of TF1, Michel Scott, was able to enter there at the end of last May, and meet Christian Tein who had just seen his house arrest lifted, after the lifting of the state of emergency . The man was in a hurry to reconnect with the field, and to resume direct dialogue with the activists.
The future independence leader was born in 1968, the last boy of ten children, and grew up in the shadow of the father figure, respected and known from the north to the south of Grande Terre. A youth between Ouen Island and the independence stronghold of Saint-Louis, where the Teins still reside. He was a child at the time of the first Kanak autonomy dreams, and a teenager during the insurrectional violence of the 1980s.
“Tonton Bichou”
The CCAT, of which he is the spokesperson, is a body created in November 2023, to coordinate the actions on the ground of different independence parties, affiliated with the FLNKS. This is the case of the Caledonian Union (UC), including Christian Tein, whom his comrades in struggle call “Tonton Bichou”, is the general commissioner. A party founded in 1953, and which for a long time followed a moderate line among the separatists, before a more radical turn in the 2000s.
Entering the UC as a simple activist, Christian Tein rose through the ranks to the point of becoming deputy general secretary and then general commissioner of the party in the 2010s. For around ten years, he has also held positions as political collaborator in institutions, the most recent with the president of the New Caledonian government, Louis Mapou. “We have never seen such a unifying man since Eloi Machoro”believes his big brother Tani, recalling the figure of this teacher killed by the police on January 12, 1985, and to whom the independence youth devote a real cult.
Spokesperson…and leader?
The offices of the Coordination Unit were set up directly in the UC premises in the Magenta district of Nouméa, marking the close proximity between the two bodies. If he is officially the “spokesperson” of the CCAT, Christian Tein is also considered by observers to be its de facto leader. The site was also one of the key places during the riots, where most of the meetings with independence leaders were held, testifies Michel Scott, senior reporter at TF1.
The movement, which has no legal existence and which everyone can take part in, quickly aroused enthusiasm, particularly among young people, who criticize the traditional independence parties for their compromises, while the CCAT page was still blank.
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This Monday, the CCAT demanded “liberation and immediate return” of its activists so that they are “judged on their land” and denounced the “colonial tactics” from France. The prosecutor in Nouméa justified this removal measure “due to the sensitivity of the procedure and in order to allow investigations to continue in a calm manner, free from any pressure or fraudulent consultation”. If the state of emergency was lifted at the end of May, the curfew established since the start of the riots has just been extended until July 1.
