New Caledonia: Two Dreams, One Political Future

NOUMEA, NEW CALEDONIA — Noumea’s international airport was deserted on my arrival in early July. It was the calm after the storm. In mid-May, unrest had erupted across the islands of New Caledonia. Pro-independence activists had protested in rage at electoral reforms adopted by the French Parliament, more than 16,000 kilometers away in Paris, that would have changed voter demographics in the French overseas territory in favor of loyalists.

“The French Government still has a colonial strategy in New Caledonia,” Maurice, a member of the Kanak and Socialist National Liberation Front (FLNKS), told me later in Noumea.

Nearly two months after the protests began, French gendarmes in black riot gear and dark sunglasses eyed our shuttle bus as it drove through the new airport checkpoint. Rows of coiled barbed wire lined the roadsides. Barricades and debris had been cleared along the highway, but Indigenous Kanak activists left verge-side messages. A large sheet of iron propped in view of oncoming traffic proclaimed: “Stop the Colonial Repression.” Then, on a hillside overlooking the road, a group of youths sat in front of a large wooden replica of Jesus crucified on the cross.

On our way to the city, the bus detoured into an outlying suburb and we abruptly stopped in front of barricades blocking the street. A group of sun-hatted Caldoche, or European settlers, brandished plastic cups of coffee as they controlled the traffic going in and out. They cheerfully waved us through.

One of my fellow passengers, a local returning home, looked at me knowingly: “We must defend the suburbs,” he exclaimed.

There is deep anxiety among those who have made their lives in this small island society of about 290,000 people. “In the first week [of the unrest], there was not enough police. People were very afraid and they put up their own barricades in their neighborhoods,” recounted Catherine Ris, president of the University of New Caledonia.

Melanesian islanders, known as Kanaks, comprise about 40 percent of the population on New Caledonia and European settlers about 29 percent.

The anger of predominantly Kanak pro-independence supporters at France’s move – since aborted – to expand the territory’s electoral roll to include another estimated 25,000 recent residents powered street protests, then riots that divided the city into zones under siege. Police and activists fought in the streets and homes and businesses were gutted by arson. The riots ebbed after French President Emmanuel Macron agreed to suspend the controversial bill on June 12, but then the arrest and transfer of eight pro-independence leaders to jails in France inflamed further retaliation.

There have been 10 deaths, damage is estimated at more than $1 billion, and about 7,000 people have lost jobs. The tourism industry has suffered major losses as visitors scrambled for flights out. With the economy severely hit, Ris predicted that the worst is still to come: “We know that the consequences will be very deep in the next months. There will be a long-term impact of what has happened. There will be a spread of poverty around the city in the next weeks and months,” she said.

The landscaped city park in downtown Noumea is bordered by patisseries and chic fashion boutiques. The streets usually throng with holiday makers, but now they are mostly desolate and many shops remain shut. The hotels, however, and upmarket bars and restaurants by the waterfront are full of French police reinforcements flown out from France to restore order.

But Kanaks say that sustainable peace is dependent on their grievances being addressed.

On the city outskirts, Indigenous residents organized a roadside campaign. There was an air of camaraderie. From a picnic table they waved and shouted to cars speeding past and honking their horns.

Bernard (his name has been changed), 40, told me about the protests. It was France’s unilateral decision to make electoral changes without their consent that had driven people onto the streets, he said. But this was also, for him, the most recent in a long litany of historical wrongs.

“Before, in the 1980s, there were also events with the French state and, at that time, there was a forced peace,” Bernard said. A pro-independence uprising against French authorities in the 1980s spiraled into a civil conflict across the islands. Subsequently French and local leaders signed the Noumea Accord in 1998. It granted the territory greater autonomy, a restricted electoral roll consisting of Kanaks and only long-term immigrants, and a referendum on its political future.

The Noumea and the previous 1988 Matignon Accord also pledged government action to address socioeconomic disparities between Kanaks and non-Kanaks. “There are inequalities because of the state and people are very angry about the inequalities," Bernard said. "There is high unemployment and the policy of giving Kanaks more employment opportunities is not happening in reality."

New Caledonia has nickel resource wealth and one of the highest GDPs per capita in the Pacific Islands, at $35,745. But the Indigenous unemployment rate is estimated at about 38 percent, compared to the territory-wide rate of 11.2 percent. And New Caledonia’s poverty rate of 19.1 percent rises sharply to 45.8 percent in the rural Loyalty Islands Province, where more than 70 percent of the population are Kanak.

“Many families cannot afford to send their children to school. Many families do not have the money and so many do not finish school and don’t have qualifications or diplomas,” Stelios, a quietly spoken young Kanak man, told me as he watched over his two young children in Noumea’s central park.

“I want independence, because it will bring liberation and support the rights and dignity of the Kanak people,” Stelios added.

As an economist, Ris has closely studied inequality in New Caledonia. The main reason for high Kanak unemployment is low levels of education, Ris told me when I interviewed her six years ago, just prior to the first independence referendum in 2018. Then she was upbeat about signs of improvement among Indigenous students.

“It was very encouraging to see that, since the Matignon Accord in 1988 to about 2000, the gap really reduced, but from 2000 to now there has not been much change,” she said.

The stagnation in their lives parallels the frustrations of many Kanak campaigners about their elusive dream of self-determination. Three referendums have been held on the question of independence, all with pro-France outcomes.

In the first two votes in 2018 and 2020, 43.33 percent and 46.74 percent of voters said yes to independence. But the last referendum in 2021 was boycotted by Kanaks, who had asked for the vote to be postponed due to the impacts of COVID-19. Amid the boycott, the vote to remain part of France soared to 96.5 percent.

Macron declared that “New Caledonia will therefore remain French.” But Roch Wamytan, the pro-independence president of New Caledonia’s Congress at the time, rejected the result, declaring: “This referendum is the referendum of the French state, not ours.”

Since then, the positions of separatists and loyalists have become increasingly polarized, leading to accusations of radicalism on both sides. “There must be a ban on radical parties and radical views from the far-right that want France to stay in Kanaky and to use more repression through French laws and the use of the gun,” Bernard declared.

On July 7, people across the capital turned out for the second round of voting in the French national election. At the Town Hall, truck-loads of police parked at a strategic distance, while voters filed in and out.

Five minutes away, the mood was calm, but subdued, as people congregated for morning coffee at Port Moselle’s fresh produce market on the bay’s edge. Here, Marcieux, a Frenchman, who has lived in the islands for 30 years, said he wouldn’t be participating in the election.

“I didn’t vote because I don’t support either candidate. I am for peace. Many people here want peace, but they don’t speak out in public,” he said.

Ris is concerned that moderate voices in local politics are being lost. Some staunch loyalists “hope that the French state will go further and be a stronger presence here,” she said, while “on the pro-independence side, we do not hear the moderate people anymore.”

She claimed that the burning down of the home of Victor Tutugoro, a prominent FLNKS leader, in the North Province on June 26 was evidence of this. “That was a warning, because he has been more moderate about his reforms. That’s a big risk, the people who could won’t do anything because they are afraid for their own security," Ris said.

Bridging the chasm of political and social divisions is now a priority. Emmanuel Tjibaou, an Indigenous leader recently voted in as one of the territory’s two new members in France’s National Assembly, has publicly called for dialogue between all political parties. He is a focus of growing hope among Kanaks.

But the challenge of creating one future from two competing dreams is further away on the horizon. Talks will continue between France and local leaders to decide the territory’s future governance. But New Caledonia is an important strategic, military, and economic asset for France in the Pacific and Blake Johnson at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute believes that France is unlikely to agree to independence soon.

“I would expect to see much of the same tensions and pushes for greater autonomy in the coming years unless another referendum on independence is agreed by the French government,” he said.

Yet much is unknown about what will happen in the next few months. “Nobody is able to say today how this will all end up, or when," Ris said. "We are in a huge context of instability and uncertainty."