New Caledonia must not become “the Wild West”, said French President Emmanuel Macron in an interview with the local press broadcast on television today.
“I decided to come here because we must never let violence take over,” the head of state explained to the Nouvelle-Calédonie public channel La 1ère in a statement released during his visit yesterday to the French overseas community of Pacific.
Macron justified the huge resources used, in particular the 3,000 internal security forces, with the need for a “return to calm” in the country. “The Republic must regain authority on all points: there is a republican order, it is the security forces who guarantee it”, underlined Macron, ensuring that he wants to bring the archipelago back to the “path of pacification”.
Noumea Airport remains closed until Tuesday
But in the meantime, Nouméa international airport will remain closed to commercial flights until 9am local time on Tuesday (11pm Monday in Italy), the New Caledonian authorities announced.
This brings the closure of the airport to two weeks, decided the day after the outbreak of violent unrest in the French archipelago in the Pacific and since then extended several times.
On Tuesday, New Zealand and Australia began chartering special flights to evacuate hundreds of tourists trapped since the start of the crisis shaking New Caledonia, in a context of protests against electoral reform. Australia will continue these evacuation flights today on Friday, Australian Foreign Minister Penny Wong said on X last night.
Seventh victim in the clashes, a 48-year-old shot by the police
A man was killed in New Caledonia after President Macron’s visit to the archipelago ended yesterday. This is the seventh victim since the riots began 10 days ago. The person killed, the prosecutor announced, is a 48-year-old man, who was shot by the police in Dumbéa.
An investigation was opened into the facts and the officer was placed in custody. According to the reconstruction, a patrol of policemen was attacked by about fifteen people and one of the officers made use of his service weapon.
Macron opens to a ‘global dialogue’
In Noumea Macron guaranteed that the electoral reform at the origin of the revolt in New Caledonia will not be imposed by Paris
against the will of the inhabitants of the Pacific archipelago. However, the president has dictated an essential condition for any opening of dialogue: a stop to the violence, the barricades be dismantled, a return to a climate of peace and security. This is the ninth day of violent riots that have caused 6 deaths and hundreds of injuries.
Before leaving the archipelago, where the last 3 nights passed relatively calmer than the previous ones, Macron promised that the situation will be taken stock of the institutional future of the island “within a month”. The opening is to a “global” dialogue and not only on the chapter of the controversial electoral law approved last week by deputies and senators and destined, in principle, to be submitted for approval by the chambers gathered in “Congress” in Versailles for constitutional revision.
It is a question of broadening the electoral base of voters, fixed on those who – at the time of the Nouméa agreement in 1998 – were already registered on the lists. A delicate issue, because with the expansion of the number of voters, the minority of natives, the Kanaki (41% of the inhabitants of the former colony, then the French overseas region) fear losing all hope of winning a referendum on independence .
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