New Caledonia protesters, police spar ahead of Macron visit

[May 22, 2024]  By Kirsty Needham

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

Macron is due to land in the French overseas territory in the Pacific on Thursday after government electoral reforms passed a week ago sparked violence that has 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 Kanaks, who make up 40% of the population.

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

The attack had been stopped and its origin was unknown, territorial government official Christopher Gyges said in a livestreamed press conference on Wednesday.

"The different emails that were sent came from several countries at the same time. They wanted to clog the New Caledonia cable," Gyges said.

France's High Commission said Macron would be accompanied by ministers for defense and interior for Thursday's talks, and that some 100 members of the GIGN elite tactical response group have been deployed in New Caledonia.

BARRICADES, FIRES

Over 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 Wednesday. Around 20 arrests were made on Tuesday; 280 people in all have been arrested in the past week.

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," 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.

A damaged building is seen amid riots against plans to allow more people to take part in local elections in the French-ruled territory, which indigenous Kanak protesters reject, in Noumea, New Caledonia May 16, 2024 in this screengrab obtained from video. Yoan Fleurot/via REUTERS/ File Photo

Lagarde said she hoped 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 that 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," Naouna said, using the island's indigenous name.

The Field Action Coordination Cell (CCAT), organizer 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 mobilized and confident for Kanaky," it said.

Macron will meet elected officials and local representatives on Thursday 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 (10,000 miles) from mainland France and 1,500 km (930 miles) east of Australia.

(Reporting by Kirsty Needham in Sydney and Camille Raynaud; additional reporting by David Brunnstrom in Washington and Dominique Vidalon in Paris; Editing by Lincoln Feast.)

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