A-Infos (en) France, OCL: NEW CALEDONIA - The colonial constant of the French state (ca, de, fr, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

The riots which broke out in New Caledonia on May 13 are commonly 
presented as a break with the "peace process" initiated with the 
Matignon agreements in 1988 and that of Nouméa in 1998. They are in any 
case a logical consequence of these agreements, because they allowed the 
French state - governed in turn by the right, the left or the center - 
to keep New Caledonia under its control while they were supposed to make 
possible its accession to independence .
In recent weeks, New Caledonia has experienced an insurrectional 
situation (see Box 1 ), which was triggered by the constitutional bill 
that the government had concocted to modify an electoral body specific 
to the archipelago. This text adopted by the Senate on April 2 was to be 
voted on by the National Assembly on May 14, then by the two Chambers 
meeting in Congress before June 30. The dissolution of the Assembly 
decided by Macron the day after the European elections reshuffled the 
cards: since Congress could no longer be convened in time, he announced 
on June 5 that he would "suspend" the bill in order to "give full force 
to dialogue on the ground and to the return to order" on the Caledonian 
territory. So, was this just a Jupiterian "bad blow"?

This is what the discourse of the separatists and their supporters 
suggests. The Kanak and Socialist National Liberation Front (FLNKS) 
blamed Macron for the riots for having sought to "force through" its 
bill. Thus, the general secretary of its main component, the Caledonian 
Union (UC), declared on 21 May: "The government's practice breaks with 
the method that has allowed New Caledonia to live in peace for the past 
thirty-five years, following the Matignon Accords in 1988 and then the 
Noumea Accords in 1998 (see box 2) , that is to say, respect for 
consensus between the parties and the impartiality of the State."

BOX 1
The social tsunami of spring 2024

On May 13, the end of the "Ten Days for Kanaky" organized by the Cellule 
de coordination des actions de terrain (CCAT, created in November 2023 
by independentists to coordinate the mobilization against the reform of 
the electoral body) turned into a riot: roads blocked, stores looted or 
set on fire, cars burned, stone throwing... While clashes took place 
between young people and law enforcement in several neighborhoods of 
Nouméa, the capital of the territory, loyalist militias set up 
roadblocks to "protect" other neighborhoods. According to the report 
established on June 16 by the High Commissioner of the Republic in New 
Caledonia, there were nine dead (including two gendarmes), hundreds of 
people injured and 1,187 arrested. Two mutinies also took place at 
Camp-Est, the prison in Nouméa (overcrowded with 95% Kanaks and other 
Oceanians). 570 establishments (town halls, schools, social services 
premises, etc.) were reportedly destroyed or damaged in a few days, and 
the damage is estimated at 1.5 billion euros. Since all goods are 
imported into the archipelago, shortages quickly appeared. According to 
the New Caledonia Chamber of Commerce and Industry, on June 3, 5,000 
people lost their jobs due to the riots and 15,000 will find themselves 
on partial unemployment (i.e. a quarter of Caledonian salaried jobs). A 
curfew was imposed from May 14 to June 17, a state of emergency was 
declared by Macron on the 15th, and the TikTok network was suspended. 
3,500 members of the "security forces" were still deployed in mid-June 
in the territory to prevent them from being reinstalled by separatists 
once the roadblocks had been evacuated by the police.

In fact, the recent Caledonian conflagration is part of the line of 
successive Kanak revolts against the French state, since the latter made 
the archipelago one of its colonies in 1853. It is a social revolt at 
the same time as it reflects the reaction of an indigenous people 
against colonialist policies aimed at making them a minority on their 
land in order to monopolize it. The French state has alternated between 
repression and promises or financial aid to the Kanaks, but it has also 
used more underhanded methods - such as encouraging the arrival of 
external populations and giving them the right to vote in local 
elections. New Caledonia is indeed of great interest to it, on an 
economic and geostrategic level: it is very rich in minerals (notably 
nickel, of which it has about a quarter of the world's reserves) and it 
offers it a military base in the South Pacific.


June 17, 2024. Petro Attiti Vocational High School.
Under the Pompidou presidency, the instructions given by Prime Minister 
Messmer to the Secretary of State for the DOM-TOM Deniau in a letter 
dated 19 July 1972 were to "prevent a nationalist claim by indigenous 
populations" in New Caledonia by promoting "mass immigration of 
metropolitan French citizens or those from overseas departments" and by 
having "jobs reserved for immigrants in private companies".
The question of the electorate planned for the self-determination 
referendums was then the stumbling block for the multiple statuses 
proposed by successive governments, left or right, for the Caledonian 
territory - and it frequently led to the instruction given by the Kanak 
parties, which quickly became pro-independence, to boycott these or 
other elections. In the French presidential election of 1981, they 
called for a vote for Mitterrand because the Union of the Left had 
included in its Common Programme "the innate and active right of the 
Kanak people to independence"; but they then rejected the Lemoine 
statute (presented in 1984 by Prime Minister Fabius to the National 
Assembly) because the electorate for the self-determination referendum 
scheduled for 1989 was not precisely defined and the Kanaks were already 
drowned in other communities. In the 1983 census, they were only 42.6% 
of a Caledonian population comprising Europeans (37.1%), Wallisians and 
Futunians (8.4%), Tahitians (3.8%), Indonesians (3.7%), Vietnamese 
(1.6%) and other communities (2.7%).

If the Matignon Accords shortly afterwards established a "special" 
electoral body for the Caledonian elections, there was no shortage of 
attempts to remove this "achievement", and the latest highlighted the 
fragility of the "shield" to which the independence leaders are clinging.

BOX 2
The Matignon and Noumea agreements

The Matignon Accords of 26 June 1988 (supplemented on 20 August by those 
of Oudinot) recognised Kanak culture and identity. They promised a 
referendum on self-determination in 1998, with an electoral body 
composed of people who had been established in New Caledonia for at 
least ten years. This electoral body was also to be used to designate 
the members of the Assemblies responsible for managing the three 
provinces created - those of the North and the Loyalty Islands 
(predominantly Kanak) and that of the South (where between two-thirds 
and three-quarters of the 271,000 Caledonians live). The State retained 
its sovereign powers in matters of defence, security, justice and 
currency. It remained competent in the areas of education and 
communications; and, to enable "the development of disadvantaged 
regions", it provided investment credits to be distributed in the 
proportion of 3/4 for the provinces of the North and the Islands and 1/4 
for the South. The operating credits of the territory's budget are 
allocated under the following conditions: 1/5 for the territory, 2/5 for 
the Northern and Islands provinces, 2/5 for the Southern provinces. 
Priority is given to local hiring on the job market, at an equal level, 
and a program will ensure the training of 400 executives in order to 
integrate Kanaks into the provincial administration. Finally, the 
perpetrators of the homicides committed in Ouvéa on April 24, 1988 will 
benefit from an amnesty - this has helped to shed a veil on the 
atrocities committed by the military that day.
The Noumea Accord of May 5, 1998 states that an officially initiated 
"peaceful decolonization" associates the descendants of the colonizers 
("victims of History") and those of the colonized in the same "community 
of destiny." He announced an economic "rebalancing" that would involve 
the completion of major road and port works, and above all by 
maintaining the distribution of state credits defined by the Matignon 
agreements.
Legislative power would be exercised by the Provincial Assemblies, some 
of whose members would constitute a 54-member Congress that would elect 
a collegiate government proportionally, based on lists of candidates 
proposed by the political groups. This Congress would draw up "laws of 
the country" (controlled by the Constitutional Council) in various areas 
(identity signs, employment, natural resources, etc.). The French 
government would continue to finance the operation of Caledonian 
institutions, would retain its sovereign powers, and would also have the 
right to dissolve the Congress in the event of institutional instability.
The agreement provides for the gradual transfer to New Caledonia of 
powers concerning education, the taxes and duties it will collect, 
foreign trade, transport and communications, civil and commercial law as 
well as civil security. But it postpones the holding of the referendum 
on independence by sixteen to twenty years; and this referendum 
becomes... three consultations of a special electoral body (meeting 
strict conditions of birth, residence for twenty years in the territory, 
and "material and moral interests") which must be carried out on the 
territory at two-year intervals. Finally, this agreement is declared 
"irreversible", and the partition of the country prohibited - the 
temptation to secede being quite strong in the rich southern province.

In the end, Macron distinguished himself from his predecessors above all 
by demonstrating more clearly/cynically than them his intention not to 
let go of the archipelago. As soon as the figures from the last 
referendum were known (see box 3) , he declared: "The Noumea Agreement 
is reaching its legal term" and "Tonight, France is more beautiful 
because New Caledonia has decided to stay there!" However, this 
agreement stipulates that, whatever the result of the consultations, 
"the political organization put in place[since]1998 will remain in 
force, at its final stage of evolution, with no possibility of going 
back"; and that the "political partners" will establish a Caledonian 
Constitution if the yes is the majority, or a new status for the 
territory within the French Republic if it is the no.

Hearing the statements of the pro-independence leaders or reading the 
"left-wing" press, one gets the impression that Macron's maneuvers are 
considered worse than those of Mitterrand who authorized the Ouvéa 
massacre in 1988 to promote his re-election as President of the Republic 
(see box 4) . The current President is criticized for having removed his 
Prime Minister from the Caledonian issue to entrust it to his Minister 
of the Interior and Overseas Territories Darmanin, a divisive figure; or 
for having appointed Sonia Backès, the leader of the loyalists, as 
Secretary of State for Citizenship in the Borne government, or for 
having designated as rapporteur of the constitutional bill another 
elected Caledonian loyalist, Nicolas Metzdorf. And Macron is also 
accused of having repeatedly thrown oil on the Caledonian fire in recent 
years. For example, when he threatened, on May 25, to submit his reform 
of the Caledonian electoral body to a national referendum...

All these criticisms are fair - but how can we expect the representative 
of a State to be the "neutral" (and friendly) partner of the populations 
it colonizes? It is simply impossible because their respective interests 
are antagonistic. Moreover, the government had an easy time, following 
the three referendums, claiming to want to "thaw" the electoral body 
from which the composition of the Territorial Assemblies, the Congress 
and the Caledonian government is derived in the name of "democratic 
requirements resulting from the constitutional principles and 
international commitments of France". Using universal suffrage so prized 
in liberal democracies against a "special regime" was clever: the 
integration into the Caledonian electoral body of the 25,000 people with 
"at least ten years of residence" in the territory would contribute to 
further marginalizing the Kanaks.

BOX 3

The referendums provided for by the Noumea Accord

The question asked is: "Do you want New Caledonia to gain full 
sovereignty and become independent?" The first referendum could have 
been organized as early as 2014, but the various parties worked to 
postpone it for fear of its outcome, and the composition of its 
electorate has long crystallized tensions.
This referendum of November 4, 2018 was a good surprise for the 
pro-independence camp since the no vote won with only 56.7% of the votes 
cast (with a turnout of 81.01%) - while a fraction of the 
pro-independence camp (the Union Syndicale des Travailleurs Kanak et des 
Exploités and the Labor Party) had called for not voting. Its result has 
(re)born the hope of gaining independence through elections; also, for 
the referendum of October 4, 2020, the participation was 86%... and the 
no vote was reduced to 53.3% of voters - only 10,000 votes short of winning.
But, for the referendum of December 12, 2021, the FLNKS called for not 
going to the polls [1]- and this resulted in both an overwhelming 
victory for the no vote and a massive abstention. The FLNKS had asked 
Macron on November 21 to postpone this consultation because the covid-19 
pandemic was then raging in the territory: the number of cases there 
rose to 11,871, with 276 deaths mainly in Oceanian communities (more 
than half of them among the Kanak, where customary mourning lasts a 
month). Macron refused: in his campaign for re-election, he wanted to 
put the "settlement of the Caledonian question" to his credit; moreover, 
the new registrants on the special electoral list being mostly Kanak, 
the postponement of the vote could have led to a victory for the yes. 
With its 96.5% no to independence and its 56.1% abstentions, this 
referendum recalled those that had taken place during the "events" in 
1984, 1987 and 1988, where the independentists had called for their 
active or passive boycott.

May 20, 2024. "Normandy" industrial zone in Noumea.
In any case, it can be said that the Matignon and Noumea agreements were 
a fine trap for the Kanaks, because, while it is certain that the 
balance of power was already not in their favour before, playing for 
time by signing them, as the independence leaders did, did not bring 
them independence either. And while the Matignon agreements were 
approved on 6 November 1988 by 80.99% in the Northern Province and 
85.10% in the Islands Province (compared to 42.81% in the South), 
abstention there was 33.69% and 53.51% respectively. Furthermore, when 
they learned of their content, the activists arrested after the 
hostage-taking in Ouvéa protested by refusing to be released; and on May 
4, 1989, Djubelly Wea, who had been one of their spokesmen, killed 
Tjibaou and his deputy Yeiwéné Yeiwéné because he accused them of having 
betrayed by signing them.

It is never easy for a person in power to honour a commitment. But 
whether the pro-independence leaders made a mistake in judgment or were 
naive in believing that the Matignon and Noumea agreements would forever 
safeguard the Kanaks, participation in Caledonian institutions then led 
them to want to strengthen the link with the metropolis instead of 
breaking it - and, likewise, to confine themselves to the type of 
"democracy" practiced there instead of promoting any kind of socialism. 
These leaders seek the autonomy of a Kanaky/New Caledonia that the 
French state would support financially and protect internationally. 
Depending on the era and the positions of their parties, they speak of 
"independence-association", "independence-partnership" or 
"interdependencies" with France. And emphasizing the misdeeds of 
colonialism rather than those of capitalism leads them to ask their 
rulers for compensation for a "historical" injustice towards the Kanak 
people without challenging the established economic and social order.

Daniel Goa, President of the UC, thus assured on May 26, 2021 in Paris: 
"In the spirit of independence, sovereignty will not be combined with a 
break with anyone. (...) During this[transition]period, Kanaky/New 
Caledonia will sign interdependence agreements to guarantee the transfer 
of all skills and resources. France will be able, if it wishes, to 
become the leader."

Similarly, when in the summer of 2021 the leadership of the Caledonian 
government fell for the first time to an independentist, Louis Mapou (a 
figure of the Palika), he said in his general policy statement: "It is 
(...) fundamental that, upon leaving the Noumea Agreement, the State and 
New Caledonia consider ways and means that allow them to reconcile their 
positions to best serve their shared strategic interests[and that 
their]cooperation in the Pacific evolves and strengthens."
For the time being, the situation in the archipelago mainly reflects the 
persistence of colonial relations.

Vanina, June 22, 2024

BOX 4
The "events" of the 80s

In order to denounce the Lemoine project, the FLNKS called for an active 
boycott of the territorial elections scheduled for 18 November 1984, 
while its leader, Jean-Marie Tjibaou, promoted the "national liberation 
struggle" for "socialist Kanak independence" (IKS). This was the 
starting point for the "events" of 1984-1988 - where the independence 
activists already had as adversaries the loyalist militias (2,000 to 
3,000 heavily armed far-right people) and the French state (significant 
military forces were stationed on the territory).
The activists were active: roadblocks, occupations of town halls, 
kidnapping of police officers, demonstrations... and, of the 50% 
abstentions in the territorial elections, there were 80% of the Kanak 
electorate. A state of emergency was declared on January 12, 1985, and a 
curfew was imposed. On the 25th, Tjibaou declared the independence of 
Kanaky and appointed his "provisional government". On the 27th, Jacques 
Lafleur, leader of the Rally for Caledonia in the Republic (the main 
loyalist force), announced that New Caledonia was in a state of 
"self-defense"... Until the end of the year, there were only strikes, 
fires, demonstrations, roadblocks, bombings, arrests, assassinations - 
90 Kanaks would die in total. In March 1986, the right won the 
legislative elections in France - and repression hardened under the 
Chirac-Mitterrand "cohabitation".
On April 24, 1988, territorial elections and the first round of the 
French presidential election were to take place - the two favorites of 
which were Mitterrand, for a second term, and Chirac. The FLNKS called 
for their active boycott and entrusted its local committees with the 
task of making its position known. On April 22, activists from the 
island of Ouvéa led by Alphonse Dianou (member of the UC) decided, in 
order to apply this instruction, to replace the French flag with the 
Kanak flag in a gendarmerie; but the action went wrong: a gendarme 
reacted to the sight of them by shooting, a shootout ensued in which 
four soldiers died, then the independence activists took 27 others 
hostage before taking refuge in a cave. On May 5, Mitterrand signed the 
order to storm it. This was "Operation Victor": 350 gendarmes, 
paratroopers and GIGN intervened, and 19 Kanaks were savagely executed. 
Mitterrand was re-elected. He instructed his new Prime Minister, Michel 
Rocard, to resume dialogue between Tjibaou and Lafleur - and, on June 
26, they accepted the Matignon Accords.

Notes
[1] Read, on oclibertaire.lautre.net, "  From the struggle for socialist 
Kanak independence to the negotiation of reinforced autonomy?  " 
published in Courant Alternatif of February 2022 .

http://oclibertaire.lautre.net/spip.php?article4215
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