{"id":87062,"date":"2024-05-20T15:11:44","date_gmt":"2024-05-20T05:11:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/?p=87062"},"modified":"2024-05-20T16:47:15","modified_gmt":"2024-05-20T06:47:15","slug":"france-new-caledonia-and-the-indo-pacific","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/france-new-caledonia-and-the-indo-pacific\/","title":{"rendered":"France, New Caledonia and the Indo-Pacific"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/figure>\n

How France manages the first outbreak of serious violence in New Caledonia in 40 years will affect not only its future role there but its acceptance as a resident Pacific, and Indo-Pacific, power.<\/p>\n

The violence of indigenous independence supporters, many of them very young, signals that the inconclusiveness of earlier peace agreements risks taking New Caledonia back to the bloodshed of the 1980s. The unrest is targeting the capital, Noumea, and its population of Europeans, who mostly support staying French.<\/p>\n

The wounds are deep.\u00a0The peace agreements that ended violence in the 1980s largely succeeded because of difficult and constant compromises by the French state, loyalist parties and independence parties.\u00a0Mutual trust in the promises of those agreements to work towards self-determination underpinned the French state conducting three referendums in New Caledonia from 2018 to 2021.\u00a0The first two were impeccably organised and showed, respectively, that 56.7 percent and 53.3 percent opposed independence.<\/p>\n

But the\u00a0state dropped the ball\u00a0in a third referendum in 2021, sticking with an intended voting date despite indigenous requests for postponement.\u00a0At the time, hundreds of Kanaks had died from Covid-19. Their leaders said they could not ask their people to campaign or vote when their traditions required lengthy mourning rituals.\u00a0The resulting indigenous boycott saw the count of opposition to independence soar to 96.5 percent.<\/p>\n

Since then,\u00a0divisions have deepened.\u00a0Loyalists, backed by the government in Paris, say all three votes were valid and want to cement the territory as part of France. Independence groups reject the third vote and seek another; some refuse to participate in discussion about the future.\u00a0They rejected Macron\u2019s offer of\u00a0a chemin de pardon<\/em> (path of forgiveness) when he visited in July 2023. They did not attend a meeting he convened, and their supporters did not turn out for his major speech there, sending a strong message of discontent.<\/p>\n

Macron then threatened unilateral action unless local parties came to an agreement.\u00a0Informal discussions between some parties from each side in December\u00a0ended with wide divergences, including over a further independence vote and voter eligibility.<\/p>\n

To set a deadline, Macron introduced legislation postponing local elections from April 2024 to December 2025, and he put forward another bill that would amend the French constitution, imposing broader voter eligibility and thereby diluting the Kanak voting share, unless locals reached agreement before the end of June.<\/p>\n

Demonstrations\u00a0erupted into violence<\/a>\u00a0on 13 May, the day France\u2019s National Assembly debated imposing from Paris the enlargement of voter eligibility.\u00a0The destruction perpetrated by young Kanaks signalled not only to France and loyalist parties who were their targets but also\u00a0to Kanak leaders\u00a0and\u00a0neighbouring countries the\u00a0depth of distress of a new generation who felt disrespected and excluded from determining the future of their homeland.<\/p>\n

How France responds will be decisive for its sustainable future in New Caledonia.<\/p>\n

New Caledonia\u2019s population is about 270,000.\u00a0In the census of 2019, indigenous Kanaks were 41 percent, Europeans 29 percent and other Pacific islanders and \u2018others\u2019 composed the remaining 30 percent. Another census is due this year.<\/p>\n

Kanaks may now exceed 45 percent, since there have been net departures of about 2000 people a year since 2015, almost all presumably non-indigenous. Moreover, some people in the \u2018others\u2019 category, which includes the sub-categories of \u2018mixed\u2019 and \u2018Caldeonian\u2019, would also be Kanaks. \u00a0And the Kanak share of the population will rise, especially since recent developments may contribute to an increase in non-Kanak departures.<\/p>\n

While New Caledonia\u2019s neighbours have quietly supported the peace agreements, they remain concerned about the interests of the islanders in the non-self-governing French territory. Some of them took New Caledonia to the United Nations Decolonisation Committee in 1986, ensuring annual UN scrutiny of the territory and France\u2019s dealings with it since then.\u00a0The Pacific Islands Forum (PIF) has regularly sent missions monitoring implementation of the Noumea Accord and observed each referendum, expressing serious reservations on the third.\u00a0\u00a0The Melanesian Spearhead Group (Papua New Guinea, Fiji, Vanuatu, Solomon Islands and New Caledonia\u2019s FLNKS independence coalition) was formed in the mid-1980s specifically to support Kanak independence claims.<\/p>\n

With the eruption of violence, their silence has broken.\u00a0Making Australia\u2019s highest-level statement in decades,\u00a0Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said\u00a0Australia was closely monitoring the situation and encouraged all parties to work together constructively to shape the institutional future of New Caledonia.\u00a0PIF Secretary-General Henry Puna\u00a0said he was not surprised by the riots, noting it was unfortunate that the third referendum had been allowed to go ahead amid the pandemic. PIF chair and Cook Islands Prime Minister Mark Brown said New Caledonia and French Polynesia had been included in the forum \u2018in recognition of their calls for greater autonomy coming from their people\u2019, and supported providing help to prevent conflict.\u00a0Vanuatu Prime Minister and Melanesian Spearhead Group\u00a0 Chair Charlot Salwai publicly opposed France\u2019s constitutional change and urged a return to the spirit of the peace agreements and the sending of a dialogue mission led by a mutually respected person.<\/p>\n

France has done much to regain the acceptance and trust of the region in recent decades.\u00a0Responding to island governments\u2019 visceral opposition to its policies in the 1980s, France abandoned nuclear testing in the region and gave greater autonomy to its Pacific territories.\u00a0It did so by respecting local governments and people.<\/p>\n

Macron has articulated an Indo-Pacific vision for France that\u2019s\u00a0firmly based\u00a0on its sovereignty in the Pacific. But, to maintain France\u2019s claims as an Indo-Pacific power, he must listen to the large and growing indigenous minority in its pre-eminent Pacific territory, New Caledonia. And he must listen to the appeals of Pacific island governments, so they and France can move forward together with humility and respect.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

How France manages the first outbreak of serious violence in New Caledonia in 40 years will affect not only its future role there but its acceptance as a resident Pacific, and Indo-Pacific, power. The violence …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":258,"featured_media":87064,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[291,921,891],"class_list":["post-87062","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general","tag-france","tag-new-caledonia","tag-violence"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nFrance, New Caledonia and the Indo-Pacific | The Strategist<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/france-new-caledonia-and-the-indo-pacific\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"France, New Caledonia and the Indo-Pacific | The Strategist\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"How France manages the first outbreak of serious violence in New Caledonia in 40 years will affect not only its future role there but its acceptance as a resident Pacific, and Indo-Pacific, power. 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