After three decades of frustratingly slow progress but with a measure of quiet optimism over the decolonisation process unfolding under the Noumea Accord, Kanaky New Caledonia is again poised on the edge of a precipice.

Two out of three pledged referendums from 2018 produced higher than expected – and growing — votes for independence. But then the delta variant of the global covid-19 pandemic hit New Caledonia with a vengeance.

Like much of the rest of the Pacific, New Caledonia with a population of 270,000 was largely spared during the first wave of covid infections. However, in September a delta outbreak infected 12,343 people with 280 deaths – almost 70 percent of them indigenous Kanaks.

With the majority of the Kanak population in traditional mourning – declared for 12 months by the customary Senate, the pro-independence Kanak and Socialist National Liberation Front (FLNKS) and its allies pleaded for the referendum due this Sunday, December 12, to be deferred until next year after the French presidential elections.

In fact, there is no reason for France to be in such a rush to hold this last referendum on Kanak independence in the middle of a state of emergency and a pandemic. It is not due until October 2022.

It is clear that the Paris authorities have changed tack and want to stack the cards heavily in favour of a negative vote to maintain the French status quo.

When the delay pleas fell on deaf political ears and appeals failed in the courts, the pro-independence coalition opted instead to not contest the referendum and refuse to recognise its legitimacy.

Vote threatens to be farce
This Sunday’s vote threatens to be a farce following such a one-sided campaign. It could trigger violence as happened with a similar farcical and discredited independence referendum in 1987, which led to the infamous Ouvea cave hostage-taking and massacre the following year as retold in the devastating Mathieu Kassovitz feature film Rebellion [l’Ordre at la morale] — banned in New Caledonia for many years.

On 13 September 1987, a sham vote on New Caledonian independence was held. It was boycotted by the FLNKS when France refused to allow independent United Nations observers. Unsurprisingly, only 1.7 percent of participants voted for independence. Only 59 percent of registered voters took part.

After the bloody ending of the Ouvea cave crisis, the 1988 Matignon/Oudinot Accord signed by Kanak leader Jean-Marie Tjibaou and anti-independence leader Jacques Lafleur, paved the way for possible decolonisation with a staggered process of increasing local government powers.

A decade later, the 1998 Noumea Accord set in place a two-decade pathway to increased local powers – although Paris retained control of military and foreign policy, immigration, police and currency — and the referendums.

In the first referendum on 4 November 2018, 43.33 percent voted for independence with 81 percent of the eligible voters taking part (recent arrivals had no right to vote in the referendum).

In the second referendum on 4 October 2020, the vote for independence rose to 46.7 percent with the turnout higher too at almost 86 percent. Only 10,000 votes separated the yes and no votes.

Expectations back then were that the “yes” vote would grow again by the third referendum with the demographics and a growing progressive vote, but by how much was uncertain.

Arrogant and insensitive
However, now with the post-covid tensions, the goodwill and rebuilding of trust for Paris that had been happening over many years could end in ashes again thanks to an arrogant and insensitive abandoning of the “decolonisation” mission by Emmanuel Macron’s administration in what is seen as a cynical ploy by a president positioning himself as a “law and order” leader ahead of the April elections.

Another pro-independence party, Palika, said Macron’s failure to listen to the pleas for a delay was a “declaration of war” against the Kanaks and progressive citizens.

The empty Noumea hoardings – apart from blue “La Voix du Non” posters, politically “lifeless” Place des Cocotiers, accusations of racism against indigenous Kanaks in campaign animations, and the 2000 riot police and military reinforcements have set a heavy tone.

And the damage to France’s standing in the region is already considerable.

Many academics writing about the implications of the “non” vote this Sunday are warning that persisting with this referendum in such unfavourable conditions could seriously rebound on France at a time when it is trying to project its “Indo-Pacific” relevance as a counterweight to China’s influence in the region.

China is already the largest buyer of New Caledonia’s metal exports, mainly nickel.

The recent controversial loss of a lucrative submarine deal with Australia has also undermined French influence.

Risks return to violence
Writing in The Guardian, Rowena Dickins Morrison, Adrian Muckle and Benoît Trépied warned that the “dangerous shift” on the New Caledonia referendum “risks a return to violence”.

“The dangerous political game being played by Macron in relation to New Caledonia recalls decisions made by French leaders in the 1980s which disregarded pro-independence opposition, instrumentalised New Caledonia’s future in the national political arena, and resulted in some of the bloodiest exchanges of that time,” they wrote.

Dr Muckle, who heads the history programme at Victoria University and is editor of The Journal of Pacific History, is chairing a roundtable webinar today entitled “Whither New Caledonia after the 2018-21 independence referendums?”

The theme of the webinar asks: “Has the search for a consensus solution to the antagonisms that have plagued New Caledonia finally ended? Is [the final] referendum likely to draw a line under the conflicts of the past or to reopen old wounds.”

One of the webinar panellists, Denise Fisher, criticised in The Conversation the lack of “scrupulously observed impartiality” by France for this third referendum compared to the two previous votes.

“In the first two campaigns, France scrupulously observed impartiality and invited international observers. For this final vote, it has been less neutral,” she argued.

“For starters, the discussions on preparing for the final vote did not include all major independence party leaders. The paper required by French law explaining the consequences of the referendum to voters favoured the no side this time, to the point where loyalists used it as a campaign brochure.”

‘Delay’ say Pacific civil society groups
A coalition of Pacific civil society organisations and movement leaders is among the latest groups to call on the French government to postpone the third referendum, which they described as “hastily announced”.

While French Minister for Overseas Territories Sebastien Lecornu had told French journalists this vote would definitely go ahead as soon as possible to “serve the common good”, critics see him as pandering to the “non” vote.

The Union Calédoniènne, Union Nationale pour l’independence Party (UNI), FLNKS and other pro-independence groups in the New Caledonia Congress had already written to Lecornu expressing their grave concerns and requesting a postponement because of the pandemic.

“We argue that the decision by France to go ahead with the referendum on December 12 ignores the impact that the current health crisis has on the ability of Kanaks to participate in the referendum and exercise their basic human right to self-determination,” said the Pacific coalition.

“We understand the Noumea Accord provides a timeframe that could accommodate holding the last referendum at any time up to November 2022.

“Therefore, we see no need to hastily set the final referendum for 12 December 2021, in the middle of a worldwide pandemic that is currently ravaging Kanaky/New Caledonia, and disproportionately impacting [on] the Kanak population.”

The coalition also called on the Chair of the Pacific Islands Forum, Prime Minister Voreqe Bainimarama to “disengage” the PIF observer delegation led by Ratu Inoke Kubuabola. Forum engagement in referendum vote as observers, said the coalition, “ignores the concerns of the Kanak people”.

‘Act as mediators’
The coalition argued that the delegation should “act as mediators to bring about a more just and peaceful resolution to the question and timing of a referendum”.

Signatories to the statement include the Development Alternatives with Women for a New Era, Fiji Council of Social Services, Melanesian Indigenous Land Defence Alliance, Pacific Conference of Churches, Pacific Network on Globalisation, Peace Movement Aotearoa, Pasifika and Youngsolwara Pacific.

The Melanesian Spearhead Group (MSG) secretariat has called on member states to not recognise New Caledonia’s independence referendum this weekend.

Fiji, Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands and Vanuatu, which along with the FLNKS are full MSG members, have been informed by the secretariat of its concerns.

In a media release, the MSG’s Director-General, George Hoa’au, said the situation in New Caledonia was “not conducive for a free and fair referendum”.

Ongoing customary mourning over covid-19 related deaths in New Caledonia meant that Melanesian communities were unable to campaign for the vote.

Hopes now on United Nations
“Major hopes are now being pinned on a Kanak delegation of territorial Congress President Roch Wamytan, Mickaël Forrest and Charles Wéa who travelled to New York this week to lobby the United Nations for support.

One again, France has demonstrated a lack of cultural and political understanding and respect that erodes the basis of the Noumea Accord – recognition of Kanak identity and kastom.

Expressing her disappointment to me, Northern provincial councillor and former journalist Magalie Tingal Lémé says: What happens in Kanaky is what France always does here. The Macron government didn’t respect us. They still don’t understand us as Kanak people.”

Dr David Robie covered “Les Événements” in New Caledonia in the 1980s and penned the book Blood on their Banner about the turmoil. He also covered the 2018 independence referendum.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

By RNZ Pacific

Commemorations have been held in New Caledonia over the weekend to mark the 30th anniversary of the assassination of the pro-independence leader Jean-Marie Tjibaou and his deputy on 4 May 1989.

Tjibaou, leader of the pro-indeoendence Kanak and Socialist National Liberation Front (FLNKS), was killed along with Yeiwéné Yeiwéné.

The two Kanak leaders were gunned down on the island of Ouvéa by a local independence advocate Djubelly Wéa who was upset with the signing of the 1988 Matignon Accord which ended years of unrest.

READ MORE: Blood in the Pacific: 30 years on from the Ouvéa massacre

Wea was in turn shot dead by Tjibaou’s bodyguard.

On the island of Ouvéa, there was also a remembrance of the 19 Kanaks killed by French commandos in the Ouvéa cave hostage crisis a year earlier.

In Hienghène in the north east of the main island, where Tjibaou used to be the mayor, this year’s Tjibaou Cup sports events have been timed to conincide with the anniversary.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

On Saturday, 30 years ago in 1988, I smelled death for the first time – literally.

A sickening, almost suffocating, stench assaulted my nostrils in a dank cave where 21 men – 19 Kanak militants and two French military – had been killed the previous day in what lives on infamously as the “Ouvéa Island massacre” in New Caledonia.

Our feet sunk deep into the loose layer of moist loam the gendarmes had shovelled from the jungle outside onto the cave floor to cover the blood and waste of the dead.

On what we trod it was impossible to know. I dry retched.

My ABC cameraman Alain Antoine, sound recordist Stewart Palmer and I were the very first of the first group of journalists to be allowed inside the Gossannah cave complex on Ouvéa where the Kanaks had died in an assault by French Special Forces.

We’d been flown from the capital Nouméa in a French military helicopter. As we’d scrambled onto the Ouvéa tarmac we bumped into a giant Kanak prisoner sporting red shorts, yellow T shirt and manacles being led the other way by French military (pictured below).

A few days earlier on the main island I experienced for the first of many times in my career the shock of having a cocked, loaded gun pointed at me. We’d happened upon the helicopter evacuation of a French officer wounded in an ambush. He later died.

Not worth shooting
A frightened, angry adrenalin-charged soldier raced up to our car screaming and pointing his automatic weapon before being calmed by a superior who chose to believe we were civilian journalists, not rebels and not worth shooting.

They were tense days.

The Ouvéa event is still cloaked in controversy (French President Emmanuel Macron visited Ouvéa yesterday for the 30th anniversary but, under pressure from families of the dead, refrained from laying a wreath at the graves of the 19 Kanaks).

The action and its context is described by respected Pacific author David Robie in Pacific Journalism Review (2012, pp. 214-215):

“I wrote the following in my book Blood on their Banner[1989, pp. 275-278] – the “blood” being that symbolised by the Kanak flag as being shed by the martyrs of more than a century of French rule:

“Mounting tension as the French security forces were built up in New Caledonia to 9500 for the elections finally erupted on Friday, 22 April 1988, two days before the poll. Kanak militants, arguably the first real guerrilla force in the territory, seized a heavily armed Fayaoué gendarme post on Ouvéa, in the Loyalty Islands.

“Armed with machetes, axes and a handful of sporting guns hidden under their clothes, they killed four gendarmes who resisted, wounded five others and seized 27 as hostages.

“They abducted most of their prisoners to a three-tiered caved in rugged bush country near Gossanah in the north-east of the island; the rest were taken to Mouli in the south.

As almost 300 gendarmes flown to Ouvéa searched for them, the militants demanded that the regional elections be abandoned and that a mediator be flown from France to negotiate for a real referendum on self-determination under United Nations supervision. They threatened to kill their hostages if their demands were not met.

“Declaring on Radio Djiido that he was dismayed by the attack, Tjibaou blamed it on the “politics of violence” adopted by the Chirac government against the Kanak people.

“‘The [colonial] plunderers refuse to recognise their subversive lead,’ he said. ‘From the moment they stole our country, they have tried to eliminate everybody who denounces their evil deeds. It has been like that since colonialism began.’

Appeal for calm
“(French President) Mitterrand appealed for calm and a halt to spiral of violence; (Premier) Chirac condemned the ‘savage brutality’ of the attack, claiming the guerrillas were ‘probably full of drugs and alcohol’.

“The guerrillas freed 11 hostages but remained hidden in their Wadrilla cache with the others. Another hostage, who was ill, was later released.

“[French Minister for Territorial Affairs Bernard] Pons portrayed the guerrilla leader, Alphonse Dianou, as a ‘Libyan-trained religious fanatic’. In fact, he had trained at a Roman Catholic seminary in Fiji and was regarded by people who knew him as ‘a reflective man, found of books and non-violent’. He spent hours explaining to his captives why they had been seized.

“At dawn on Thursday, May 5, French military and special forces launched their attack on the Ouvéa cave and killed 19 Kanaks in what was reported by the authorities to be a fierce battle. The hostages were freed for the loss of only two French soldiers.

“If the military authorities were to be believed, their casualties were from the 11th Shock Unit of the DGSE. (This unit was formerly the Service Action squad, used to bomb the Rainbow Warrior in Auckland Harbour on 10 July 1985).

“The assault came just three days before the crucial presidential vote, and hours after three French hostages had been freed in Lebanon following the Chirac government’s reported payment of a massive ransom.

“To top it off, convicted Rainbow Warrior bomber Dominique Prieur, now pregnant, was repatriated back from Hao Atoll to France.

Massacre ‘engineered’

Leaders of the [pro-independence] FLNKS immediately challenged the official version of the attack. Léopold Jorédie issued a statement in which he questioned how the “Ouvéa massacre left 19 dead among the nationalists and no one injured” and the absence of bullet marks on the trees and empty cartridges on the ground at the site”.

Yéiwene Yéiwene insisted that at no time did the kidnappers intend to kill the hostages – ‘this whole massacre was engineered by Bernard Pons who knew very well there was never any question of killing the hostages”. Nidoish Naisseline also condemned the action:

“Pons and Chirac have behaved like assassins. I accuse them of murder. They could have avoided the butchery. They preferred to buy votes of [Nationalist Front leader] Le Pen’s friends with Kanak blood.”

The following extract sums up claims and counter claims:

According to a later report of Captain Philippe Legorjus, then GIGN leader: “Some acts of barbarity have been committed by the French military in contradiction with their military duty”. In several autopsies, it appeared that 12 of the Kanak activists had been executed and the leader of the hostage-takers, Alphonse Dianou, who was severely injured by a gunshot in the leg, had been left without medical care, and died some hours later. Prior to this report, Captain Philippe Legorjus was accused by many of the GIGN agents who took part in the operation of weaknesses in command and to have had “dangerous absences” (some even said he fled) in the final stages of the case. He was forced to resign from the GIGN after this operation, since nobody wanted him as chief and to fight under him anymore.

The military authorities have always denied the version of events given by Captain Philippe Legorjus. Following a command investigation, Jean-Pierre Chevènement, Minister of Defence of the Michel Rocard government, notes that “no part of the investigation revealed that there had been summary executions”. In addition, according to some participants of the operation interviewed by Le Figaro, no shots were heard on area after the fighting ended.

Legorjus said French Premier Jacques Chirac, who was challenging Mitterrand in the French presidential elections, wanted to stage the assault. And Pons said that he had acted throughout the drama on the orders of Chirac, who believes the “separatist” movement should be outlawed.

Radio NZ on Saturday: “The two-week hostage crisis in 1988 was a turning point in the separatist campaign of the indigenous Kanaks because it ushered in reconciliation talks, which led to the 1988 Matignon Accord.

The Accord and its subsequent 1998 Noumea Accord allowed for the creation of a power-sharing collegial government and the phased and irreversible transfer of power from France to New Caledonia.”

Whatever the truth, the blood of 1988 will stain this territory for a long time yet.

Max Uechtritz is managing director of Kundu Productions Pty Ltd and is republished by Asia Pacific Report with permission. Photos thanks to France TV Outre-Mer and revolutionpermanente.fr

References:
Robie, D. (2012). Gossanah cave siege tragic tale of betrayal. Pacific Journalism Review,  18(2), 212-216.
Robie, D. (1989). Blood on their banner: nationalist struggles in the South Pacific (pp. 275-280). London, UK: Zed Books.

Southern Cross radio comment about the Ouvéa visit on 5 May 2018 by President Macron.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

Pacific Media Watch Newsdesk

French President Emmanuel Macron has visited the island of Ouvéa in New Caledonia on the 30th anniversary of the bloody end of the 1988 hostage crisis, reports RNZ Pacific.

Facing opposition by some Kanak families, the president altered Saturday’s programme marking the May 5 ending to the two-week cave siege and refrained from laying a wreath at the grave of the 19 Kanaks killed by the French security forces.

Macron is the first French president to visit Ouvéa but members of one tribe warned that his presence on the anniversary was unwanted and would be seen as a provocation.

Instead, he took part in a ceremony at the site, planting a coconut tree.

He said to forget the events would be another wound for the mourning families.

Earlier in the day, he paid tribute at the tomb of the French security forces killed during the hostage drama.

Macron then also went to the grave of the two Kanak pro-independence leaders, Jean-Marie Tjibaou and Yeiwene Yeiwene, who were assassinated a year later on 4 May 1989.

Tight security
Security was tight, with police blocking an access road and checking travellers amid concern over possible disturbances.

The hostage crisis in 1988 was a turning point in the pro-independence campaign of the indigenous Kanaks because it ushered in reconciliation talks which led to the Matignon Accord.

The Accord and its subsequent Noumea Accord allowed for the creation of a power-sharing collegial government and the phased and irreversible transfer of power from France to New Caledonia

The Accord expires this year with a referendum on November 4 on whether New Caledonians want to attain sovereignty and assume the remaining powers, such as defence, judiciary, policing and monetary policy.

The Ouvéa hostage crisis, which also claimed the life of six French gendarmes, has remained a sensitive issue.

A feature film based on the events, which happened to coincide with the French presidential race between Francois Mitterrand and Jacques Chirac, could not to be filmed on Ouvéa.

The film Rebellion (English title) was subsequently shot in French Polynesia, but on its release in 2011 cinema operators in Noumea refused to screen it.

At the time it was alleged it could cause resentment and weaken the forces of consensus.

The film was screened in the NZ International Film festival.

This article has been republished as part of the content sharing agreement between Radio New Zealand and the AUT Pacific Media Centre.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz