After four months of unrest that left 13 people dead, including two last week, the authorities have decided to put the Pacific island under lockdown, fearing a new outbreak of violence: the police (6,000 personnel deployed) are everywhere, demonstrations and gatherings are banned and a series of restrictions imposed, including a broad curfew running from 6 p.m. to 6 a.m.
“Humiliating,” fumes Lupa (who does not wish to give his surname), a 54-year-old Kanak who was ordered by the police to put out his brazier in the streets of Dumbéa, a northern suburb of the capital, where he planned to cook a traditional dish in public, as is his custom. “They are depriving me of September 24,” a public holiday on the “Rock,” “while July 14 was celebrated,” he ruminates. “They are preventing us from doing what we want on this day of mourning when my ancestors were here before the French arrived in New Caledonia” in 1853, continues the “big brother” of the neighborhood. About twenty people, Kanak flag in hand, were surrounded by the police there in the early morning.
Unable to organize the usual commemorations, thousands of independence supporters circulated in the streets of Greater Noumea, flag in hand or hanging from their cars. Many wandered in clusters and formed micro-gatherings, de facto tolerated, as in the sensitive district of Vallée du Tir where about fifty young people played pétanque and chatted, totally indifferent to the encirclement by the police of their square bathed in reggae music.
Stifle the gathering. “The authorities’ strategy is to stifle the mass gathering. The state is afraid that the Kanak people will gather,” analyses Dede Bouama, a “facilitator” of the neighborhood, his traditional tunic tied into a bandana. “Not respecting this date reminds us of the history of the takeover. The French came and said ‘This is our home’. Today, with the repression, history is repeating itself,” he thinks.
With other activists, he has undertaken to “raise awareness” among young people about the history of September 24: a Kanak trauma now celebrated by a “Citizenship Festival”, established in 2004. “Young people will be able to better anchor themselves on the land, know their history well in order to know how to fight,” he explains.
While the archipelago has been experiencing regular upheavals since May, the High Commissioner of the Republic Louis Le Franc admits to having opted for a “massive deployment” of law enforcement for this dreaded anniversary, in a territory where “it doesn’t take much to get things going again”.
Live together. He welcomes a system that has prevented any overflow at this stage. On the embers of the riots, “the social terrain remains incandescent”, observes the State representative. It was therefore necessary to “dissuade some, reassure others”. Those who need to be reassured are the residents of European origin tempted to take up arms, he says, and who have barricaded themselves since the first hours of the unrest in the upscale neighborhoods.
Around them flutter the blue, white and red flags. Near the Magenta airfield, in the east of Noumea, dozens of people defy the bans behind the barrier made of tires, unhinged doors and other concrete blocks, still filtering access to the housing estate, planted with palm trees and hibiscus flowers. These “vigilant neighbors” sing the Marseillaise, aperitif cakes in hand. In no way a “provocation”, defends Willy Gatuhau, the spokesperson for the CRC, the Citizen Resistance Collective: “We are in France! This 171st anniversary is that of the annexation of New Caledonia to France, we have a duty to remember”, he pleads.
“It’s a choice that we made three times by referendum,” he explains. This year, the Citizenship Day has a bitter taste, however, the former elected official acknowledges. “What citizenship are we talking about? We still have to want to be a people together. I don’t have the impression that this is the will of the opposing camp.” “People must relearn to live together, there are deep fractures,” also agrees High Commissioner Le Franc.
Challenge. The Tuband district in Noumea sums up this challenge. In a few hundred meters, it concentrates opulent villas with coconut trees and immaculate walls topped with barbed wire and protected by blue, white, red stone blocks and council housing mostly occupied by indigenous populations, where around thirty people are busy around a barbecue under Kanak flags and a large poster bearing the image of “Che” Guevara.
On a sign at the entrance, this date painted in red: “24.09.1853. Kanak mourning”.
Shahzad Abdul
© Agence France-Presse
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