New Caledonia protesters, police spar ahead of Macron visit

SYDNEY/PARIS - Protesters in New Caledonia erected new barricades overnight in cat-and-mouse games with French police reinforcements, a pro-independence group said on May 22, ahead of the arrival of President Emmanuel Macron after the worst riots in 40 years.

Mr Macron is due to land in the French overseas territory in the Pacific on May 23 after government electoral reforms, passed a week ago, sparked riots that have killed six people and left a trail of destruction with looted shops, torched cars and buildings. Some leaders fear the change will dilute the vote of indigenous Kanak, who make up 40 per cent of the population.

The New Caledonia government said a large cyber attack, launched soon after the announcement of Mr Macron’s visit, had aimed to make internet services unavailable, with millions of e-mails sent to one address.

The attack had been stopped and its origin was unknown, territorial government official Christopher Gyges said in a live-streamed press conference on May 22.

“The different e-mails that were launched came from several countries at the same time. They wanted to clog the New Caledonia cable,” Mr Gyges said.

A source familiar with an initial probe by the Paris prosecutor’s office into the attack said there was nothing so far to suggest foreign interference, despite a local official saying most of the IP addresses involved originated from Russia.

France’s High Commission said Mr Macron would be accompanied by ministers for defence and interior for May 23’s talks, and some 100 members of the GIGN, or elite tactical response group, were deployed in New Caledonia.

More than 1,000 security reinforcements from France were on the ground, some 90 barricades were cleared from roads and relative calm returned overnight despite two fires in Noumea, the High Commission said on May 22. Around 20 arrests were made on May 21; 280 people in all have been arrested in the past week.

Mr Jimmy Naouna, from the Front de Liberation Nationale Kanak et Socialiste (FLNKS) of New Caledonia, said the pro-independence political party had called for protesters to remove roadblocks restricting movement and supply of food in the capital Noumea, though they continued to appear overnight.

“The police forces go around clearing these barricades but right after that, the youth put them up again, so it’s almost a cat-and-mouse game. We will see what happens when Macron gets here,” Mr Naouna told Reuters in an interview.

“I am worried about my city, which is widely destroyed notably in the northern district... Noumea today is a martyr city, a city under siege,” Noumea Mayor Sonia Lagarde, a member of Macron’s Renaissance party, told France 2 TV.

Ms Lagarde said she hoped Mr Macron’s visit would help “cool things down”, and that he would announce a postponement of a joint session of France’s National Assembly and Senate to ratify the electoral reform passed by the lower house.

The approved changes would allow French residents who have lived in New Caledonia for 10 years to vote in provincial elections – a move local leaders fear will dilute the Kanak vote but the government says is needed so elections are democratic.

Electoral rolls were frozen in 1998 under the Noumea Accord, which ended a decade of violence and gave a pathway to gradual autonomy, which critics say has now been derailed.

FLNKS, the party of New Caledonia territorial President Louis Mapou, wants Paris to scrap the electoral reform.

“We are expecting if he travels to Kanaky he will make some strong announcement that he is withdrawing this electoral Bill, but if he is just coming here as a provocation that might just turn bad,” Mr Naouna said, using the island’s indigenous name.

The Field Action Coordination Cell, organiser of the protests, called on social media for demonstrators to display Kanak flags and banners opposing the electoral amendment.

“We don’t know what Macron and his team are coming to do but we remain mobilised and confident for Kanaky,” it said.

Mr Macron will meet elected officials and local representatives on May 23 for a day of talks focused on politics and the reconstruction of the island, his aides said.

France annexed New Caledonia in 1853 and gave the colony the status of overseas territory in 1946. New Caledonia is the world’s No. 3 nickel miner but the sector is in crisis and one in five residents live below the poverty threshold.

The island is more than 16,000 km from mainland France and 1,500 km east of Australia. REUTERS