New Caledonia: signs of a slow return to normal

State of emergency lifted, curfew maintained and relative calm confirmed night after night: New Caledonia continued its fragile return to normal on Tuesday in the wake of an acute crisis, marked by seven deaths, roadblocks and damage.

Up to 3,500 law enforcement personnel in total will be deployed in this French archipelago in the South Pacific, which has been engaged in a process of emancipation since 1998. A draft constitutional law has triggered riots and there is no way out of the political crisis for the time being, due to lack of agreement between loyalists and separatists.

In the popular district of Montravel in Nouméa, mainly populated by the Kanak and Oceanian communities and which was at the forefront of the revolt, no roadblocks were erected on Tuesday. Smoke is still escaping from hangars that have been burning for days, under the gaze of mobile police stationed a little further away.

“It’s calming down”

In Dumbéa-sur-Mer, on the outskirts of Nouméa, a roadblock has been reduced to a simple speed bump and the surrounding activists appear relaxed. One keeps an ax in his hand, but no tension is palpable. Barricades remain erected elsewhere but the return to normal, even fragile, also seems to be felt by the people manning them. “The night was calm, yes. It’s calming down,” one of them admitted to AFP.

Stopped since May 14, Nouméa’s taxis are returning to service, the radio taxi association announced on Tuesday, the day after the resumption of road traffic in the area, which caused long traffic jams.

The bus network which serves Nouméa and Greater Nouméa, however, remains paralyzed. The Joint Urban Transport Union indicated on Monday that it hoped for a resumption “as soon as possible but too many roads are still impassable”. Another public service still affected by the dams is the collection of household waste.

Airport closed until June 2

But here too, a sign of a timid return to normal, the Nouméa town hall organized its very first collection tour on Monday since the outbreak of the crisis, but for “only three neighborhoods”, according to the municipality. In Dumbéa also, a dump truck was able to circulate for the first time on Monday, with the same constraints.

On Monday, the High Commission of the Republic (representative of the State), which reported 460 arrests, affirmed that the police had regained control “in the Médipôle districts (where the hospital is located, editor’s note), and Boulari in the commune of Mont-Dore”, northwest of Nouméa.

Nouméa international airport – La Tontouta -, closed to commercial flights since May 14, will remain closed at least until June 2. Schools will not reopen before mid-June. French people and foreign tourists stuck on the archipelago must continue to be evacuated. Since the start of the crisis, 1,200 people have been evacuated by plane and 270 New Caledonian residents have been able to return, according to the High Commission.

270,000 inhabitants in the archipelago

The state of emergency, established on May 15, was lifted on Tuesday at 5:00 a.m. (8:00 p.m. Monday in Paris). The lifting of these exceptional measures must “allow meetings of the different components of the FLNKS (main independence movement, editor’s note) and travel to roadblocks of elected officials or officials able to call for their lifting,” the presidency specified in night from Sunday to Monday.

On Saturday, the FLNKS affirmed that, “today, the main objective of the independence movement is to ease tensions and find lasting solutions for our country.” The curfew remains in force and the sale of alcohol remains prohibited, as does the transport and carrying of weapons – estimated at around 100,000 in the archipelago populated by some 270,000 inhabitants.

The detonator of the unrest was the vote in Paris for a constitutional reform providing for expanding the local electorate to around 25,000 people established for at least ten years in New Caledonia. The separatists are demanding the withdrawal of the reform, which has caused the worst violence in 40 years and awakened the specter of the “Events” which, from 1984 to 1988, had left nearly 80 dead and fear the plunge of New Caledonia into the civil war.

“No forced passage”

On Thursday, President Emmanuel Macron, traveling to the archipelago, announced that there would be “no forceful passage” but “no going back”. He made the end of the state of emergency conditional on a lifting of roadblocks, which is not yet the case everywhere.

Traveling to Berlin on Sunday, the head of state had to qualify his comments to the daily Le Parisien published the day before on the possibility of organizing a national referendum on the unfreezing of the electorate, which sparked new tensions in the ‘island. This possibility arises from a simple “reading of the Constitution” and is “not an intention”, he assured.

Emmanuel Macron wants to give priority to a “global agreement”, including in particular the future of the nickel sector, essential for the economy of the archipelago. He gave separatists and loyalists until the end of June to outline the start of an agreement.

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