As we walked across the village’s central playing field after church, Wea described the scene there just over thirty-five years ago: seven French military helicopters, two dozen army trucks, and some 300 French special forces and police sharpshooters ready for action. In the bush near Gossanah, nineteen Kanaks were holding twenty-three French police hostage. They had raided the island’s gendarmerie, met more resistance than expected and killed four police before decamping to a remote cave with seized weapons and their hostages.

The raid was intended to be part of a territory-wide show of force by the Melanesians in support of independence for the country they called Kanaky. Seven months earlier, in September 1987, a narrow majority of white and other settlers had voted in a referendum to remain with France. The Kanaks had boycotted the poll in the belief that the result had been preset by officially encouraged immigration in previous decades. Kanaks had occupied traditional lands in the north of the main island, a settler ambush had killed ten Kanaks, and in January 1988, a sharpshooter had killed a Kanak would-be guerilla leader holed up in a seized farmhouse.

Despite the planning, the Ouvéa rebels found themselves acting alone in April–May 1988 — and a tough reaction to the kidnapping offered France’s ambitious conservative prime minister, Jacques Chirac, a chance to boost his prospects in the looming national presidential elections.

Just three days before Chirac faced off with Socialist incumbent François Mitterrand in the second round of the election, and after half-hearted negotiations for a peaceful surrender, Chirac ordered an all-out assault on the cave. Sixteen Kanaks were killed during the attack, two executed after their capture, and their leader was allowed to die of wounds without medical attention. Two soldiers died, and all the hostages were freed.

As it turned out, Mitterrand prevailed in the election. Chirac was replaced as PM by a Socialist, Michel Rocard, who brought the shocked Kanak leader, former Catholic priest Jean-Marie Tjibaou, and the loyalist leader, businessman Jacques Lafleur, to Matignon near Paris, locked them in, and presented a plan. Putting off a vote on independence for ten years, it pledged more training and involvement for Kanaks, and more investment in rural and island lands.

Tjibaou made a unilateral decision and signed the deal. Lafleur did too. They shook hands for a photo. And so the Matignon Accord was born. A decade later, in 1998, the Nouméa Accord postponed the independence decision for another fifteen to twenty years, when it would be put to three spaced-out referendums to make sure every voter made a considered choice.

Many Kanaks — among them Charles Wea’s uncle, a former protestant pastor named Djubelly Wea — had misgivings. A strong believer in independence, Djubelly had been among Gossanah villagers detained and roughed up by French troops looking for the cave. After the troops’ assault, he and twenty-eight others were jailed for several months in Paris without trial.

When Tjibaou came to Ouvéa on the first anniversary of the cave attack to speak at the burial site of the nineteen Kanaks, Djubelly stepped forward, shouted, “Long live Kanaky! Long live independence!” then pulled out a pistol and shot dead the former priest and his deputy, Yeiwéné Yeiwéné. A bodyguard then fatally shot their assailant too.

Walking through Gossanah, Wea and I came to a small, tiered garden with walls of coral rock that turned out to be Djubelly’s grave. Back in Nouméa, his victim, Tjibaou, is venerated as a kind of Gandhi or Mandela of the Pacific, and an Oceanic cultural centre designed by Renzo Piano is named after him. I asked Charles how his uncle’s reputation stands now.

His answer shocked me. “A lot of people think he was right,” the Kanak diplomat said. “They are saying: after more than thirty years of talk, where have we got?” Shocking it might have been, but his answer chimed with the sense that the politics of New Caledonia have come in a grand circle since 1987, with an increasing risk of an explosion like the Ouvéa cave drama.

When the time came for the series of three independence referendums promised in the Nouméa Accord, the French government was back in the hands of a conservative president, Emmanuel Macron. Like his predecessors, left and right, Macron was against giving the Kanaks any more voting weight than other French citizens, though the accord had “frozen” the electoral roll at 1998 to keep out later immigrants.

In the first referendum, in 2018, the vote for independence was 43 per cent. By the second, in 2020, it had grown to 47 per cent. The third vote was looming as a close-run thing at the end of 2021. Then, in September that year, Covid-19’s Delta variant swept through New Caledonia, quickly infecting over 13,000 of its 270,000 people. More than 280 of them died, about 60 per cent of them Kanaks.

With its communities having embarked on the customary year of mourning, the Kanak parties begged for the referendum to be postponed for a year. Quarantine restrictions limited movement, adding to the disadvantages faced by Kanak parties campaigning with village meetings while the urbanised loyalists could rely on the internet.

Macron, for his part, was facing his first re-election test in April 2022. His competition came from the further right, notably Marine Le Pen. He needed a boost for French national pride, especially after Scott Morrison delivered his humiliating submarine decision in September 2021.

When he and territories minister Sébastien Lecornu insisted the New Caledonia vote go ahead, the Kanak parties decided on a boycott. Participation fell from around 86 per cent in the earlier two independence votes to 43.9 per cent, with the non-voters concentrated in Kanak regions. Of those who voted, 96.5 per cent chose No and only 3.5 per cent Yes.

The result was immediately declared “null and void” by the Melanesian Spearhead Group, a forum of Vanuatu, Fiji, Solomon Islands and Papua New Guinea. The Pacific Islands Forum — a wider regional grouping that includes Melanesian, Polynesian and Micronesian states as well as Australia and New Zealand — was more diplomatic: the boycott needed to be considered in “the contextual consideration and analysis of the result.”

Unfazed, Macron declared that “France is more beautiful because New Caledonia decided to stay.” Local opponents of independence were also jubilant. “Tonight we are French and we will stay that way. It’s no longer negotiable,” said fervent loyalist Sonia Backès, president of the Southern Province region. To her, the Nouméa Accord was defunct, allowing the electoral rolls to be thrown open to more recent arrivals and special economic support for Kanak-dominated regions to be wound up.

Macron echoed these sentiments when he visited New Caledonia in July this year accompanied by a squadron of Rafale fighters and their air refuellers and transports designed to demonstrate France’s ability to swing military power into the Pacific. New Caledonia was French because it had chosen to be French in three referendums, he told a crowd of 10,000 tricolour-waving Europeans and Polynesians in Nouméa’s Place des Cocotiers.

Now the next stage of economic development could begin, he said, transforming locally mined nickel into a low-cost green-energy industry and expanding agriculture. The voice of France would resonate across the Indo-Pacific, boosted by a new military academy in the territory for the region’s armed forces. “If independence is to choose tomorrow to have a Chinese base, here, or be dependent on other fleets, good luck!” he declared.

On the political future, he invited loyalists and independence parties to a trilateral dialogue, mentioning more than once that the freeze on the electoral roll had always been “transitional” and had led to “exclusions and frustrations.” He had already inducted Backès into government as a junior minister, responsible for citizenship.

Macron then travelled on to Vanuatu and Papua New Guinea, where he declared France was an “enhancer of sovereignty” for Pacific island nations, helping protect them against a “new imperialism.” The ironies were not lost on his audiences.

Kanak and loyalist parties were back in Paris for those talks last month, and will continue negotiating in Nouméa later this month. In Paris, Macron’s prime minister, Élisabeth Borne, now presiding over a minority government, put forward what was described, strangely, as a document martyr, a paper to be chewed over and torn apart before taking any final form.

On the critical question of electoral eligibility, the new external territories minister, Gérald Darmanin, revealed voters in territorial and regional elections would need to have been born in New Caledonia or resident for ten years. Whether or not the pro-independence alliance, FLNKS, agreed, the electoral roll would be “unfrozen” in this way before provincial elections due by May 2024.

Questions of self-determination, meanwhile, would be deferred for at least “two generations” from a new accord, Darmanin said — probably about sixty years. “There is no longer a sword of Damocles,” he added, although only the loyalists had felt thus threatened.

Aside from the backlash among Melanesian countries, Macron’s decision is seen as folly by some seasoned observers in New Caledonia, and appears likely to raise tensions and threaten unrest. Mathias Chauchat, a public law professor at the University of New Caledonia, says Macron is being likened to Bonaparte, who listened to no advice, even from his own ambassadors. “The French politicians are living in the past, in the 1960s,” he tells me. “I don’t understand it. It’s crazy. France is not a modern state like the other democracies.”

Others I spoke to wondered if the Kanak leadership would have the stomach to abandon their comfortable positions, as Macron is gambling they won’t. But being ousted after the electoral roll changes could harden their attitude. A return to violent protest was likely, and could happen without much warning. Chauchat shares those fears. “If you lose the majority, you have to go on the street, the terrain,” he says. “It would lead to unrest.”

I recount the remark Charles Wea had made at his uncle’s grave to Patrice Godin, a social anthropologist who has studied and lived among the Kanaks for decades. For Godin, Wea’s remark reinforces the risks of changing the electoral system to make any real decolonisation unimaginable for a long time.

“When political negotiations fail, it is not the most open and moderate leaders who prevail, but the most radical,” says Godin. “One wonders whether the French government is aware of this. I am currently sensing great concern among Kanak elected representatives and political decision-makers. If they fail to change the government’s policy, they know that their activists, their voters and the majority of the Kanak population will withdraw their support.”

These leaders are already facing a great deal of criticism, he adds. “If the government doesn’t listen to them, it will contribute to the rise of a new generation of Kanak politicians who will be less conciliatory than those they are discussing with today. This may take time, but it is inevitable. Kanak demands are too far advanced for the movement to die out.”

True, Godin says, the thirty-five years since the Matignon Accord have changed the Kanak people and their way of life, producing more graduates, managers and intellectuals. “But this evolution has in no way altered the Kanak desire for decolonisation. Quite the contrary, as shown by the results of the three referendum consultations on the way out of the Nouméa Accord. We might even say that this desire is more considered and it is a result of the changes that have taken place.”

The nationalist idea has matured to the point where the Union Calédonienne’s Daniel Goa and some other Kanak leaders are talking of “interdependence” with France following a transfer of sovereignty, an arrangement that recalls the pacts of free association the Cook Islands have with New Zealand or the Marianas with the United States.

While full independence was “false gold” for the Kanak parties, “it’s very difficult for them to ask for an associated state because they think France will lie to them,” Chauchat says. “There is no trust between the current French government and the Kanaks. If you want an agreement, you need trust first.”

Such an idea was proposed by Mitterrand’s high commissioner in Nouméa, Edgard Pisani, during the 1987–88 troubles, and would achieve decolonisation while maintaining French military bases. (The Kanak parties have no interest in building their own military.) But the option has since been studiously ignored by Paris, perhaps because it might win local support.

“There is no other solution, and definitely no solution in France,” says Chauchat, adding: “France never honours its words. It has always failed in its decolonisation processes… It will end in tragedy like everywhere.” The best option now for the Kanaks is to prevent the opening up of the electoral roll and keep the dream of independence alive, he says. “We have to wait.”

Macron still needs to persuade New Caledonia’s parties to agree to his new plan, and then his minority government must win a 60 per cent vote of approval from a joint sitting of the national assembly and senate to amend the French constitution, into which the Nouméa Accord is written. He is hoping his show of French force against China will win regional sympathy, which seems unlikely. The island states have no particular liking for China, but they will take its money and projects, and they will use its perceived threat to get more out of the other powers.

“If, as President Macron claims, France’s project is to contribute to the creation of an Indo-Pacific axis to stem Chinese expansion in the region, it will have to be admitted into the club of states of the region,” Godin says. “For the moment, this is proving difficult. The small island states see France as it is in the region, one of the last old-style colonial powers. All these countries are in favour of New Caledonian independence, and more or less openly support Kanak nationalist claims.”

France lacks the resources for a region-wide aid and development effort. And the United States and its allies need the support of the island states against Chinese coercion. “From this point of view, France is more of a pebble in their shoe than a reliable and legitimate ally,” says Godin. “By clinging to the last shreds of its colonial past, France is in fact a cumbersome ally.”

Still, Macron’s ambition, recalling Charles de Gaulle in the 1960s, has its fans. Many Australians sympathise with Macron over the submarine affair and appreciate the way he called out Morrison as a liar. Richard Marles, the defence minister, is said to have struck a rapport with his French counterpart, Sébastien Lecornu, the same man who as territories minister helped push through the third referendum in New Caledonia. Marles is due in Nouméa in December for a gathering of Pacific defence ministers hosted by Lecornu.

Potentially complicating Australia’s approach was foreign minister Penny Wong’s appointment in March of Australia’s first ambassador for First Nations people, Justin Mohamed. The ambassador’s office, she said, “enables deep engagement with many of our closest partners including the Pacific family” and embeds Indigenous perspectives in Australian foreign policy.

Yet when she visited New Caledonia in April, Wong failed to acknowledge that the Kanaks — who were the first to settle its islands some 3000 years ago and now make up 42 per cent of the population (with Europeans accounting for 24 per cent, according to the most recent census, in 2019) — should be accorded a special right of decolonisation. “Institutional arrangements in New Caledonia are a matter for the people of New Caledonia and the French state,” was as far as she went, while repeatedly praising the French contribution to “security and prosperity in the Pacific.”

Of course, if Wong does want to raise the First Nations angle at some point — always difficult given Australia’s history — a No majority in our own referendum this month won’t help.

Meanwhile, though, pro-French loyalists are losing ground overall in the Pacific. In French Polynesia, the independence party led by veteran nuclear-testing opponent Oscar Temaru has won a majority in the assembly and now leads an autonomous government. In New Caledonia, a Kanak has just won a seat in the French senate for the first time after a vote-swapping deal with a dissident loyalist who beat Backès for the other seat. Every year recently, about 2000 white residents pack up and leave, gradually shifting the demographics, and métissage (intermarriage) between Kanaks and Polynesian migrants is on the rise.

Bonapartist or Gaullist, Macron is unheeding. His policies could well be driving New Caledonia back to the tense days of the 1980s, a condition of civil war. Younger Kanaks may see violence as a way of speeding up the French exodus. “Emmanuel Macron seems to be blinded by his ambitions for France and to understand nothing of what is happening today in New Caledonia and in the Pacific,” says Patrice Godin. “I still want to believe that it’s not too late to wake up.” •

The post France’s stubborn grip appeared first on Inside Story.

Kremer and I met the day after the announcement of the decision to close a daily newspaper published for more than fifty years. Staff were still coming to terms with the news, uncertain whether they would be paid their final wages and benefits.

It’s true that New Caledonia, a French Pacific dependency of 274,000 people, has a vibrant media landscape, with a range of weekly magazines, two TV stations and many commercial radio outlets. But the death of its sole daily newspaper comes at a crucial time, with supporters and opponents of independence debating future relations with France.

Founded in 1971, Les Nouvelles Calédoniennes soon saw off its only daily competitor, the venerable France Australe, which closed its doors after ninety years in 1979. To begin with, the new paper was a partisan broadsheet, promoting the interests of local business owners and campaigning against independence from France. It made little pretence of impartiality during the armed conflict that divided New Caledonia in the mid 1980s, denigrating indigenous Kanak and editorialising in favour of the anti-independence party, Rally for New Caledonia in the Republic.

The paper was bought in 1987 by Groupe Hersant Média, France’s largest media conglomerate at the time. A decade later, after the death of founder Robert Hersant, a financial crisis forced Hersant to sell off many media outlets, including Les Nouvelles, at fire-sale prices. In 2013, three local business figures formed the Melchior Group to take over the paper and affiliated businesses. Melchior’s majority owner was New Caledonian businessman Jacques Jeandot, with mining magnate Charles Montagnat and former supermarket owner Charles Lavoix sharing the remaining 41 per cent.

“Hersant sold the paper for global reasons related to its media group and the great difficulties it was facing in Europe,” explains Kremer. “That wasn’t the case in New Caledonia, where it was making a lot of money. At the time, Mr Jeandot had been considering setting up a newspaper in competition with Les Nouvelles, so he seized the opportunity by investing in the paper.” It was an investment driven by the heart, adds Kremer, who believes Jeandot never made much money from the paper.

The Melchior Group also owned printing presses, a range of giveaway magazines, Les Editions du Caillou publishing house and radio station NRJ-Nouvelle-Calédonie.

From the start, the new owners faced significant competition, including from French government–owned TV and radio stations. Many advertisers moved onto social media, and partisan media organisations received subsidies from the administrations in New Caledonia’s three provinces. A long delay in upgrading the Les Nouvelles website and investing in new technology contributed to a loss of readership.

The Covid-19 pandemic added to the financial pressures. Advertising slumped further and costs rose, prompting a hiring and investment freeze and an effort to reduce expenses by refusing to replace departing staff. Then in late 2022 the company decided to drop the paper’s print edition. It sold off its largest printing presses and went completely online at the end of December, placing a question mark over the future of other Melchior publications, like the weekly Le Gratuit, which used the daily’s print distribution network.

These dramatic changes reverberated across New Caledonia. The rural Northern Province and the outlying Loyalty Islands Province relied on the paper and smaller local media such as Caledonia TV, the monthly magazine Le Pays and occasional newssheets issued by the provincial governments. For Pierre-Chanel Tutugoro, mayor of the east coast town of Ponerihouen, one of Les Nouvelles’s strengths was its local inserts and regular reports from the provinces and rural towns. “For local mayors,” he says, “it was an important way to reach out to the community. Now that’s gone and it’s unfortunate.”

As has happened elsewhere, the rapid spread of smartphone technology has transformed New Caledonia’s media landscape, though unevenly. Nearly half the population can access the web through their mobile phones, but access to quality broadband — and even electricity — varies greatly between urban centres and isolated villages in the central mountain chain and the outer islands, where the population is majority Kanak.

Tutugoro, who is also secretary-general of the largest independence party, Union Calédonienne, believes the decision to halt the print edition undercut the economics of Les Nouvelles. “They went online, but that effectively meant they were giving it away,” he says. “Even in the deep valleys in the mountains near Hienghène or in Ponerihouen where people have 4G, you could get the news each day at 6am. People who had a subscription were sharing the online version on social media.”

The shift to digital-only was too little, too late. On the afternoon of 10 March, less than three months after the print edition closed, Melchior’s owners announced that the company would file for liquidation. Supporters of the group’s 120 employees rallied in front of the Les Nouvelles offices, but the court announced the liquidation of the company a week later.

“It’s a brutal procedure,” the paper’s executive director, Yves Delauw, told local media. “We have to do things very quickly, because we could not make this announcement several weeks in advance and continue working in this context. From the moment the court pronounces the liquidation, everything goes very quickly.”

The thirty-strong branch of the Société des Journalistes at Les Nouvelles deplored “the refusal of management to listen to the proposals and suggestions that we have made in recent years.” Management’s reluctance to take on new journalists and invest in new technology for the digital edition had led, staff believed, to a downward spiral.

While commercial considerations drove the decision, the complex politics of French colonialism was also a factor in the demise of Les Nouvelles Calédoniennes.

In the early years of publication, Les Nouvelles and the French government broadcaster RFO were the main sources of daily news for New Caledonians. Both were fiercely critical of the Front de Libération Nationale Kanak et Socialiste, or FLNKS, a coalition of pro-independence parties.

In 1985, faced with these dominant conservative voices, the independence movement sought support from trade unions in Australia, New Zealand and various Pacific island nations to establish a community station, Radio Djiido. Together with the short-lived magazine Bwenando, Djiido was the only outlet to provide alternative views during the violent clashes of the 1980s.

Decades later, Radio Djiido still operates on a shoestring, broadcasting news, talkback, feature interviews and music. Commercial radio stations and government broadcaster NC1ère, meanwhile, continue to air more conservative views. Coverage of competing perspectives has certainly improved in recent years, but most media outlets still editorialise against the FLNKS and oppose ending French colonial rule.

“Even though Les Nouvelles was controlled by Mr Jeandot, Mr Lavoix and Mr Montagnat — all businessmen who might be described as loyalists to the French Republic — we remained a neutral newspaper,” says Thierry Kremer. The paper’s openness was its “added value,” he goes on, “but it created problems, in that you need to be aligned to a political group or party in order to receive major subsidies.”

Independence activists don’t agree with that assessment of the paper’s strengths. While journalists like Yann Mainguet sought to maintain comprehensive coverage of statements from FLNKS leaders, many activists scoff at the notion that Les Nouvelles was an impartial voice. They haven’t forgotten the appointment of Fabrice Rouard, a former spin doctor at Noumea Town Hall, a bastion of the loyalist parties, as editor-in-chief in December 2013. Rouard notoriously told staff that the flag of Kanaky, the symbol of the independence movement and the Kanak people, should not appear in photos on the front page of the paper.

“Fundamentally, this country lacks balanced media,” says long-time independence leader Roch Wamytan. “In terms of the written press, it’s completely unbalanced. When you look at Les Nouvelles Calédoniennes, you can’t say that it supported us!” In radio, by contrast, he sees more open debate. “We have a radio station that supports independence, and the other parties have stations like RRB. But for newspapers and magazines, there’s no such balance. There are monthly or quarterly newsletters, but the independence movement has never been able to find the finance to create a daily here.”

In his role as president of the Congress, New Caledonia’s legislature, Wamytan quickly issued a statement of concern about the decision to close Les Nouvelles altogether. French High Commissioner Louis Le Franc was more measured: “This emblematic daily newspaper has provided information to the population of New Caledonia for more than half a century. Les Nouvelles Calédoniennes benefited from various assistance to the press, particularly during the Covid pandemic, which, alas, was not enough to maintain activity.”

For staff members like Thierry Kremer, these sentiments provide little comfort. “We didn’t receive any support from the Southern Province, the Northern Province or the Government of New Caledonia, even when we were in some difficulty,” he says. “It is my personal opinion that, for them, it’s not a bad thing that we’ve closed. There are now people speaking out to help us as employees, but they weren’t there when we were in trouble.”

The paper’s journalists express anger or disdain at the muted response of New Caledonia’s political elite. As the Société des Journalistes noted in its formal statement, “The loss of the only daily press title in the country, with an indifferent response from politicians and institutions, is a disaster for democracy, in particular in view of the electoral deadlines awaiting New Caledonians.”

Les Nouvelles’s demise comes at a time when New Caledonians need accurate information more than ever. After three referendums on self-determination between 2018 and 2021, political leaders are now debating whether to replace the 1998 Noumea Accord, an agreement that has governed politics, society and the economy for the past twenty-five years. Time is short to strike a deal before the next provincial and congressional elections, scheduled for May 2024.

Three separate delegations travelled to Paris in mid April for bilateral discussions with French prime minister Élisabeth Borne and interior and overseas minister Gérald Darmanin. Despite the positive dialogue, fundamental differences remain over the way forward.

Embedded in the French constitution, the Noumea Accord can only be changed by a three-fifths majority in a joint meeting of the French National Assembly and the Senate — a level of support that seems unlikely at the moment. President Emmanuel Macron lost his majority in the National Assembly in France’s June 2022 legislative elections. His recent decision to force through changes to pensions and the retirement age has crippled his standing in public opinion polls and eroded his political capital.

The French government has nevertheless proposed a short timetable to agree on a new political statute that would keep New Caledonia within the French Republic. After last month’s talks, the overseas minister will visit Noumea in late May, with Macron following — possibly in July — in the hope of finalising an agreement by September. For the French government, this would open the way for reform of the French constitution in early 2024.

The independence movement, rejecting this timetable, has so far refused to engage in trilateral negotiations with the French state and loyalist anti-independence parties. Union Calédonienne’s Pierre-Chanel Tutugoro says the FLNKS wants Paris to agree to a new treaty and a clear timetable for a transition to an independent and sovereign state.

“Our proposed treaty highlights issues related to interdependence with the French state, during a period of transition after independence,” he said. “This will ensure there is no rupture with France. We’re following in the footsteps set by our forebears, seeking independence with full sovereignty, but with ongoing, albeit different, ties with France.”

Within this complex debate, Tutugoro says the closure of the daily newspaper makes it difficult to share accurate information across the community. “If we do nothing,” he says, “we leave our community at the mercy of social media, where many people get their news. But on social media, there’s not much filtering of ‘fake news’ or political posturing or outright lying — so it’s irresponsible to rely on it.”

Not surprisingly, Thierry Kremer agrees. “I hope that, for New Caledonia’s sake, a daily paper can be revived,” he says. “But would such a paper be as neutral as we were? The problem is that there will soon be provincial elections, which will be very important. I don’t understand why the French government didn’t step in, given the political context and the need to maintain neutral, accurate information in the territory.”

What’s next? The Les Nouvelles website and photo archive are a historical resource that must be preserved, but they are also a valuable asset as the liquidators seek to pay off staff, shareholders and creditors. (Disclosure: as a long-time subscriber to the newspaper I am technically a creditor, though I’m not holding my breath awaiting a small refund for the balance of my annual subscription.)

Les Nouvelles is gone, but in an increasingly polarised political context, new media may yet emerge. Local conservative politicians and business figures are discussing new projects, with conservative magazines like Actu.nc and Demain en Nouvelle-Calédonie looking at the economics of daily publishing.

Last year, businessman and former right-wing politician Didier Leroux made a significant investment in the radio station Océane FM, as the basis of a new TV station. The new channel, dubbed NC9, would likely receive significant financial subsidies from New Caledonia’s Southern Province under its president Sonia Backès, leader of the loyalist bloc in New Caledonia’s Congress.

Backès also serves as citizenship minister in the French government in Paris. With the audiovisual sector under the control of the French state rather than the government of New Caledonia, approval for editorial outlets opposed to independence will likely receive a sympathetic hearing. Commerce and politics are transforming the media landscape. •

The post Death of a newspaper appeared first on Inside Story.

France’s high commissioner to New Caledonia, Patrice Faure, announced last month that the vote would proceed as scheduled on 12 December, despite pleas from Kanak customary and political leaders for a delay until after next year’s French elections. “New Caledonians who wish to go to the polls on 12 December will be able to do so in peace and calm,” said Faure. At town halls and polling booths, they will be able to choose between Yes for independence or No to remain within the French Republic.

Despite this, the independence coalition Front de Libération Nationale Kanak et Socialiste, or FLNKS, and other independence forces have chosen not to participate in this weekend’s referendum. FLNKS spokesperson Daniel Goa has called on all Yes voters to stay at home on Sunday, and “to stay away from the polling booths to avoid any confrontation with people turning out to vote.” The non-participation of many Kanak and other supporters of independence “will obviously result in an overwhelming victory for the No,” says Goa, “in a proportion that will totally discredit the popular consultation.”

The vote is the third in a series under the Noumea Accord, a 1998 agreement between the French government and supporters and opponents of independence. After more than twenty years’ transition involving the devolution of powers from Paris to New Caledonia, the referendums ask, “Do you want New Caledonia to accede to full sovereignty and become independent?”

In the first referendum, in November 2018, the Yes campaign won 43 per cent support; in the second, in October 2020, this rose to 46.6 per cent. The FLNKS was hoping for majority support in the third and final vote in late 2022, but France’s rush to hold the vote this week led to their change of policy.

“This referendum is the culmination of the Noumea Accord, the culmination of a decolonisation process,” says Victor Tutugoro, president of Union Progressiste Mélanésienne, or UPM, one of four FLNKS parties. “The FLNKS, as a representative of the indigenous people, the colonised people, has said that the referendum should be delayed and we will not turn out to vote on 12 December. Despite this, the French state has gone ahead to organise the poll without the first people, the colonised people. So who will turn out to vote? People who have never been colonised?”

In a rare sign of unanimity, all pro-independence forces — political parties, trade unions and customary leaders — have formed a joint committee to back the call for non-participation. With the likely absence of tens of thousands of independence voters, Kanak and non-Kanak, the poll has little credibility. It does nothing to resolve the current political impasse that divides supporters and opponents of independence. There’s trouble ahead and the French government is responsible.

Opponents of independence have forged Les Voix du Non — the Voices of No — an alliance of political parties who want to maintain New Caledonia within the French Republic.

“We’re seeking to mobilise people who have voted No in the past, to ensure that they will turn out on the twelfth,” spokesperson Christopher Gygès tells me. The pandemic means “it’s very hard to estimate the likely turnout, even with opinion polling about voting intentions. But we’re getting a feeling about attitudes on the ground, because we’re out and about, talking to people.”

“Our objective — a very ambitious objective — is to maintain the same No vote that we obtained in 2020,” says Thierry Santa, leader of the anti-independence party Rassemblement-Les Républicains. A key member of Les Voix du Non, he served as president of New Caledonia between 2019 and February this year, and remains a member of New Caledonia’s multi-party government under his successor, President Louis Mapou. “But one problem is that some of our supporters, especially those who live deep in the valleys, in the tribes, are unlikely to turn out because of the call from the independence movement. In a small village, they may face some pressure and so they won’t go and vote.”

Complacency also exists among pro-French voters, he adds: “We have tried to maintain our mobilisation, despite the non-participation of independence parties, which means some people think ‘we’ve won, so there’s no need to go and vote!’ At the same time, there is the health crisis which continues to worry sections of the population. So we’ve really been trying to reach out to those people, telling them that they have to get out and vote.”

Like other anti-independence leaders, Santa welcomes greater autonomy from Paris while wanting to retain French sovereignty. “I think that we already have a very great autonomy, and that an ongoing decolonisation process can extend that autonomy within the French Republic, without completely cutting ties with France. This is the basis for the discussion that we will inevitably have, to forge a consensus between us, to recognise the recognition of identity that is at the heart of the independence struggle, even while recognising the diversity of ethnic communities that make up the New Caledonian kaleidoscope.”

The large Wallisian and Futunan community in New Caledonia has historically backed the conservative anti-independence parties, but a new generation of Polynesian voters are more open to engagement with the independence movement. The Eveil Océanien (Pacific Awakening) party, led by Milakulo Tukumuli, has said “No, not now” to independence. But Tukumuli has told members and supporters they can freely decide whether to participate in Sunday’s vote or stay at home. Many people in this islander community, hit hard by a recent wave of Covid-19, have other priorities.

The rush to hold the referendum is polarising the nation. Last April, key independence parties called for the third poll, but wanted it held in late 2022, after the French national elections. The decision on the earlier date of 12 December 2021 was taken by the French government following discussions at a roundtable in Paris last June.

At the time, leaders of the largest pro-independence parties expressed concern at what they described as a “unilateral” decision about the date rather than a consensus of delegates at the roundtable. France’s overseas minister, Sébastien Lecornu, agreed that this was a decision from Paris: “I would like to point out that this date is not the subject of a consensus… It’s an initiative that we are taking within the strict framework of the powers of the French state.”

In the lead-up to the first two votes in 2018 and 2020, former French prime minister Edouard Philippe invested extensive time and effort to forge a consensus over the date, registration of voters and other contested issues. But the French government under his successor Jean Castex has been distracted by wider concerns.

For months, and especially since the latest surge of Covid-19, Kanak customary leaders and independence politicians have called for a delay in the poll until 2022. But the young and ambitious overseas minister has forged ahead, despite warnings and cautions from across the spectrum. The final confirmation of the December date came not from the prime minister but in an offhand statement by high commissioner Faure. “We are shocked that it was the high commissioner who made this announcement, rather than the overseas minister or the prime minister,” UPM’s Victor Tutugoro told me, “because the issue of New Caledonia is their responsibility.”

Many French and New Caledonian commentators have highlighted the ambitions of the thirty-six-year-old Lecornu, who is a fervent supporter of Macron’s LREM party. One Kanak leader told me the minister is “young, ambitious and arrogant — a bad combination in a politician.”

Rassemblement’s Thierry Santa, a pro-French loyalist, is more diplomatic, but notes, “To be honest with you, Minister Lecornu has his own way of working, that involves breaking many of the traditional codes of practice. This has allowed things to move on a bit faster than usual, but it’s also shaken things up and caused some tension. His way of working today is criticised more and more. I agree that there are issues about his level of experience and the need for respect.” Things have moved faster, he adds, “but it’s a problem if this throws up roadblocks… His way of working is now less and less accepted and has created reactions that have stopped things moving forward.”

The rush to the referendum and Lecornu’s “crash through or crash” style has provoked a flood of condemnation from diplomats, academics, Pacific island leaders and other people with a deep knowledge of the French dependency.

Among them is Denise Fisher, a former Australian consul general in Noumea, who has described France’s plan to continue with the December referendum as “the most stunning, the most disappointing and the most consequential decision in the last twenty years.” The refusal to delay the poll “undermines the legitimacy of this decisive vote,” she says.

Vanuatuan prime minister Bob Loughman has called for a delay in the vote, while the five-member Melanesian Spearhead Group, or MSG, has issued a joint statement to the United Nations: “We are deeply concerned, like many New Caledonians, that the prevailing circumstances of the Covid-19 pandemic in New Caledonia… does not present a conducive environment for a fair, just, credible, transparent and peaceful conduct of the self-determination referendum.” The MSG warns that “the integrity and credibility of the referendum process and its outcome are seriously at stake.”

This concern is echoed by a group of eminent figures from Polynesia and Micronesia, including former presidents of Kiribati, Palau and Marshall Islands, the outgoing Tuvalu prime minister, a former US congressman from Guahan (Guam) and the outgoing secretary-general of the Pacific Islands Forum. Through the organisation Pacific Elders Voice they have written to President Macron urging him to “be open to the voice of the leaders of the Kanak people and show consideration and respect for their wishes. We urge this so that the situation does not turn to violence and the dialogue remains open.”

In France, an open letter from sixty-four leading specialists on New Caledonia — historians, anthropologists, researchers and more — questioned the French government’s refusal to delay the vote until 2022: “A self-determination vote in New Caledonia without the Kanaks? It’s not only a political and moral mistake: it is a flashback that evokes the gloomy ‘events’ of 1984–1988 [a period of armed conflict in New Caledonia].” They went on: “We witness with amazement and concern the complete challenge to the 1988 Matignon Accords and the 1998 Noumea Accord which, out of Ouvéa’s ashes, had given rise to immense hope: that of a peaceful and inclusive decolonisation.”

These concerns are echoed by New Caledonian historian Louis-José Barbançon, a leading intellectual among the Caldoche (New Caledonians of European heritage, born and bred in the islands, who often regard with some scorn the “metros” from Paris). Writing in Le Monde, Barbançon says that “in their own country — the only one they have — the Kanak should never be seen as enemies; otherwise, we will always remain in a colonial situation.”

Independence supporters are especially concerned that the French authorities have pressed on with the process in the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic. New Caledonia avoided large numbers of coronavirus cases for more than eighteen months, but since 6 September there’s been a terrible surge of the Delta variant. The current tally rests at 12,385 cases and 279 deaths in a territory of just 272,000 people.

In this climate, the mood in the towns and tribes is markedly different from the earlier referendum campaigns, which involved large public meetings, street rallies, concerts and other mass events. Today, far fewer flags can be seen — either the blue, white and red French tricolour or the multicoloured flag of Kanaky — and campaigning has been disrupted by a lockdown and declaration of a state of emergency. Even today, with fewer daily cases and the lifting of the state of emergency, large gatherings are still limited until 19 December, curtailing the capacity of political parties to mobilise and enthuse their supporters.

Beyond the FLNKS call for “non-participation,” the lived experience of the pandemic will depress turnout for Sunday’s vote. While people from every community have been affected by Covid-19, the death toll has fallen disproportionately on indigenous Kanak and islanders from the Wallisian community, reflecting disparities in housing, income, and access to information and health services in rural areas and squatter settlements.

The official Institut des Statistiques et Etudes Économiques has confirmed the impact of the pandemic, reporting that “the number of deaths recorded in September 2021, 1.8 times higher than the 2015–2019 average, appears to be quite exceptional.” A recent ISEE bulletin reported, “All causes combined, the municipalities of New Caledonia recorded a total of 310 deaths in September 2021 and 250 deaths the following month.” This is “a 144 per cent increase for September over previous years” and “for October, double the average usually observed.”

With dozens of extended families in mourning, Kanak and islanders face cultural obligations and significant expense to mark the death of loved ones. Many people have little time for the blah, blah, blah of politicians — even for such an important referendum. “We are in national mourning and we are not even out of lockdown,” Basil Citre of the Dynamique Autochtone party told journalists last month. “Talking about politics and referendums when many families are in mourning is not the right option.”

For the French government, the poll will not be invalidated by a low turnout. Voting is not compulsory in France, and national and local elections are often marked by low numbers and abstention.

For Francis Lamy, a councillor of the Conseil d’État, France’s highest administrative court, French judicial case law is clear: “A low turnout is not a sign that the ballot is irregular. I remind you that voting is not compulsory in France and that there is no minimum turnout required for this referendum.” Lamy heads the official Control Commission that oversees the vote (alongside electoral observers from the United Nations and the Pacific Islands Forum).

Les Voix du Non’s Christopher Gygès echoes the government view: “We think that a certain number of independence supporters won’t follow the orders issued by their leaders, but even without their participation, the referendum is legitimate.”

This narrow legalism ignores political realities. A decolonisation referendum without participation by most indigenous Kanak — the colonised people — lacks credibility. The two previous polls have been marked by very high turnout (81% in November 2018 and 85.6% in October 2020). This year, the absence of tens of thousands of pro-independence voters will be a blow to the credibility of the outcome — especially as non-participation will likely be highest in Kanak-majority areas in the Northern Province and outlying Loyalty Islands.

The FLNKS and other pro-independence forces have called for “non-participation” in the vote, rather than an “active boycott” that could lead to disruption of polling or clashes with the hundreds of extra soldiers and paramilitary police deployed to New Caledonia in recent weeks. These include fifteen extra squadrons of gendarmes mobiles, amounting to 1100 officers, supported by a small contingent of military personnel on attachment to the police. Paris is dispatching thirty armoured cars and extra helicopters to support this deployment.

The conservative leaders of Les Voix du Non are not expecting serious problems, because of this show of force. “We are confident that the same message is coming from the loyalists and the independence parties: that the process should be peaceful,” says Gygès. “We think it’s helpful that the French state has deployed the ‘forces of order’ to avoid any disruption. At this stage, we’re confident about a smooth running of the referendum and the period afterwards.”

Former president Thierry Santa acknowledges the vast majority of Yes voters will respect the FLNKS watchword on non-participation. “However there will be some who will vote on 12 December, because there is some pressure from the new generation of independence activists, who complain against the elders who are still in positions of power.”

Santa also thinks that Sunday will be calm. “I’m not worried about conflict because I think the term ‘non-participation’ is designed to avoid any disruption,” he tells me. “By saying ‘non-participation’ instead of ‘boycott,’ I think that’s a way of saying they want the referendum to go ahead. So I don’t think that access to the polling booths will be blocked, or the ballot boxes will be smashed with an axe! I’m quite optimistic about the way that the vote will proceed, apart from a few young radicals here or there. Clearly the independence parties are calling for a peaceful process and not an active boycott of the vote. They’re happy for people to go fishing or to their gardens.”

Regardless of the outcome, this week’s vote marks the last referendum under the 1998 agreement known as the Noumea Accord, a decolonisation process that has framed New Caledonia’s politics and economy for more than twenty years.

The French government now proposes replacing the Noumea Accord, which has devolved many powers to its Pacific dependency and restricted voting for local political institutions to indigenous Kanak and long-term New Caledonian citizens. Overseas minister Lecornu has announced that the transition to new governing arrangements must be completed in just eighteen months, by 30 June 2023, to be followed by a vote on a new political statute.

Southern Province president Sonia Backès — leader of the right-wing Les Républicains Calédoniens, or LRC, party — has called for a revision of the clé de repartition (an agreement that divides revenues among New Caledonia’s three provinces). Criticising the FLNKS for its “lack of political courage” in avoiding the vote, Backès wants a new deal to reduce the share of revenue allocated to the Kanak-majority rural provinces.

“With the clé de repartition, it can’t go on as it is,” says Christopher Gygès, a member of the LRC. “While we need to continue development in the Northern Province and the Loyalty Islands Province, it can’t continue to unbalance the South. We’re all united as well on the voting rights and the electoral roll: the ‘frozen’ electoral roll can’t continue as it is. The French state has also written that after the third referendum, the electoral roll can’t remain frozen.”

Such changes to electoral registration for the local provincial assemblies and national Congress would enable more recently arrived residents to vote for the local political institutions. This pressure for thousands of extra French nationals to be added to electoral rolls will be fiercely resisted by the independence movement.

Gygès regards the outcome of Sunday’s vote as a foregone conclusion: “Regardless of the opinion of the independence movement, the people of New Caledonia will have spoken three times to say that New Caledonia should stay within the French Republic. We’re certainly open to dialogue about what should come next, but it’s up to the independence movement to say when they’re ready to talk.”

That clearly won’t be any time soon. Leaders of all the major pro-independence parties issued a statement last week saying bluntly that “the political timetable for discussion imposed by the French state in the aftermath of 12 December 2021 is not ours and only commits them. Therefore, we reserve the right to initiate discussions with the state after consultation with our respective political structures. We also wonder about the legitimacy of the current interlocutors, even though the national elections have not yet occurred.”

Rassemblement’s Thierry Santa agrees that little can be resolved until there’s a new government in Paris: “It’s clear that any future statute for New Caledonia can only be finalised by the new president, the new prime minister and a new overseas minister, who will only be determined as a result of the ballot in the presidential and legislative elections next year. Personally, I don’t think we’ll see a roundtable involving all three partners until after the elections.

“There will be bilateral talks between us and the French state, between the independence leaders and the French state and even between us here in New Caledonia,” he adds. “But I’m convinced there won’t be three-way talks until the new government is in place after the national elections. The current government can’t solve the problems of New Caledonia in the next few months, especially in the middle of an election campaign.”

UPM’s Victor Tutugoro stressed to me: “They just want to talk about yet another statute, for the nth time. We tired of this discussion of statutes — we want our independence. We will challenge this fake referendum, locally and internationally, at the United Nations, calling for a real referendum for the colonised people.”

And Australia’s role? In recent years, France and Australia have strengthened their strategic partnership in the Indo-Pacific region, concerned over rising Chinese influence. But the relationship has been damaged by the recent decision to cancel the $90 billion submarine contract between Australia and the French corporation Naval Group.

As Australia joins Britain and the United States in the new AUKUS strategic partnership, Thierry Santa says, “It’s absolutely certain that the ripping up of the submarine contract by Australia and the United States has influenced France’s attitude towards New Caledonia. I think that for a long time, France was relying heavily on its relationship with Australia to strengthen the Indo-Pacific axis. The fact that Australia has turned its back on the submarine contract has really made France realise that it’s on its own in the Pacific territories.”

With President Macron publicly describing Scott Morrison as a liar, and both France and Australia moving to elections within the next six months, the issue has become highly politicised. As he seeks re-election in April, Macron faces stiff competition from extreme-right figures like Marine Le Pen and Eric Zemmour, and the short-term temptation to act tough — regardless of the long-term interests of New Caledonians — is overwhelming.

Even a loyal supporter of the Republic like Thierry Santa recognises the significance of rushing to a referendum before the French elections.

“The debate over the submarines has focused attention in metropolitan France about the role of the Pacific territories,” Santa says. “This whole issue will be debated during the French presidential elections, requiring President Macron to show to his more nationalist adversaries that he has a commitment to New Caledonia remaining French.”

Facing a massive boycott, Sunday’s vote does not address, but only delays, the resolution of this longstanding issue: will France remain a colonial power into the twenty-first century?

FLNKS leaders continue to stress that the colonised Kanak people have an “innate and active right to self-determination.” In a statement last month, they reaffirmed that the quest for independence will continue: “We reiterate to President Macron and his government our wish to build a new link with France — a link to tie together the French state with a sovereign state, free to co-construct interdependence. But if we absolutely have to choose between our freedom and these relationships, then we will choose our freedom.” •

Reporting for this article was supported by a Sean Dorney Grant for Pacific Journalism through the Walkley Public Fund.

The post Crash through or crash appeared first on Inside Story.

Under a 1998 agreement known as the Noumea Accord, two referendums have already been held on New Caledonia’s political status. In both cases, a majority of registered voters opposed independence. But the narrow victory for the No vote — 57 to 43 per cent on 4 November 2018 and an even closer 53 to 47 per cent on 4 October 2020 — worried the French government and anti-independence leaders in New Caledonia.

If a majority votes Yes on 12 December, says the French government, local leaders will need to negotiate a new constitution for the independent nation Kanaky New Caledonia, to be put to a popular referendum. But only eighteen months would then be allowed for new agreements on finance, passports, security and other issues between France and the independent state.

A No vote would open the way to a different set of negotiations. The French government proposes replacing the 1998 Noumea Accord, which has devolved many powers to its Pacific dependency. But some local leaders are worried it may unilaterally reform the law that introduced the Accord into the French constitution, rendering unconstitutional the many gains the indigenous Kanak people have made over the past twenty years.

Whether the vote is Yes or No, overseas minister Lecornu says that the transition to new governing arrangements must be complete by 30 June 2023.

While political debate has been intense in New Caledonia, the independence question is exciting little interest in France. Amid austerity, the pandemic and the debate about Europe’s future after Brexit, many ordinary citizens see little point in pumping taxpayers’ money into the network of overseas dependencies that make up the French empire. One opinion poll, taken in late April, shows 66 per cent of those surveyed would support New Caledonia’s “separation” from France. This figure worries anti-independence leaders who say, correctly, that it doesn’t reflect the opinion of French nationals of European heritage living in New Caledonia.

With the second referendum held just eight months ago, calling another vote in December has angered independence leaders, who had proposed that the third poll take place in September or October next year. Anti-independence leaders pushed for the earlier date, believing they can stall the momentum towards independence.

The debate over timing is also driven by domestic French politics. Emmanuel Macron will face off against the extreme right’s Marine Le Pen in next April’s French presidential election. In the second run-off vote, he will desperately need support from centre-right voters and the conservative Les Républicains party. Macron’s own party, La République En Marche, may seek to win friends on the right by promising to back Les Républicains against New Caledonia’s current deputies in the National Assembly — Calédonie ensemble’s Philippe Gomes and Philippe Dunoyer — in next June’s elections for the French legislature.

Over the past two decades, the transition to a new political status for New Caledonia has been monitored by regular meetings of the cross-party Committee of Signatories to the Noumea Accord. But since the first referendum, in 2018, that process has been fraught. With the two votes having raised the stakes, the multi-party government of New Caledonia has often seemed paralysed, unable to agree on key policies and budgets.

Five pro-independence members of the collegial government resigned in February, bringing down president Thierry Santa, leader of the conservative anti-independence alliance Avenir en Confiance. Despite the election of a new eleven-member executive by New Caledonia’s congress in April, Santa has remained caretaker leader because of a dispute over his replacement between the two main pro-independence groups in parliament, UC-FLNKS and Union Nationale pour l’Indépendance.

To break this cycle of mistrust, the young, ambitious Lecornu has promoted informal networks for dialogue. After last year’s conflict over the sale of nickel assets in the Southern Province, Lecornu established the Leprédour group, an irregular meeting of five politicians from anti-independence parties and five from the FLNKS, rather than seeking consensus in the Committee of Signatories.

He then called a meeting of key New Caledonian leaders in Paris between 25 May and 3 June, supposedly for a roundtable discussion but in reality to ram through a series of decisions. Speaking after the meeting, he made clear that the decision to proceed to a referendum this year was made by the French government. “This date is not the subject of a consensus,” he said, “It’s not an agreement. It’s an initiative that we are taking within the strict framework of the powers of the French State.”

Returning to Noumea after the roundtable, Gilbert Tyuiénon, a leading member of the largest independence party, Union Calédonienne, expressed concern that French domestic politics rather than New Caledonian interests were driving the agenda. While he acknowledged that the choice of referendum date is in the hands of the French government, he argued that it had “taken advantage of the constraints of the national electoral calendar, rather than the expectations expressed by the independence movement. The date of 12 December was therefore not the subject of a consensus decision.”

Louis Mapou, a leading independence activist in New Caledonia’s Southern Province and one of two candidates contending for the presidency of New Caledonia, says the rushed timing imposed by the French state is promoting deep anger among grassroots independence supporters. “Our activists are advocating a boycott, because all Kanak say that this is too much of a rush,” said Mapou. “We have long pleaded that the referendum not be held before the end of the year. Can this guarantee that the independence movement will participate? And beyond this, who can guarantee that we in the leadership will be followed?”

When he announced the roundtable in Paris, Lecornu hoped to engage key political leaders across the spectrum. But a number were reluctant to participate, arguing the format would restrict the topics that needed to be discussed. Union Nationale pour l’Indépendance leader Paul Néaoutyine, president of the Northern Province, boycotted the meeting and UNI delegation members Louis Mapou and Victor Tutugoro then refused to attend. Union Calédonienne leaders agreed to travel to France but said they had come to present their point of view, not to negotiate.

Long-time conservative politician Pierre Frogier, New Caledonia’s representative in the French Senate, also declined to participate. He also attacked the “deep state” of French bureaucrats for their lack of interest in the concerns of New Caledonians. His boycott highlights the classic fear among pro-France politicians that sections of the French government are eager to walk away from France’s overseas colonies — a claim that surprises FLNKS leaders who argue, with more evidence, that the opposite is true.

Other politicians — including Milakulo Tukumuli and Vaimua Muliava, leaders of Éveil Océanien — travelled to Paris hoping to participate in the week of meetings. Even though their Wallisian party holds the balance of numbers in New Caledonia’s congress, they were unable to join key meetings. “We did not actually meet the prime minister,” complained Tukumuli, referring to Jean Castex, “quite simply because we did not have an appointment with him.”

Much of the discussion in Paris was framed around an official French government document setting out its views on the legal, constitutional and financial implications of both a Yes and a No vote in a third referendum. A draft of the document was sent confidentially to chosen participants before the meeting, but was quickly leaked to the conservative blog Calédosphere in the hope that elements of France’s response to the vote will scare New Caledonians away from supporting independence.

The leaked draft states, for example: “In the event of independence, as the funding currently granted by the French State becomes null and void, the new State [of Kanaky New Caledonia] will have to mobilise resources to finance its public service and social services. The question of the settlement of financial debts and investments made by the French State, as well as its property and property rights, will also have to be dealt with by the new State.”

It also states that “France does not exercise judicial jurisdiction outside its national territory. In the event of independence, therefore, the judicial system will have to be defined and managed by the new State… In the event of independence of the territory, the overseas tax exemption mechanisms provided for by French law, being reserved for companies present on national territory, will no longer be applicable on the territory of the new State at the end of the transition period.”

The independence movement will shed few tears that the tax lurks and financial subsidies that have benefited a small segment of the European elite in Noumea will be withdrawn. Many Kanak will also welcome the opportunity to reform the judicial and legal system to reflect local realities, replacing the French jurisprudence that has seen indigenous people making up 80 per cent of prisoners in Camp Est, New Caledonia’s main prison. Despite this, French funding for secondary teachers is a major budget item, and there are few Kanak lawyers, doctors and professionals, even after nearly 170 years of colonisation.

The FLNKS has long recognised that a Yes vote will be followed by a transitional period before the new nation can be born. Indeed, an FLNKS policy statement released in 2018 proposed negotiations over finance, technical assistance and security to develop a new relationship with France, but also new agreements on trade and economic support with Australia, New Zealand, the Melanesian Spearhead Group and other neighbours. The decades-long struggle for independence has always been based on the notion that New Caledonia must be better integrated into its regional environment rather than always look to Paris for solutions, even though many of the legal and cultural ties created during the colonial era will persist.

Yet the French government says it will rapidly withdraw funding amounting to more than €1 billion a year, and that future support will be determined only after tough political negotiations. Not surprisingly, anti-independence leaders have seized on the Yes/No document’s tight timeline to argue that New Caledonia will face a fiscal crisis and a collapse of the local bureaucracy before new arrangements are settled.

“Part of the French State’s financial transfers will come to an abrupt end and the other part progressively over time, but in a very short period,” anti-independence leader Sonia Backès told journalists in Paris. “Our degrees will no longer be recognised and it will require lengthy approaches to other countries (France, Australia, New Zealand, Canada…) to have them welcome our students into their countries. Our currency will be devalued: wages may be cut in half.”

Despite the disagreement about the timing of the referendum, Union Calédonienne’s Gilbert Tyuiénon believes the Paris meeting had a number of positive outcomes. The French government made clear the “irreversibility” of the Noumea Accord, he says, “confirming that the accord won’t lead to a political vacuum, whatever the result of the third referendum; that France would not call for the withdrawal of New Caledonia from the list of non-self-governing territories at the United Nations; that an audit of the decolonisation process would be undertaken; that a process involving restrictions on the right to vote would still be possible within the framework of a new agreement; and that a double nationality would be possible for citizens of the future nation.”

The French government also rejected “any form of partition of the country,” he added. For Kanak, the vast majority of the population in the North and Loyalty Islands provinces, this is a welcome response to efforts by some anti-independence leaders to shift more power to the Southern province, in the vain hope that part of the main island might somehow remain a French dependency after independence.

Meanwhile, many New Caledonians will again be making their own calculations about the pros and cons of independence.

A few years ago, I had a long discussion with a French friend about whether he would stay in an independent Kanaky. He gave me a detailed account of the advantages provided by a French passport, with work and education opportunities for his children in Europe and the enormous tax benefits and subsidies that come with living in a French overseas dependency. He had obviously thought a lot about the issue and was reluctant to become a citizen of the new state unless he could also retain French nationality.

The Noumea Accord created a distinct group of New Caledonian citizens — indigenous Kanak and long-term residents — who gain employment rights and can vote for the three provincial assemblies and national congress. (A separate electoral roll with different residency requirements includes New Caledonian citizens seeking to vote in the referendums on self-determination.) But tens of thousands of French nationals living in New Caledonia are ineligible to vote for local political institutions, even though they are enrolled to vote for the French presidency, the National Assembly, the Senate, the European parliament and municipal councils. Anti-independence leaders are pushing for a revision of these voting rights, opening up the local electoral rolls to more French nationals.

The leaked Yes/No report argues that “the restricted, fixed electorate in particular constitutes a restriction that cannot be sustained in its current configuration,” but this push is being fiercely resisted by the independence movement. Many Kanak fear they will be made an even greater minority in their homeland, like Maori in Aotearoa–New Zealand.

Anti-independence leaders are quick to highlight the potential loss of French and EU passports for French nationals who take out citizenship in the new state. “In the event of independence,” says the draft Yes/No report, “nationals of the new State would lose the benefits of European citizenship.” France and the newly independent state might try to negotiate a system of double nationality but “French nationals who have not acquired the nationality of the new State at the same time will also be foreigners in New Caledonia. They will therefore be subject to the law of foreigners determined sovereignly by the new State.”

Some French nationals appear to already be packing their bags. The latest census, in 2019, reported 271,400 inhabitants of New Caledonia, with the population having increased by only 2600 people in the last five years (a much lower number that the period from 2009 to 2014). According to New Caledonia’s official Institute for Statistics and Economic Studies, the decline in the rate of population growth “is mainly explained by an increase in departures, combined with a decrease in arrivals. For the first time since 1983, the migratory balance is negative.”

Many more French nationals are likely to desert New Caledonia if they face losing access to their EU passport and the high salaries and tax benefits that come as a resident of France’s overseas empire. Although the Yes/No report says that, beyond departing French public servants and soldiers, “the number of those leaving is difficult to calculate with precision,” it also claims 10,000 people are certain to leave if independence goes ahead, and “up to 70,000 departures are possible, impacting the labour force, domestic consumption and taxation receipts.”

When Emmanuel Macron delivered a speech on French–Australian relations from the deck of HMAS Canberra in Sydney Harbour in May 2018, he highlighted the potential for an “India–Australia–France axis” in the Indo-Pacific region to help contain China. This re-framing of the Asia-Pacific region as the “Indo-Pacific” has become the new trope as the Biden administration reinforces and expands the US alliance structure in the aftermath of the chaotic Trump era.

With New Caledonia a key pivot point in France’s Indo-Pacific strategy, it’s no surprise that Macron’s administration is encouraging New Caledonian politicians to increase collaboration with Australia and New Zealand. The ANZUS allies now see France as a “democratic, stable and Western power” in the region, and both Canberra and Wellington have given up any public criticism of French colonialism, as they boost defence cooperation.

In Paris last month, overseas minister Lecornu acknowledged that the debate over New Caledonia’s political future is overlaid by geopolitics. The referendum is a time, he said, “when the government looks at what New Caledonia contributes to France. Where we must reflect on France’s ability to be present in the Pacific, where the world is carved up between the USA and China.”

Others were less subtle about playing the China card. “I plan to meet the United States, New Zealand and Australian embassies,” Sonia Backès bluntly remarked en route to Paris last month, “to make them aware of the China threat in the case of independence.”

On 7 June, after visiting the US embassy, Backès met with Australian ambassador Gillian Bird as part of her schedule of meetings with visiting New Caledonian political leaders. A spokesperson from the NZ foreign affairs ministry confirmed that Backès also met with NZ ambassador Jane Coombs, stating that “France remains an important and like-minded partner for New Zealand in the Indo-Pacific region and globally.”

After meetings with prime minister Jean Castex and France’s overseas ministry, some of the New Caledonian delegation also met with the defence ministry and senior military officers to discuss “the role of military forces in the Pacific and the strategic implications of French positioning in the Pacific Ocean and the Indo-Pacific axis.”

The French government claims to take an impartial stand on the outcome of the next referendum. But given the implications for other Pacific dependencies such as French Polynesia, Wallis and Futuna and Clipperton Island, it is eager to maintain colonial control in New Caledonia.

Under the Noumea Accord, France retains control of the “sovereign powers” of defence, justice and military security, which has given it increased access to regional security programs through New Caledonia’s membership of the Pacific Islands Forum. But in the absence of a new defence cooperation agreement with an independent Kanaky New Caledonia, the French government is proposing a rapid departure of its military forces in the territory, the Forces Armées de la Nouvelle-Calédonie.

Many Kanak, remembering the role of the French army in the armed clashes of the 1980s and the 1988 Ouvea massacre, would welcome this. But a newly independent government would still need vessels to patrol its fishing grounds and vast exclusive economic zone. Would it seek an extension of French military deployments (as occurred in post-independence Algeria)? Would it look to Australia’s Pacific Maritime Security Program? Or might it perhaps seek support from other partners, in the way Timor-Leste looks to China as well as Australia for patrol boats and security training?

With just six months before the 12 December referendum, there’s no guarantee that the timetable can hold. The FLNKS and other independence forces are discussing the best way to respond to the rushed, unilateral decision on the referendum. The ominous silence of many Kanak leaders should not be taken as consent, and France’s current manoeuvres should worry Australia, New Zealand and other member states of the Pacific Islands Forum. The perception that the French government has broken its word, abandoning a past commitment to forging consensus between supporters and opponents of independence, will have significant repercussions in Melanesian culture.

The decision facing New Caledonians is stark: whether to retain the familiar ties with the French motherland or take a leap into history. The overwhelming majority, both supporters and opponents of independence, have accepted the outcome of the two previous referendums as broadly free and fair. But will they respond in a similar way after this third referendum, if the process has been curtailed to fit in with President Macron’s re-election bid? •

Reporting for this article was supported by a Sean Dorney Grant for Pacific Journalism through the Walkley Public Fund.

The post Third time lucky in New Caledonia? appeared first on Inside Story.

The clash on 7 December followed a month of roadblocks and demonstrations across the French Pacific dependency of New Caledonia. The protests were called by the “Usine du Sud = Usine Pays” collective, which unites customary chiefs, environment groups, trade unionists and members of the independence coalition Front de Libération Nationale Kanak et Socialiste, or FLNKS.

The immediate dispute was over which consortium could bid for the Goro nickel smelter and the other assets of Vale Nouvelle-Calédonie. The company, which began nickel smelting in 2010, is the local subsidiary of the Brazilian corporation Vale, one of the largest mining companies in the world, with interests in logistics, transport, energy and steel making. Vale is pulling out of New Caledonia by year’s end, threatening 3000 jobs.

But the battle over Vale’s assets hides a deeper struggle. Can the local people control New Caledonia’s extensive natural resources, including nearly a quarter of the world’s reserves of nickel, as they move towards a new political status?

Vale’s decision to leave New Caledonia was announced in December 2019, between two referendums on self-determination — the first in November 2018 and the second in October this year. In both cases, a majority of registered voters expressed a desire to remain within the French Republic. But the narrow margin of 57–43 per cent in 2018 and the closer 53–47 vote this year suggest the territory will move to the third and final vote by 2022. As New Caledonians decide on their political future, the independence movement believes that increased local control of the mining sector will help underpin a sovereign and independent nation.

Across Melanesia, recent conflicts in Bougainville, West Papua and New Caledonia have reflected concern about environmental management and the role of transnational resource companies. Mining lies at the heart of the political ecology of these Melanesian dependencies, both as a cause of discontent — about environmental damage and the distribution of financial benefits — and as a resource for economic viability in a postcolonial nation.

Kanak nationalists have learnt many lessons from mining operations elsewhere in Papua New Guinea, Nauru and other independent nations in the region, with their tragic history of environmental damage, tax avoidance and unequal distribution of royalties. Facing off against the French state and transnational mining corporations, they have long sought to add value to the islands’ main resources, nickel ore and other strategic minerals, rather than simply ship them offshore unprocessed.

After New Caledonia’s violent conflict of the 1980s, independence leaders sought to open up the nickel sector to foreign companies. Under the 1969 Billotte laws, France guaranteed an effective monopoly over nickel smelting to the French corporation ERAMET and its local subsidiary Société Le Nickel, which operates the Doniambo smelter in Noumea. The French government used its Strategic Investment Fund to maintain a 25 per cent holding in ERAMET, and has subsidised Société Le Nickel in good times and bad.

In the North Province, where the population is majority indigenous Kanak, the provincial administration established a development arm, the Société de Financement et d’Investissement de la Province Nord, or Sofinor, which purchased the mining company Société Minière du Sud Pacifique, or SMSP, in 1990. Led by local entrepreneur Andre Dang, SMSP has developed new smelting capacity over the past three decades, as well as becoming a major global exporter of nickel.

“We don’t want New Caledonia to end up like Nauru,” Dang told me last year. “They were a world leader in phosphate mining, but they abused it and used it all up. They are a sad country. So our strategy is to add value to the resource, which can generate funds for use in sectors beyond the nickel industry, to benefit the country and future generations.”

New Caledonia’s governing agreement, the May 1998 Noumea Accord, created new political institutions and transferred administrative and legal powers from Paris to the territory, opening the way for re-equilibrage (economic rebalancing) between the wealthy South Province and two rural provinces in the North and the outlying Loyalty Islands.

The Accord could only be signed because contending parties had previously agreed on the préalable minier (mining precondition) posed by the independence movement. The February 1998 Bercy agreement had allowed the transfer of strategic deposits of high-grade nickel ore in the Koniambo Massif to SMSP and Sofinor, opening the way for the US$6 billion Koniambo nickel smelter at Vavouto, in the north of Grande Terre, the main island. Today, this smelter is operated by Koniambo Nickel SAS, or KNS, a joint venture between SMSP and the transnational corporation Glencore. In an unprecedented deal, Dang persuaded the Anglo-Swiss financial conglomerate to grant SMSP 51 per cent controlling interest in KNS, even as Glencore provides finance and technology.

SMSP developed a strategy to raise finance by exporting lower-grade nickel ore to Korea and China through joint ventures over which it had 51 per cent control, keeping higher-grade ore for Koniambo. The company now has two joint ventures with the Korean corporation Posco: one, the Nickel Mining Company, exports tens of thousands of tonnes of ore to Gwangyang in South Korea, for smelting at the other, the Société du Nickel de Nouvelle-Calédonie et Corée.

The next challenge was to export even lower-grade ore to a joint-venture smelter in China. In October 2017, SMSP signed a memorandum of understanding with Yangzhou Yichuan Nickel Industry Co. Ltd. to develop a joint project, once again with a 51 per cent majority for SMSP–Sofinor. Ore exports to China began in 2018, moving beyond traditional markets in Australia and Japan.

Despite technical delays at Koniambo and massive financial inputs, SMSP’s operations in the North can be contrasted with a series of social and environmental disasters at Vale’s Goro plant in the South Province. Since it began production in 2010, the plant’s high-pressure acid-leach technology has generated major environmental problems and the South Province only holds a minority stake in Vale’s operations.

The Goro smelter and Vale’s nickel ore reserves are located in the Kanak customary region of Djubea-Kapumë, which makes up the southernmost portion of Grande Terre. In the two decades since the project was conceived, Vale has engaged in tense struggles with local customary leaders operating through the Rhéébù Nùù committee (“eye of the land” in the local Drubea language), which seeks environmental protection, jobs and opportunities for local subcontractors.

After violent protests in 2006, Vale and Rhéébù Nùù signed a cooperation pact to govern relations with local Kanak tribes. But once operations began, a series of acid spills from the Goro smelter damaged the freshwater ecosystem that provides resources and livelihoods to local villagers. A major leak of acid effluent from Goro in May 2014 sparked violent clashes with unions, neighbouring Kanak tribes and subcontractors, amid calls for the smelter to be closed.

Today, buffeted by these local disputes and the rollercoaster of global nickel prices, Vale wants out.

The value of nickel has fluctuated wildly in the decades since the collapse of the Soviet Union. Russia initially flooded the market with its reserves, sinking the price on the London Metal Exchange; later, when the booming Chinese economy increased demand, new smelters — including the Koniambo and Goro plants — were set up to ride the wave. But overproduction overlaid by technological delays and financial pressure left KNS, Vale and ERAMET–Société Le Nickel struggling with debt and falling share prices.

All three ventures were looking forward to a bonanza when more nickel will be needed for electric car batteries. But the recent slowdown in China’s growth and the impact of the 2020 pandemic has made it hard to maintain existing markets. Vale was the first to crack, announcing in December last year that it would sell its New Caledonian operations. The sale is being managed by the Rothschild bank, which issued a public offer and called for bids.

Nickel smelting is a specialised industry, and relatively few companies have the technical expertise to run the complex acid-leach technology while meeting environmental standards. With the financialisation of the global economy in recent decades, the nickel industry has become the target for speculators rather than long-established metallurgy companies like France’s ERAMET or Canada’s Inco and Falconbridge.

Because of its use as an alloy and for manufacturing stainless steel, and with demand fuelled by China’s remarkable growth, “nickel has become one of the sexiest metals on the planet,” writes natural resources expert Laurent Châtenay. “It has aroused the interest of a large number of financial mercenaries, who bought out the main gems of this industry (notably Inco and Falconbridge) and contributed to a gradual change in the culture of the nickel industry.” Xstrata, Glencore, Trafigura and other “financial nomads” undermined the industry’s culture, adds Châtenay, “enticed yesterday by the development of China and today by the prospect of the development of the electric battery.”

In April, the North Province’s development arm, Sofinor, announced a preliminary bid for Vale Nouvelle-Calédonie’s assets, in partnership with Korea Zinc. The Korean corporation is one of the world’s leading producers of zinc and other metals, and has extensive industrial experience in hydro-metallurgy. Under the bid, the three provinces would jointly hold a majority shareholding in a new venture, giving control of the smelter to New Caledonia. Some 20,500 hectares of mining titles would be returned to local control, amounting to nearly 8 per cent of the mining area of the territory.

But conservative politicians in Noumea opposed any expansion of Sofinor into the South Province. “This is unfeasible economically and unthinkable politically,” provincial president Sonia Backes, a leader of the anti-independence coalition Avenir en Confiance, told journalists. “Those who propose this have a desire to economically colonise the southern province.”

Vale began discussions with the Australian company New Century Resources, but after widespread local opposition New Century withdrew from talks on 8 September. By then, Vale Nouvelle-Calédonie’s managing director, Antonin Beurrier, had revealed details of Sofinor’s bid, indicated it was not acceptable and sought other partners. He offered exclusive negotiations until 4 December, with the aim of closing the sale in January 2021.

Then, in a late October surprise, Beurrier announced the creation of a new company, Prony Resources Nouvelle-Calédonie. Half of the shares in this entity would be held by New Caledonian interests, while the Swiss commodity trading house Trafigura would hold another quarter. FLNKS leaders were angered that Trafigura would be given priority over the bid from Korea Zinc. “Trafigura is only an intermediary,” said the FLNKS’s Victor Tutugoro. “It’s only interested in buying the smelter and the mining titles in order to resell them when the market for nickel is more active, drawing down the maximum amount of profit.”

Daniel Goa, president of the largest independence party, Union Calédonienne, entered the fray, calling for France to intervene in support of the Sofinor–Korea Zinc project. Nearly 3000 jobs would be saved, he said, “but much more than that” — in the spirit of the Noumea Accord, he asked France to “fulfil its role as a partner, regaining through control of the southern smelter all of the social and environmental impacts that are vital for the future of our country, whatever its political or constitutional future.”

For Goa, Vale’s announced withdrawal is “a triple opportunity” for New Caledonia. “It’s an opportunity to salvage the southern smelter. It’s an opportunity to hold 56 per cent of the capital in the enterprise instead of the current 5 per cent and to do this without becoming indebted. Thirdly, it’s an opportunity that would allow the return of the Goro holdings to the country and to protect its status as metallurgical reserves in a similar manner to the Koniambo reserves.”

In October, leading anti-independence politician Philippe Gomes told me that violent clashes were likely if the sale of Vale’s assets was rushed through without proper consultation. “There is the danger of mobilisation on the ground, something we’ve already lived through in the South,” he said. “I was president of the southern province between 2004 and 2009 when there were violent protests by the Rhéébù Nùù committee. They plundered the site, causing three billion Pacific francs in damage, they destroyed equipment, some fired on police vehicles. These were real clashes and it took hundreds of hours of discussion in order for work to begin again.”

Calling for Vale to reopen dialogue with local Kanak leaders, Gomes stressed that “you just can’t hand over a smelter that’s in the middle of four Kanak tribes, who live through hunting, fishing and agriculture. It just can’t be done and we are saying, hang on, you need to be transparent and open up dialogue. The more people are fearful, the more they will drag their heels.”

To press the case for Vale to delay the sale, customary leaders in the South formed a negotiation structure, the Instance Coutumière Autochtone de Négociation, or ICAN. This body includes the eight high-chieftainships and the customary council of Djubea-Kapumë, together with the Rhéébù Nùù committee. ICAN’s call for protests was echoed by the Usine du Sud = Usine Pays collective.

In early November, Union Calédonienne’s Daniel Goa called on his members to support the protests. As part of the month-long series of protests, rallies and blockades were held in the North, leading to the closure of some municipal services. In the South, protesters gathered outside the Blue House, the imposing headquarters of the South Province on Noumea’s waterfront. At the urging of provincial president Sonia Backes, the police moved in on 17 November, firing tear gas to disperse the crowd. Young protesters hurled stones at the police, then faded away to fight another day.

These actions by indigenous activists were backed by members of the pro-independence trade union confederation USTKE, who launched a series of strategic strikes that disrupted the economy and raised the stakes for president Thierry Santa’s government of New Caledonia.

Christopher Gygès, who is responsible for the economy, trade and finance in the government, expressed reluctance to accept any delay in the sale. “The offer from Sofinor and Korea Zinc has been rejected by Vale and by the Rothschild bank, which is in charge of the negotiations,” he said. “The relentlessness shown by the partisans of this process reveals that it is designed to allow the independence movement to take control of the southern smelter. This is not what one might call a national project.”

Tough words, but the ongoing protests and blockades eventually forced the French government to intervene. On 26 November, France’s overseas minister, Sébastien Lecornu, announced that he would organise a roundtable to discuss the future of the Vale smelter and more broadly the prospects for the nickel sector in New Caledonia. Lecornu stressed that the priorities for the French state include “respect for the law, the protection of employment at the site and the preservation of the environment.”

In a letter replying to Lecornu, Union Calédonienne’s Daniel Goa said that the independence movement would add another priority beyond jobs and the environment: “Respect for the general interests of the Kanak people and New Caledonians more broadly, who today are trying to build a country free from the pangs and torment of colonial dependency.”

The tense debate amplified long-running differences between the conservative party Calédonie Ensemble and the three other anti-independence parties that make up the Avenir en Confiance coalition. Under leader Philippe Gomes, Calédonie Ensemble announced it was open to a visit by technical experts from Korea Zinc to clarify their preliminary bid. Given the difficulties for travel and quarantine during the pandemic, Gomes called for Vale to delay a decision on the sale of its assets until major bidders could present equally detailed submissions.

An initial online discussion with Lecornu was followed by a formal roundtable in Noumea on 3 December, the day before Vale was due to sign an agreement with Trafigura and Prony Resources. After discussions late into the night, the participants agreed to approach Vale to delay the proposed sale to Trafigura, suspend blockades and protests, and allow Sofinor–Korea Zinc to conduct due diligence of Vale’s nickel assets before making a definitive bid.

Within three days of the roundtable, however, stone-throwing youth were again clashing with police at the entrance to the Goro smelter. The French high commission in Noumea ordered riot police to break up any protests, echoing the law-and-order rhetoric of the South Province leadership: “The damage and stone throwing that have caused several injuries in the ranks of the police must be condemned, and those responsible will face the full force of the law.”

In response, French loyalists armed with hunting rifles mounted roadblocks, leading the French authorities to ban the transport or carrying of weapons.

Angering his conservative counterparts, Calédonie Ensemble’s Philippe Gomes joined key FLNKS leaders to write to French president Emmanuel Macron on 6 December, calling on him to intervene and calm rising tensions in the South. On social media, Gomes argued that Vale “was acting like a conqueror, imposing its timetable for the sale between the two referendums. This is unacceptable. For Vale to withdraw is one thing. But setting fire to the country as they leave is another.”

Protests and clashes surged again in Noumea on 7 December. But the culmination of a troubled day came that evening, when Korea Zinc, in a shock decision, formally withdrew its bid. A day later, Vale accepted the offer from Prony Resources and Trafigura.

ICAN vowed to maintain its opposition, worried that when Vale walks away at year’s end, New Caledonians will be left to clean up after the company. “We call on Vale to assume full responsibility for its decision to withdraw from New Caledonia,” said John-Rock Tindao, chair of the Djubea-Kapumë customary council. “This responsibility involves the environment, especially in terms of the acid effluent tailings pond which should not be exposed any longer.” Possible breaches of the dam “could lead to forty-five million tonnes of toxic waste spilling into the lagoon.”

It was one more round in the quest for a sovereign and independent Kanaky-New Caledonia, built on a sound economy. The anger evident in the South has been exacerbated by fighting words on law and order from the authorities, and the deployment of riot police. Government rhetoric about the “independent decisions” of overseas investors won’t calm the growing tension, nor mask the failure of the French state to resolve the crisis. •

Reporting for this article was supported by a Sean Dorney Grant for Pacific Journalism through the Walkley Public Fund.

The post New Caledonia’s triple opportunity appeared first on Inside Story.

This is the second referendum held under the Noumea Accord, an agreement signed in May 1998 by the French government, anti-independence leaders and the independence coalition, Front de Libération Nationale Kanak et Socialiste, or FLNKS.

At a time of economic uncertainty, many voters worry whether it’s the right time for change. But for Kanak leader Paul Néaoutyine, “our accession to sovereignty is inevitable.”

In the lead-up to New Caledonia’s first referendum in November 2018, conservative politicians predicted the independence movement would get only 30 per cent support. In the event, 43 per cent voted in favour of independence, disheartening many opponents of independence and opening the way for this weekend’s referendum.

When I ask Roch Wamytan, speaker of New Caledonia’s Congress, whether the independence movement can win, he responds cautiously. “I am hopeful that we will increase our score,” says the veteran member of the independence party Union Calédonienne. “I’m not sure whether we’ll get more than 50 per cent and may have to wait until the third referendum, but we certainly hope to get a few more percentage points beyond the 43 per cent obtained in 2018. This will strengthen us in the discussions that we will have to undertake with the French state.”

If a majority of voters say Yes on Sunday, the FLNKS has proposed a three-year transition to nationhood. Negotiations with the French government would cover the transfer of sovereign powers such as defence, foreign policy, currency and the justice system; partnerships with France on nationality and dual nationality; membership of the United Nations, the World Bank and other multilateral institutions; and funding to replace the many French public servants who staff the local administration.

If there’s a majority against independence, the status quo is retained, maintaining political structures and legislative powers created under the Noumea Accord. But another No vote opens the way to a third referendum in 2022, and the FLNKS has already stated it will continue down this path to decolonisation.

It was the shock result in the 2018 referendum that led to the formation of a conservative alliance of six anti-independence parties, says Kanak politician Roch Wamytan. Dubbed “The Loyalists,” this coalition wants to roll back the achievements of the Noumea Accord.

“Last time, the anti-independence camp was almost drunk, intoxicated by opinion polls that suggested the No vote could be as high as 75 or 80 per cent,” Wamytan tells me. “But the final result on the night of 4 November 2018 showed quite the contrary.” The debate has sharpened since then, says Wamytan. “This time, the anti-independence groups are more on the offensive.”

Louis Mapou is leader of the Union Nationale pour l’Indépendance, one of two independence groups within New Caledonia’s Congress. He agrees that this year’s debate is more polarised, and dismisses pledges by the French government that they remain impartial above the fray: “As a partner, the French state has become biased in favour of a No vote for the referendum on 4 October.”

Just three months ago, French president Emmanuel Macron reshuffled his cabinet, appointing Jean Castex as his new prime minister. It took Castex until this week to make a parliamentary statement on New Caledonia, stunning supporters and opponents of independence alike with his prolonged display of apparent indifference.

For months, Union Calédonienne president Daniel Goa has been sharply critical of the new French prime minister. “Since his appointment, we have had no discussion, no exchanges,” says Goa. “He is not interested in this territory. President Macron has also sent us a high commissioner who is nothing more than a governor, and who lacks the profile for New Caledonia, which is in a process of emancipation and decolonisation.”

The FLNKS has long provided a framework to calm the often-fractious relationship between its two largest members, Union Calédonienne and the Parti de Libération Kanak. The two parties challenge each other during provincial and municipal elections, but unity has held during the referendum campaign and a number of smaller parties supporting independence have also joined the campaign.

In the lead-up to the 2018 referendum, the left-wing Parti Travailliste and the trade union confederation USTKE advocated “non-participation,” criticising concessions by the FLNKS and arguing that only the colonised Kanak people should vote. This year, however, both the Parti Travailliste and USTKE are calling for a Yes vote, joining with other indigenous activists to form the Mouvement Nationaliste pour la Souveraineté de Kanaky, or MNSK. Although smaller than the FLNKS, the MNSK will mobilise pockets of support among voters who abstained last time in the rural north and Loyalty Islands.

The Parti Travailliste promotes Kanak sovereignty, but founder Louis Kotra Uregei says the objective is “to truly build the case [traditional house] of Kanaky, to welcome all those who have come to live with the Kanak people and become the people of Kanaky. Our struggle is not just for the Kanak, but for all those who have been recognised as ‘the victims of history’ — people who have been in the country for a long time, and who face the same problems as the Kanak face today.”

The 2018 referendum reflected the broad polarisation of New Caledonia’s politics, with most Kanak supporting independence but most non-Kanak communities opposed. The FLNKS must draw support from non-indigenous voters to win the referendum, given the Kanak people only make up 40 per cent of New Caledonia’s population, and a minority of Kanak voters are still reluctant to support independence.

Today, however, there are signs of a shift towards pro-independence sentiment among younger voters, in rural areas, and even among the many islanders who have migrated to New Caledonia from Vanuatu, Tahiti, and Wallis and Futuna.

The creation in March last year of a new political party, Eveil Océanien, highlights the desire to move beyond a Yes/No binary. Drawing support from the large Wallisian and Futunan community — more than eight per cent of the electorate — the new party has created an “islander majority” in Congress by supporting the independence groups in key votes. Last July, for example, EO’s three votes contributed to the re-election of Union Calédonienne politician Roch Wamytan as head of the legislature.

For the first time, Eveil Océanien has said its supporters should decide for themselves whether to vote Yes or No, a significant shift from the historical loyalty to France in the Wallisian community.

Significant cultural and political shifts are also evident in the Northern Province, which has been managed by a pro-independence administration for more than thirty years. Living and working together is slowly changing opinions among Caldoche farmers, descendants of French colonial settlers, who have lived in the north for generations and were bitterly opposed to independence during the conflicts of the 1980s.

In an interview with Le Monde, provincial president Paul Néaoutyine highlighted the economic “rebalancing” in the north created by the Noumea Accord.

Néaoutyine is the long-time leader of the Parti de Libération Kanak and the Union Nationale pour l’Indépendance. He said that his administration is focused on reducing social and economic inequality in the rural north. “In the Northern Province, where I preside, we make sure that the benefit of our political actions goes to these people, and not in the pockets of a privileged minority,” he told the newspaper. “The law prioritising local employment would never have existed without the struggle of the independence movement. But it benefits all the citizens of the country, not only Kanak.”

One key objective of the independence movement since the 1970s has been to break French control over mining and nickel smelting, key sectors in New Caledonia’s economy. For decades, governments in Paris guaranteed a monopoly over smelting to the French corporation ERAMET and its local subsidiary Société Le Nickel, which operates the Doniambo smelter in the capital Noumea.

The signing of the Noumea Accord in May 1998 was preceded by a deal that transferred strategic deposits of high-grade nickel ore to the Northern Province, through its development agency SOFINOR and the SMSP mining company. This opened the way for the construction of a new nickel smelter at Koniambo in the north of the country — a major project that many conservatives predicted would never happen.

Patricia Goa, a key adviser to Paul Néaoutyine and herself a member of the national Congress, lives in the tribe of Baco, outside the provincial capital Koohne. She has seen the rural north transformed by the construction of the smelter in a joint venture between the province, SMSP and the transnational corporation Glencore. She stresses that SOFINOR and SMSP hold 51 per cent control of Koniambo Nickel SAS, an unprecedented deal for a resource project in Melanesia.

“KNS is a major player in the economic rebalancing of our country,” says Goa. “New Caledonia holds one quarter of the world’s nickel and the nickel sector is the largest employer in New Caledonia. But nickel resources are not renewable. We really have to think about how we are working for future generations — that’s what our cultural heritage is saying.”

To add value to New Caledonia’s vast mineral resources, the FLNKS has looked beyond simply exporting ore to traditional markets in France, Japan and Australia. The Northern Province administration has established offshore smelters in South Korea and China, through joint ventures between SMSP and the Korean company Posco and the Chinese corporation Yinchuan.

New Caledonia’s president, Thierry Santa, a leader of the anti-independence Loyalist alliance, recognises that historical differences between elements of the independence movement are being replaced by unity over resources policy. “The attitude taken by Union Calédonienne about control of the minerals sector has sharply radicalised compared to the past,” Santa tells me. “Until now, UC had always been more pragmatic and less doctrinaire. They recognised the necessity of maintaining mining across the territory, and the need for diversity of production — for domestic use, for export, and for use by the overseas smelters. Now we see a united policy from all parts of the independence movement opposed to the export of ore, except to the overseas smelters.”

Among those calling for a Yes vote were hundreds of young demonstrators who marched through central Noumea on 19 September, bearing the multicoloured flag of Kanaky. But the vibrant protest masked a more serious mood among young Kanak, who see training and education as a crucial part of the struggle.

“Even if we are losing our direction, we must continue to go to school to become better trained adults,” twenty-four-year-old Pauline told journalists. “When you have a degree, you have more chance to build our country, to move it forward. You have to be serious. You can’t just go crying ‘Kanaky’ everywhere and expect to change things.”

As hundreds of first-time voters turn out in 2020, it’s worth remembering that the Noumea Accord was signed before they were born. The armed clashes of the mid 1980s are ancient history for voters who have grown up under a multi-party government that includes both supporters and opponents of independence.

Despite this, the 2018 referendum saw a massive turnout of young Kanak voters, and the FLNKS is working hard to mobilise people who are wary of old rivalries among politicians. Last July, FLNKS spokesperson Daniel Goa called for a general mobilisation of all political forces, calling on young people to participate: “Our youth must get involved and be active at local level. It is their fight and it will be their victory.”

Today, as a leading Yes campaigner in the north, Magalie Tingal says the independence movement has been forced to adapt to twenty-first-century realities, using social media and talking to youth who are wary of division within the political elite.

“We can feel on the ground that people want more information,” she says. “There are plenty of young intellectual Kanak who want more and more information about what independence means. Campaigning for independence in this millennium, we use a lot of social media, and even ten years ago we didn’t have that type of campaigning. People are listening but have done their own studies, so we can’t campaign like we did ten years ago.”

She highlights the need to decolonise minds as well as institutions: “Independence is scary for some people here, so we have to educate people through meetings, discussion and information. We are talking about living together.”

This referendum is framed by broader global realities. France has markedly improved its diplomatic relations with neighbouring Pacific states, undercutting historical support for the FLNKS. Australia — as the largest member of the Pacific Islands Forum — has forged a strategic partnership with Paris, seeing France as a bulwark against Chinese influence in the region.

At the same time, the coronavirus pandemic has caused more than 31,000 deaths in France and led to border closures and an economic downturn in New Caledonia. China is New Caledonia’s main export market, but US–China tensions and the global recession create uncertainty in the nickel sector.

The No campaign seeks to roll back many economic, social and political advances created by the Noumea Accord. But the flourishing of bleu-blanc-rouge French flags during their campaign belies the reality that many New Caledonians are looking to regional partners like China, Korea and Australia for trade, tourism and services.

Charles Wea has represented the FLNKS in Australia and says that an independent Kanaky-New Caledonia would maintain ties with France but build new relationships in the Pacific region. “If New Caledonia were to become independent tomorrow, we would establish relations with countries that we share values with,” says Wea. “Secondly, we would build relations with countries where we have economic, political and cultural interests. For example, we already have an offshore smelter in Korea, so that’s the sort of country where we have to establish a bilateral relationship.”

Today, through the Melanesian Spearhead Group and Pacific Islands Forum, New Caledonians have already built new trade and commercial ties to neighbours like Vanuatu and Fiji. The government of New Caledonia has begun to place representatives in French embassies in Canberra, Wellington, Suva, Port Vila and Port Moresby. “For the FLNKS,” says Magalie Tingal, “independence doesn’t mean we close our doors to France or anyone. Independence opens us up to the international stage.”

Patricia Goa agrees that a Yes vote won’t lead to a rupture with France. “I’m not against France,” she says. “I have spoken French since I was six years old, although I have my own language. I breathe French because of colonisation, that’s the fact. I know French history, maybe more than the French themselves. What we are saying is, we’ve come to a stage where the people are asking for sovereignty. What’s wrong with having cooperation with China and others? The difference is, we want to choose that relationship as a free state.” •

Reporting for this article was supported by a Sean Dorney Grant for Pacific Journalism through the Walkley Public Fund.

The post “Our accession to sovereignty is inevitable” appeared first on Inside Story.

Five weeks earlier, Australia had sent its first diplomat to the Pacific islands seeking information about the level of support for Charles de Gaulle. The London-based Free French leader had called on France’s overseas possessions to rise up against the collaborationist regime led by Marshal Philippe Pétain.

It was a crucial time in the relationship between Australia and one of its closest Pacific neighbours, and this history of mobilising defence and diplomacy against a rising Asian power has echoes today.

The path to war during the 1930s had already transformed colonial relations in the Pacific. Facing US embargoes, Japanese militarists looked south to the oil resources of Southeast Asia and to strategic mineral deposits throughout the Pacific islands. New Caledonia’s massive reserves of nickel were also coveted by Germany, and the Japanese had increased their investment and trade with the French colony. From 1933, the fascist powers even began to manufacture solid nickel coins as a way of stockpiling this crucial resource for arms manufacture.

But Japan’s 1931 invasion of Manchuria and the 1937 Sino-Japanese war raised fears of a wider regional conflict. With war raging in China, anti-fascist trade unionists in Australia blocked shipments of slag metal to Japan in late 1938, to the anger of attorney-general Robert Menzies, known forever after as Pig Iron Bob.

Long before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, some French officials in New Caledonia had tried to limit the sale of nickel to Tokyo, fearing it would be onsold to Nazi Germany. By 1940, Australian officials were negotiating with New Caledonia’s largest producer, Société Le Nickel, to purchase nickel as a way of encouraging the French colony to cease exports to Japan.

Australian politicians had been promoting a policy of “strategic denial” in the Pacific since long before Federation. At the start of the second world war, with Britain and France entangled in the European conflict, the Royal Australian Navy needed more information about political developments in strategically important New Caledonia.

Naval historian Ian Pfennigwerth has documented RAN intelligence operations at the time. “Director of Naval Intelligence Rupert Long had organised some human intelligence sources in Noumea,” he writes. “He had arranged to have William Johnston appointed as Admiralty Reporting Officer Noumea on 15 April 1940. He had also organised through Lieutenant Colonel Maurice Denis, the French military commander in Noumea, that a French naval officer would provide the Naval Intelligence Division with intelligence.”

Anxious to get more of its own information independent of the British, the Australian government decided in mid July 1940 to send a French-speaking lawyer, Bertram Ballard, to Noumea to observe and report back.

Eighty years on, Ballard’s successor as Australia’s representative in New Caledonia is consul-general Alison Carrington. Last month she organised a ceremony in Noumea to commemorate the arrival of Australia’s first diplomatic representative in the Pacific islands.

“This year, we’re celebrating eighty years of an official Australian presence here in New Caledonia,” she tells me. “The nomination of Ballard was quite an important moment: it represents our fourth diplomatic mission overseas. Before Noumea, there was only London, Washington and Ottawa.”

Bertram Ballard had previously served as Australian government solicitor in neighbouring New Hebrides (today, the Republic of Vanuatu). The government’s decision to send him to New Caledonia followed Charles de Gaulle’s famous 18 June call for French overseas colonies to rally to a Free France. “New Caledonia hadn’t actually done that,” says Carrington, “so Ballard’s mission was to come to Noumea, report on political and economic matters and basically take the temperature of the place during this time of global upheaval.”

With the Germans having occupied Paris, New Caledonia’s governor, Georges Pélicier, an ageing colonial civil servant, was wavering between supporting the exiled Free French forces or Marshall Pétain’s regime, headquartered in the French spa town of Vichy. The governor angered Gaullist supporters in Noumea when he published Vichy’s new constitutional laws on 29 July.

Pélicier had asked the Vichy regime to send a warship to Noumea, and it deployed the vessel Dumont d’Urville from French Polynesia in late August, commanded by Toussaint de Quièvrecourt. The French aristocrat, a fervent colonialist, reported to Paris that Australia was subsidising local Free French agitators with the objective of annexing New Caledonia.

A month after he arrived in Noumea, Ballard wrote to Canberra reporting that most New Caledonians would “welcome and follow” a governor appointed by de Gaulle. As Alison Carrington explains, until Australia had someone on the ground in Noumea “we weren’t aware of quite the level of support for Free France here. I like to think that having an official representative on the ground at the time contributed in some small way to assisting the decision to send HMAS Adelaide to escort Henri Sautot into New Caledonia, which ultimately led to New Caledonia rallying to Free France.”

Sautot was French resident commissioner in the neighbouring Condominium of the New Hebrides, which had been jointly colonised by France and Britain. With British support, Sautot had rallied French colonists in Port Vila to support the Gaullist cause. After extensive debate, the Australian government decided to transport Sautot to Noumea, deploying HMAS Adelaide as protection.

John Lawrey’s classic study, The Cross of Lorraine in the South Pacific, documents this successful episode of gunboat diplomacy. The Australian warship, under the command of Captain Harry Showers, escorted the Norwegian ship Norden from Port Vila to New Caledonia, with Sautot aboard. Arriving in Noumea early on 19 September, Showers was under orders not to fire unless fired on by the Dumont d’Urville or French army shore batteries. Facing off against the French ship, Sautot was transferred from the Norden onto the Australian warship. A popular uprising was under way onshore.

An uneasy days-long stand-off ended with the Free French forces prevailing under the watchful eye of the RAN warship. Following an unsuccessful revolt by pro-Vichy officers on 23 September, Ballard and Showers convinced Governor Sautot to arrest the remaining pro-Vichy leadership. To forestall any further trouble, Showers drafted a letter for Sautot to send, inviting Dumont d’Urville to depart. The French ship soon left port, carrying pro-Vichy officials to Saigon in French Indo-China.

After the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941, an Australian commando company was deployed to New Caledonia to train “native scouts” for a guerilla campaign against an invading Japanese force. From 1942, Noumea was transformed by the influx of tens of thousands of American troops, preparing to fight their way across the Pacific islands towards Japan.

These tumultuous events inspired a young Australian to write his first book. Hailing from the small town of Poowong in the Victorian farming district of Gippsland, Wilfred Burchett visited New Caledonia in 1939 and 1941. He travelled throughout the islands, gathering stories from a range of ordinary people — nickel prospectors and Javanese mine workers, Kanak villagers and French farmers.

Published in 1941 as Pacific Treasure Island, Burchett’s words from eight decades ago still resonate today, as New Caledonia strengthens ties with Australia and the Pacific region. “Whatever the fate of the French empire,” he wrote, “it is certain that relations between New Caledonia and its Pacific neighbours will become ever closer, and it is high time that all we Pacific neighbours began to know each other a little better.”

This perception of Australia and New Caledonia as neighbours was uncommon in the 1940s. Since then, community contacts between the two neighbours have ebbed and flowed through periods of cooperation, exploration and mutual suspicion.

From the mid 1970s, as Papua New Guinea gained independence and ni-Vanuatu battled Britain and France in the New Hebrides, some Australians engaged with Kanak cultural and political activists. Links expanded through unions and ecumenical church networks, regional sporting competitions, cultural exchanges and the thousands of young Australians who travelled to study the French language.

Even before the founding in 1984 of the independence movement Front de Libération Nationale Kanak et Socialiste, or FLNKS, Kanak leaders such as Jean-Marie Tjibaou and Yann Céléné Uregei visited Australia to lobby for government support. Between 1984 and 1988, trade unions, churches and community groups supported the Kanak independence struggle through the period of violent clashes known as les évènements.

As New Caledonia descended into armed conflict, friendly relations between Canberra and Paris disintegrated. France’s ties with the Pacific Islands Forum were already strained because of regional opposition to French nuclear testing. The 1985 bombing of the Greenpeace vessel Rainbow Warrior by French intelligence agents and the deployment of thousands of troops to New Caledonia in 1986 won France few friends, in the region or internationally.

Australia reluctantly followed Island Forum countries to support New Caledonia’s return to the UN list of non-self-governing territories in December 1986. In retaliation, France suspended ministerial visits and expelled Australian consul-general John Dauth from Noumea in early 1987.

Those diplomatic dramas are long past. French nuclear testing ended in 1996; two years later, the Noumea Accord mapped a path to possible New Caledonian independence via political devolution. This transformed France’s profile in the region and ties to Australia.

“Today, we have a very good relationship with Australia,” New Caledonia’s president, Thierry Santa, tells me. “We’re developing many commercial activities because we have a good bilateral relationship. As a government, we’ve undertaken a number of visits to Australia, but the economic discussion is happening more at the level of the states. On the health front, Australia remains the primary location for medical evacuations from New Caledonia. In education, we have a number of agreements for students to move in both directions. So relations are really great.”

Over the past decade, even as independence movements in New Caledonia and French Polynesia continue to call for an end to French colonial rule, Paris has improved its diplomatic relations in the islands region. The government of New Caledonia is also basing delegates in French embassies in Canberra, Wellington, Port Vila, Port Moresby and Suva.

A key turning point, according to Australia’s Alison Carrington, was the decision by regional leaders to include the two French dependencies as full members of the Pacific Islands Forum in 2016.

“This decision really marked an evolution of the relationship for these two Pacific territories more broadly in the region,” she says. “This is something that both France and Australia strongly encourage and endorse: the increasing participation of the French Pacific territories in the Pacific region, the neighbourhood we all share.”

The consul-general says she is seeking to expand cooperation with Australia in agriculture, mining services and especially education.

“More and more Australians are aware that New Caledonia is just a stone’s throw from our east coast,” she says. “Because of that geographic proximity, for a long time there’s been a lot of back and forth between Australia and New Caledonia, for holidays, for work or study. New Caledonians young and old have been travelling to Australia to study English, some to do their primary and secondary schooling, many to study at universities in Australia. In the other direction, New Caledonia represents the closest and easily accessible place for Australians to come and enhance their French-language skills.”

Where wealthy New Caledonians once travelled primarily to France for holidays, by 2010 Australia had become their top destination. “There is a strong flow of tourists headed in the direction of Australia,” Carrington acknowledges. “The number of tourists who come from Australia by plane to stay in hotels is a bit smaller, and that is something that New Caledonian authorities seek to grow. But before Covid, we were welcoming around 300,000 Australian tourists a year on cruise ships.”

Trade between Australia and New Caledonia amounted to $721 million in 2018–19. But that year, China was the number one export destination for New Caledonia, with 31.7 per cent of trade, followed by Korea and Japan — rankings that reflect exports of nickel ore and ferronickel metal. Australia had been a primary export market for nickel ore until rogue politician and entrepreneur Clive Palmer closed the Yabulu nickel smelter in Townsville in 2016. By 2018, Australia only ranked number eleven as an export destination, receiving just 1 per cent of New Caledonian exports.

Alison Carrington sees room for more cooperation in mining services: “The technology and services part of the mining sector is an important part of our relationship. We in Australia are world leaders in this sector and have a lot to offer to New Caledonia.”

Despite this, Australia’s overall trade with the Pacific has stagnated, even as China’s has more than doubled over the past decade. In August last year, just weeks after his election as president, Thierry Santa travelled to his first Forum leaders meeting in Funafuti. “When I met prime minister Scott Morrison in Tuvalu,” says Santa, “he was very enthusiastic about us being part of PACER-Plus, the regional trade agreement between Australia, New Zealand and the independent countries of the Pacific. But we’re not really within that framework — we’d rather improve the bilateral relationship.”

At a time of geopolitical tension between China and the United States, regional interventions by Australia and France are increasingly framed by the concept of the “Indo-Pacific.”

“France is a great Indo-Pacific power,” said French president Emmanuel Macron when he visited Australia and New Caledonia in May 2018, “and it has great power in the Indo-Pacific region through its territories New Caledonia, Wallis and Futuna and French Polynesia, as well as Mayotte and Reunion.” The 8000 or more French military personnel in the two oceans “project our national defence, our interests, our strategy; the region has more than three quarters of the vast maritime zone that makes us the second-largest maritime power in the world.”

Macron highlighted the strategic importance of both India and Australia, two countries where the French government is actively promoting arms sales. “Our shared priority is to build this strong Indo-Pacific axis to guarantee both our economic and security interests,” he said. “The trilateral dialogue between Australia, India and France has the possibility to play a central role in this.”

At the time, officials argued that continuing French colonial control in New Caledonia was crucial to France’s Indo-Pacific strategy. “In terms of geo-politics,” the Australian Financial Review reported, “losing control over New Caledonia’s foreign affairs and defence would undermine Macron’s strategy, of which Australia is a stated ally, to strengthen or protect France’s influence in the Indo-Pacific region — presumably as a hedge against China.”

During the visit, Macron and then prime minister Malcolm Turnbull signed a new Vision Statement on the Australia–France Relationship, extending two previous intergovernmental agreements on strategic partnership. This relationship is dominated by Australia’s $80 billion submarine technology deal with France’s Naval Group, and other ADF purchases from the arms manufacturer Thales.

After a decade of negotiation, Australia and France also signed a Mutual Logistics Support Agreement in 2018, a deal promoted as “symbolic of the strategic depth and maturity of relations between France and Australia in the field of defence.” The agreement increases intelligence sharing and allows French and Australian naval and air units to use each other’s ports, fuel and logistics in the Pacific.

Alison Carrington sees cooperation between the Australian Defence Force and the Forces Armées de la Nouvelle-Calédonie, or FANC, as a key part of the burgeoning relationship with Paris and Noumea. “Sitting here in Noumea, where the French armed forces are headquartered, this part of the relationship is a really crucial one,” she says. “For a long time, there’s been a good level of cooperation between Australian and French defence forces, preparing for and responding to humanitarian disasters in the region. But I’d say we’ve gone up from a good level to a very good level now.”

Carrington points out that Australia’s chief of the defence force made his first visit to Noumea, with his New Zealand counterpart, in January this year. She also welcomes a new ADF liaison officer, to be based in Noumea later this year. “That person will share their time between the consulate-general and the French armed forces headquarters. That will only further enhance our interoperability.”

“There’s an alignment between Australia’s ‘step-up’ engagement with the Pacific and France’s Indo-Pacific axis strategy,” says Carrington. “Both of us see ourselves committed to security in the region and meeting the security needs of the region. In that sense, France is a very important partner for Australia.”

The closeness of this relationship will be tested, however, in coming years. New Caledonia will hold a referendum on its political future on 4 October. Fearful of upsetting the global security relationship with France, Australian ministers are loath to publicly champion the “right to self-determination” for colonised peoples. But the Kanak independence movement sees status quo definitions of “security” as reinforcing France’s colonial control. The ebb and flow of neighbourly relations will continue to be affected by their call for sovereignty and independence. •

Reporting for this article was supported by a Sean Dorney Grant for Pacific Journalism through the Walkley Public Fund.

The post “Before Noumea, there was only London, Washington and Ottawa” appeared first on Inside Story.

On 4 October, long-term residents of the French Pacific dependency will vote on New Caledonia’s future political status. Despite overwhelming support for independence among the indigenous Kanak people — nearly 40 per cent of the population — most non-Kanak voters want to retain ties with France. In an increasingly polarised debate, supporters and opponents of independence are seeking to mobilise their base, amidst the social and economic crisis caused by the global coronavirus pandemic.

The choice of Parc Brunelet for the rally — a green, open space in the wealthy southern suburbs of the capital, Noumea — was no accident. In the 1970s, conservative politician Jacques Lafleur used the same park to mobilise support for his new anti-independence party, Rassemblement pour la Calédonie dans la Republique. Under Lafleur’s often autocratic leadership, the party was the dominant political force in New Caledonia throughout the 1980s and 1990s, including during the violent clashes of 1984–88 known as Les évènements.

Many conservative politicians look back with longing to that era of right-wing hegemony. Decades later, Lafleur’s Rassemblement party, now led by New Caledonian president Thierry Santa, is just one of a range of conservative, anti-independence parties. This fragmentation on the right reflects widespread uncertainty about the best way to respond to the call for sovereignty from the Front de Libération Nationale Kanak et Socialiste, or FLNKS, and other pro-independence forces.

In a system without compulsory voting, each campaign must mobilise supporters to turn out to the polls — a process that draws on emotion as well as considered decisions. For this reason, the use of flags has become fraught during the referendum campaign, pitting the bleu-blanc-rouge against the multicoloured flag of Kanaky.

Independence parties unsuccessfully lodged a case before France’s highest administrative court, claiming the partisan use of the French tricolour undercuts the supposed neutrality of the French state during the referendum. For FLNKS spokesperson Daniel Goa, “The use of the French flag is very restricted. Here in New Caledonia, the question is not a choice between France and New Caledonia. It is to prepare for the exit of France.”

Less predictably, Philippe Gomes, leader of the anti-independence Calédonie Ensemble, says that his party’s No to independence “is not a bleu-blanc-rouge No.” Gomes, who represents New Caledonia in the French National Assembly in Paris, says the other anti-independence parties have “bleu-blanc-rouge everywhere” in their campaign materials. “For us, the flag is on the corner of our material, but we’re talking about this country, about New Caledonia. For this reason we couldn’t participate in their radical campaign, that is in part racist, very anti-Islander and very anti-independence. This can’t bring anything good to the country.”

The French state, FLNKS and conservative anti-independence parties reached an agreement known as the Noumea Accord in May 1998, setting out a decolonisation process for New Caledonia. Entrenched in the French Constitution the following year, the Noumea Accord proposed measures of economic and social “rebalancing” and set out a twenty-year transition towards a new political status. After the transfer of legal and administrative powers to local institutions between 1998 and 2018, the colonised Kanak people and other long-term residents of New Caledonia would vote in a referendum on self-determination. Uniquely, the Noumea Accord allowed another two referendums, if a first vote for independence was unsuccessful.

In November 2018, the first referendum under the Noumea Accord posed the question: “Do you want New Caledonia to accede to full sovereignty and become independent?” In an unprecedented turnout, 56.7 per cent of voters decided to remain within the French Republic, while 43.3 per cent voted Yes to independence. These bald figures, with a clear majority opposing full sovereignty, suggest a setback for the FLNKS. In reality, the size of the Yes vote surprised most conservative politicians and pundits, who had predicted an overwhelming and strategic defeat for the independence movement.

Today, three anti-independence parties make up the Avenir en Confiance (The Future with Confidence) coalition: Les Républicains Calédoniennes, led by Sonia Backes; Thierry Santa’s Rassemblement—Les Républicains; and the Mouvement Populaire Calédonien, led by Gil Brial. For the 2020 referendum, this coalition has created a new alliance, dubbed “The Loyalists,” with three more smaller parties: Pascal Vittori’s Tous Calédoniens; Nicolas Metzdorf’s Générations NC; and the Rassemblement National (the new name for the extreme right-wing National Front led by French politician Marine Le Pen).

Opponents of independence rally in Parc Brunelet in July displaying France’s bleu-blanc-rouge tricolour. Les Nouvelles Caledoniennes

This unwieldy grouping is united by the goal of boosting the No vote. As President Santa tells me, “Our objective is to improve the tally achieved in the first referendum. Amongst the 33,000 people who didn’t vote last time, the vast majority live in greater Noumea. I think a proportion of these people, who thought the result would be 70/30, didn’t bother to vote. But I think that the result in 2018 really disappointed them, and that will mobilise them to get out and vote the next time.”

On 7 September, The Loyalists alliance released a booklet setting out its vision for the future. Under the influence of Sonia Backes and other conservatives, it proposes policies to roll back advances made by the Kanak people since the 1988 Matignon-Oudinot Agreements and 1998 Noumea Accord.

The Loyalists plan to change the current division of government revenues among New Caledonia’s three provinces, reducing extra funding allocated to the Northern and Loyalty Islands provinces after decades of underdevelopment. Their policy proposes changes to the representation of the two Kanak-majority provinces in the Congress and also membership of the existing collegial, multi-party government that currently includes both supporters and opponents of independence. This change would allow the dominant majority after elections — currently an anti-independence majority — to propose laws to Congress.

The document calls for “dialogue” and “sharing” but promotes policies that will be fiercely resisted by the independence movement, at the ballot box and on the streets.

In spite of this unified statement, significant policy differences still exist within the anti-independence coalition — over nickel exports, the use of indigenous languages in schools and the funding of provincial administrations. But President Santa says it is vital to work together. “The key factor is that we are united and can multiply the number of activities thanks to our alliance,” he says. “We’ll be able to operate at many levels: to mobilise the members of our various parties, and coordinate actions around the country on behalf on one or another group. So I hope that the Loyalist campaign will be more effective than last time.”

Calédonie Ensemble is the only major anti-independence party that has refused to join this alliance. CE dominated local politics for a decade until 2019 provincial elections and is still a significant player: Gomes and fellow CE member Philippe Dunoyer hold New Caledonia’s two seats in the French National Assembly, and CE’s Gerard Poadja sits in the French Senate.

Shocked by the size of the 2018 independence vote, New Caledonia’s non-Kanak electorate punished CE during May 2019 provincial elections. Sonia Backes’s Avenir coalition carried the majority of the European electorate, with campaign meetings featuring the French national anthem and lots of French flags. Wealthy beachside suburbs in Noumea are a bastion of anti-independence support, and during the campaign CE’s Philippe Michel denounced Backes as a “white supremacist from the southern suburbs.”

In March 2020 municipal elections, CE also lost control of its long-term stronghold in the rural town of La Foa, where Philippe Gomes was mayor from 1989 to 2008. To rub salt in the wound, CE was defeated by a breakaway faction — Nicolas Metzdorf’s Générations NC. Metzdorf then took his new party into the Loyalists, stating, “We’re not all best buddies in the Loyalists, but at any given moment, the national interest must come first. We need unity.”

This bad blood is reflected in CE’s decision to run its own No campaign for the October referendum — a division that disappoints President Santa. “I remain convinced that there is no fundamental difference that justifies this parallel process,” he tells me. “When the Loyalist Front launched our social policies, to explain to New Caledonians our vision for the period after the Noumea Accord, we felt that there were many policies that were the same as those presented by Calédonie ensemble. So their claims that we are on a doctrinaire, anti-independence, even racist path, while they are promoting dialogue, negotiation and discussion — well, that’s just the artifice of a politician to justify his decision not to join the Loyalist alliance.”

Not surprisingly, Philippe Gomes says the opposite: “The National Front called for a vote against the Matignon Accords and also against the Noumea Accord. How could we sit around the table with people who have actively opposed the process we’ve undertaken over the last thirty years? We just don’t have the same political beliefs as those people.

“You also have the Avenir en Confiance led by Sonia Backes,” Gomes added. “The last proposal she put forward was for the partition of the country: when the Northern and Loyalty Islands provinces vote Yes for independence, they can become Kanaky while the Southern Province can remain part of France. But for us, the division of the country makes no sense. It is one and indivisible, you can’t cut it up like a sausage!”

In the lead-up to the November 2018 referendum, French prime minister Edouard Philippe and overseas minister Annick Girardin allocated extensive time and political capital to New Caledonia. Wrangling supporters and opponents of independence, Philippe managed to forge a consensus on the date for the referendum, the logistics of polling, who could vote and even the wording of the question.

But Philippe is gone. Just three months before this year’s referendum, Emmanuel Macron reshuffled his cabinet in Paris, appointing Jean Castex as prime minister and Sebastien Lecornu as minister responsible for France’s overseas collectivities.

Louis Mapou, head of the Union Nationale pour l’Indépendance parliamentary group within New Caledonia’s Congress, noted: “Until now, Edouard Philippe has been our interlocutor within the French State. The new prime minister — we don’t know him. We’ve met the new overseas minister, but not to discuss all the New Caledonian issues that are on the table since 1998.”

Overseas Minister Lecornu told the newspaper Les Nouvelles Calédoniennes that “there isn’t a day when the president of the Republic hasn’t asked me questions about what’s happening overseas in general and about New Caledonia in particular.”

CE’s Philippe Gomes is not persuaded. He says that New Caledonia is not high on the agenda in Paris, at a time when the new government faces more than 30,000 deaths from COVID-19, post-Brexit debates about the future of the EU and protests over domestic austerity.

“The French government is failing in its duty,” he says. “This year, the president of the French Republic made a major speech on television on 14 July, our national day. He talked for two hours. But the issue of New Caledonia was not even mentioned once, even though within two months we will decide whether to leave the French Republic! When the new prime minister, Castex, made his speech to the National Assembly, not one single word about New Caledonia.”

For, Gomes, this is starkly different from the first referendum. “In 2018, the government was very active,” he says. “The prime minister and the president of the French Republic both visited, they spent hundreds of hours talking with everybody and the referendum was organised after a consensus had been forged. Everyone was on board, agreeing about the manner in which the vote would be held. For this reason, the result could not be questioned, nor was it questioned. Today, the French government hasn’t done its job and the process is under challenge.”

Cynics might note that Gomes, as a member of the French National Assembly, is in a prime position to lobby the government. But he argues that the Macron administration has mishandled the process. “Even though they have a lot on their plate at the moment, they’ve made very bad decisions over the last two years in relation to New Caledonia,” he responds. “I don’t think they realise that 2020 is not simply a replay of 2018. I fear that when they do start to talk about New Caledonia, it will be too late.”

It’s worth noting that the independence movement doesn’t agree that Paris has dropped the ball. They have long argued the French government is actively working against independence, in spite of pledges of impartiality.

I spent weeks in New Caledonia covering the 2018 referendum campaign and trying to gauge the mood on the ground. Reporting from a distance this year, courtesy of pandemic restrictions, it’s still clear that the mood is more polarised and anxious. Opponents of independence seem more fearful of the future, knowing the independence vote last time was tantalisingly close to 50 per cent. And they have many questions. Will citizens of an independent New Caledonia retain their French passport and access to the European Union? Will France continue to fund a range of social services and welfare payments? What about the Chinese?

The FLNKS has mounted a public campaign to respond to these queries, but loyalist politicians have seized on documents showing the independence movement is negotiating directly with the French state, hoping to set parameters for any post-referendum transition to nationhood. The classic fear of a stab in the back from Paris motivates many conservative New Caledonians, especially those who have migrated from Algeria, Vanuatu and other former French colonies.

Given that a third referendum is possible under the Noumea Accord, Philippe Gomes believes that the independence movement can win this year without reaching 50 per cent. “We know that the independence movement desperately wants to increase their score this time, because that would be a very powerful psychological blow for people opposed to independence,” he says. “The same is true for our movement: we want to hold steady or increase our score! If they manage to increase their Yes vote by two or three per cent, our people will feel the independence movement breathing down their neck. This is another element that explains the polarisation of debate at the moment.”

Politics in New Caledonia’s Congress is heating up as the vote gets closer. This month, Calédonie ensemble joined independence groups and the Wallisian party Eveil océanien to vote for a special budget debate, reviewing proposed French loans to cope with the loss of trade and tourism during the pandemic. President Santa sees this unholy alliance as a vote of no confidence in his multi-party government, which includes members from all these groups.

Despite these tensions, New Caledonia’s political elite works together on common concerns through congressional committees, provincial assemblies and the multi-party Government of New Caledonia.

But Philip Gomes argues that personal connections among professional politicians can founder when the stakes get high: “If you look at the press statements by Sonia Backes of Les Républicains Calédoniennes or Daniel Goa of Union Calédonienne, they threaten each other that they’ll go back to the barricades, as we saw in the 1980s. We are in a period where the debate is very black and white, yes or no, for or against. Given this binary choice, people are reacting more and more with their guts and less and less with their head. That’s not good in a small island society with its multiple cultures and identities, which has already suffered too much.”

President Santa agrees that the public debate is sharper. “In my opinion, we are not yet at a stage where we need to worry, but I can’t say otherwise than there’s an increasing mood of tension. We’ve seen a radicalisation of political language. And of course, when political speech is radical, it can create a response from people at the base. This is true for both sides, not just the independence movement, but unfortunately also from the supporters of France.”

With just weeks before the vote, the path to decolonisation still faces many hurdles. •

Reporting for this article was supported by a Sean Dorney Grant for Pacific Journalism through the Walkley Public Fund.

The post New Caledonia’s bleu-blanc-rouge vote appeared first on Inside Story.

Eighteen men were driving home to the Kanak tribe of Tiendanite after a meeting of the newly formed independence coalition Front de Libération Nationale Kanak et Socialiste, or FLNKS. Ambushed at Wan’yaat by members of the Lapetite and Mitride families — local settlers opposed to independence in New Caledonia — ten were shot dead and another five wounded, with just three others living to tell the tale. Today, their two rusting, burnt out trucks, sheltered from the elements in a newly refurbished memorial on the road to Tiendanite, are a reminder of the massacre.

The murder of his brothers and clansmen was a terrible blow for Jean-Marie Tjibaou, the charismatic leader of the FLNKS. Tragically, he too was assassinated on the island of Ouvea, on 4 May 1989, together with his lieutenant Yeiwene Yeiwene.

On 4 May this year, the thirtieth anniversary of Jean-Marie Tjibaou’s death, hundreds gathered at Tiendanite, the Kanak tribe that was his home, twenty kilometres into the mountains above Hienghène. People arriving by early morning joined a Mass in the community hall, followed by the laying of wreaths and flowers on Tjibaou’s grave. The priest urged the congregation to follow the message of hope from “our papa, our brother, our friend Jean-Marie.” Later, people travelled down the road to Wan’yaat, where a new memorial and sculpture to the 1984 massacre was inaugurated and blessed.

Other ceremonies were being held in the outlying Loyalty Islands. On Mare, friends and family mourned the loss of Yeiwene Yeiwene, Tjibaou’s right hand man. Yeiwene, a leading figure in the movement for Kanak independence, campaigned alongside Tjibaou during the period of armed conflict that wracked New Caledonia between 1984 and 1988. Known as les événements, these years pitted the Kanak people against the French armed forces and settler militias.

On Ouvea, in the tribe of Gossanah, people gathered to remember Djubelli Wea, the Kanak activist who killed the two FLNKS leaders in May 1989, before being shot dead by Tjibaou’s bodyguard Daniel Fisdiepas.

Speaking after the ceremony in Tiendanite, Tjibaou’s son Emmanuel tells me that remembering his father and others killed during les événements is a vital part of looking to the future. “The importance of this day is to commemorate their fight, to celebrate their life, but also to reflect on the reasons that we honour such men,” he says. “Their political vision has led us to where we are today. To commemorate them through custom, through prayer, is our way of making them live again, their words, their commitment.”

The day also reminds local people to take up their own responsibilities, he adds. “Looking back over thirty years, it’s time for us to take stock, and look forward to making the right choices for our country. This is not a matter of history. It’s a matter of integrating their vision into our action today, thirty years later, to lead our country to independence and sovereignty.”

For a younger generation, the events of decades ago might seem irrelevant to the needs of today. But Tjibaou remains an emblem of the Kanak struggle for self-determination. After he took a leading role in the independence party Union Calédonienne, or UC, in the 1970s, a central part of his work was promoting Kanak culture and identity that had been marginalised by French colonial society. In 1975, he organised the Melanesia 2000 festival, an unprecedented celebration of local culture, music and dance. Two years later, UC called for independence rather than greater autonomy within the French Pacific dependency.

In Tiendanite, current UC president Daniel Goa says that Tjibaou’s vision of an independent Kanaky–New Caledonia still resonates with both old and new generations of independence supporters. “His words are still relevant today, and they are especially relevant for the young people who are seeking to find their place in society,” Goa tells me. “Jean-Marie’s words can still guide them. You see here today that there are many young people. It’s a way of returning to the source to rediscover their culture.”

Beyond this, the commemoration ceremony united people across the political spectrum. Representatives from different independence parties and the Kanak Customary Senate were joined by New Caledonia’s representative in the French Senate Gerard Poadja, and Jean Pierre Aifa, a charismatic political leader from the 1980s and long-time friend and rival of Tjibaou.

Standing at the graveside beside Tjibaou’s widow Marie-Claude, Poadja — a member of the anti-independence party Calédonie ensemble — recalls their work together for the Melanesia 2000 festival: “He was a man we respected enormously… Today, I am here because we cannot forget what we lived through together.”

The ceremonies in Tiendanite, Ouvea and Mare were held just eight days before New Caledonia’s national elections. On 12 May, voters elect seventy-six representatives for New Caledonia’s three provincial assemblies and national Congress, political institutions created after the 1988 Matignon–Oudinot Agreements and the 1998 Noumea Accord.

In Tiendanite, Jean-Pierre Djaiwe of the Parti de Libération Kanak tells me that the day went well beyond the current electoral contest: “For us it’s a day of commemoration, a day of remembrance, a day to recall this man who was for us an extraordinary figure, a man who by his bearing, by his words, is still with us in our hearts. His words were spoken many years ago, but they remain in our hearts and are still relevant today.”

The Ouvea crisis of May 1988 and the assassination of Tjibaou and Yeiwene a year later were milestones in New Caledonia’s troubled path towards a new political status. After nearly four years of conflict, the FLNKS had decided to boycott the May 1988 elections for the French president and a new local government. The independence movement had planned a nationwide mobilisation to highlight its opposition to French militarisation, but the uprising took place only in Canala, on the main island of Grande Terre, and in the outlying Loyalty Islands.

On Ouvea, a local group of Kanak independence activists attempted to take over a police station at Fayaoue on 22 April 1988. In the subsequent melee, three French gendarmes were killed and another mortally wounded. Twenty-seven others were taken hostage and hidden in caves, most in the north of the island near the tribe of Gossanah.

The Ouvea crisis led to a major military mobilisation and the torture and maltreatment of villagers by French troops trying to locate the hostages. Djubelli Wea, a former Protestant theology student and leading independence activist from Gossanah, was dragged from his sick bed, questioned about the location of the hostages, and tied to a tree. His father, beaten by French troops, later died.

The assault on the caves to free the captured police coincided with a final (and unsuccessful) attempt by French prime minister Jacques Chirac to glean votes between the two rounds of the 1988 presidential elections. On 5 May 1988, the French government abandoned negotiations and launched a military attack, with elite police and a commando unit storming the cave. Nineteen Kanak activists were killed, at least three of them executed after surrendering. Their leader, Alphonse Dianou, was shot in his knee during capture, and left to die. Two French special forces soldiers died in the assault.

Twenty-nine men from around Ouvea, including Djubelli Wea, were arrested and transported to jail in Paris. Ouvea was left with a legacy of bitterness and tragedy: men from over half the villages on the island were dead or in jail, and there were sharp tensions with the FLNKS leadership.

The tragedy made all parties step back from the brink. Incoming French prime minister Michel Rocard proposed negotiations, and the subsequent Matignon and Oudinot Accords, sealed by a handshake between Tjibaou and anti-independence leader Jacques Lafleur, included amnesties for crimes committed before August 1988. For the families of the dead soldiers and of the nineteen Kanaks killed, this could not resolve the legacy of grief and division.

A year later, Jean-Marie Tjibaou and Yeiwene Yeiwene came to the island on 4 May 1989 to mark la levée du deuil, the end of a period of mourning for the nineteen.  At the ceremony in Hwadrilla, Tjibaou and Yeiwene were shot and killed by Djubelli Wea, who was immediately gunned down by Tjibaou’s bodyguard.

Isolated by the death of key leaders, the local community could not recover for many years. Over time, though, a customary reconciliation process — between the Gossanah community, the family, clan and supporters of the slain FLNKS leaders, and the families and supporters of the four slain police officers — built up trust.

The impact spread nationally. Religious and customary leaders began charting a path towards dialogue, moving from Tiendanite to Ouvea, then to Yeiwene’s home on the island of Mare, always using the traditional paths that link clans across the country. The signing of the Noumea Accord in May 1998 opened the way for France’s overseas minister to travel to Gossanah in August that year, the first of many more public gestures of reconciliation involving the French state. (Last year, president Emmanuel Macron visited Hwadrilla for the thirtieth anniversary of the hostage crisis.)

The churches played a crucial role. Jean-Marie Tjibaou was a former Catholic seminarian; the leader of the Ouvea hostage takers, Alphonse Dianou, had trained for the priesthood at the Pacific Regional Seminary in Suva; Djubelli Wea did pastoral training at the Pacific Theological College in Suva; and leading Kanak theologians Jean Wete and the late Pothin Wete are originally from Gossanah.

Ecumenical figures like Pastor Jean Wete and Father Rock Apikaoua played a central mediating role between the Wea, Tjibaou and Yeiwene families, promoting face-to-face meetings and ultimately reconciliation between the wives, then the children, and then the clans of the three central figures. Although some family members were reluctant to participate in the process and many tears were shed, this process was vital in sealing a breach that could not be healed by judicial mechanisms.

Today plaques in Ouvea, Mare and Tiendanite highlight the day in July 2004 when people transcended the bitterness of the past. The plaque next to the gravesite of Djubelli Wea pays homage to the three Kanak leaders who died in 1989, and to the reconciliation that followed: “To all generations to come — remember that on the night of 4 May 1989, blood was spilt on Ouvea. Pardon — Haiömonu me ûsoköu.” A similar plaque marks Jean-Marie Tjibaou’s grave in Tiendanite: “Pardon — do kan ôdavi vin mala da — so a new dawn can rise.”

For Emmanuel Tjibaou, it is the strength of Kanak culture that made reconciliation possible. “Just as in Papua New Guinea, or Solomon Islands or Vanuatu, custom is what makes us Pacific islanders,” he tells me. “The yam, the sacred, respect for others, respect for the community, the dimension of justice, of sharing: it was through these cultural values that we were able to reconcile with the family of Djubelli Wea, who killed my father…” His hope is that this spirit of reconciliation will “inspire others — in Bougainville, in Solomon Islands — to bridge the gulf between combatants and their clans still living with the loss. We hope to share our experience of reconciliation, in the tradition of Wantok — one way, one spirit.” •

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Despite the idyllic scenery, Ouvea carries a tragic burden of history. New Caledonia’s referendum on self-determination, which takes place on 4 November, is the culmination of a twenty-year decolonisation process that began with the Noumea Accord, an agreement between the French state and local parties signed on 5 May 1998. That was the tenth anniversary of a crisis — the 1988 Ouvea massacre — that almost tipped the country into civil war. The polarisation of those days, though muted today, still echoes through political debates.

The overwhelming majority of Ouvea province’s population is indigenous Kanak, and members of independence parties have dominated nearly every provincial government over the past thirty years. But they preside over a declining population. With limited employment available on the island, some working-age people seek education, employment or enjoyment on the main island of Grand Terre. At the last census, in 2014, only 3374 people were living on Ouvea.

According to Benjamin Malie, principal of the Guillaume Douare junior secondary college, the lack of a senior high school on Ouvea contributes to the outflow of locals. “We don’t have a lycée on Ouvea, so many families move to Grande Terre to assist their children complete schooling,” he told me. “After they’ve finished, however, some of them don’t return, so many people from Ouvea are still living in the capital, Noumea, or other towns on the mainland. Our college has dropped from 200 pupils to just eighty-nine this year, and the Protestant and public schools have also seen reductions.”

Ouvea’s food and water security is threatened by a changing environment. The reef still teems with marine life, but on the ocean side of the island, near Saint Joseph, the effects of coastal erosion can clearly be seen. Local authorities are focused on dealing with the immediate effects of climate change on water and food; three desalination plants operate, and tankers deliver fresh water to homes and schools at times of water stress.

Despite these constraints, local authorities are working to create a sustainable model of development for the island and trying to overcome the challenges of expensive transport and communications, with a new wharf and warehouse welcoming three boats a week delivering supplies.

Like most outlying islands across the region, the pace here is different from the hassle of the capital. Beyond their beauty, Ouvea’s beaches are a crucial economic resource, acting as a drawcard for overseas and domestic tourists. In recent years, there’s been a particular emphasis on small-scale tourism, with gites (bungalows) established in Kanak tribes to tap the ecotourist market. The provincial government seeks to lure Noumea-based public servants looking for a beach escape during the school holidays. Locals run a range of small businesses, promoting walking tours, fishing and boating.

But New Caledonia’s economy essentially relies on the extravagant wages and bonuses paid to French public servants and the “value-adding” on imports by local business elites. Backpackers in the Loyalty Islands will find that the beer is more expensive than in independent Vanuatu or Fiji.

Even when you focus on Ouvea’s economic future, however, it’s hard to avoid traces of the past.

Driving along the island’s main road, you pass the tall green fence, topped with barbed wire, of the police station in Fayaoue. At nearby Hwadrilla, there is a roadside memorial to “the nineteen,” the Kanak martyrs of 1988. In the northern tribe of Gossanah, the old building for the École Populaire Kanak (Kanak community school) is festooned with banners calling for non-participation in this year’s referendum, an echo of the boycott of New Caledonia’s last failed referendum in 1987.

Next to the sporting field at Gossanah is the gravesite of Djubelli Wea, an independence leader from Gossanah, with a plaque that pays homage to three Kanak leaders who died in 1989, and to the reconciliation that followed: “To all generations to come — remember that on the night of 4 May 1989, blood was spilt on Ouvea. Pardon — Haiömonu me ûsoköu.”

Much as people have reconciled since the armed conflict of the 1980s, it’s impossible to understand the present without remembering the past. Next month’s referendum is the culmination of a twenty-year transition under the Noumea Accord, an agreement signed by the French state, the independence movement Front de Libération Nationale Kanak et Socialiste, or FLNKS, and anti-independence politicians led by Jacques Lafleur.

In 1987, in the midst of the French army’s militarisation of New Caledonia, the FLNKS boycotted a referendum organised by France that purported to determine the future of the country. Despite an overwhelming Yes vote to stay with France, the referendum was meaningless without the participation of the colonised Kanak people.

The following year, Jean-Marie Tjibaou and the FLNKS leadership called for a boycott of the French presidential elections, in which conservative prime minister Jacques Chirac was challenging the incumbent Socialist Party president François Mitterrand. During the FLNKS protests, a group of Kanak independence activists led by Alphonse Dianou attempted to raise the flag of Kanaky over the police station at Fayaoue. In the subsequent melee, three gendarmes were killed and another mortally wounded. Twenty-seven others were taken hostage and hidden in caves in the north of the island, near the Kanak villages of Gossanah and Takedji.

The Ouvea crisis led to a major military mobilisation on the island. Villagers were mistreated and even tortured by French troops trying to find the hostages. The assault on the caves to free the captured police coincided with a final (and unsuccessful) attempt by Chirac to glean votes to win support before the second round of the presidential elections. On 5 May 1988, his government abandoned negotiations and elite police and an army commando unit stormed the cave. Nineteen Kanak activists were killed, with at least three executed after surrendering. Dianou was shot in the knee, and left to die.

The Ouvea tragedy made all parties step back from the brink. France’s incoming prime minister, Michel Rocard, proposed negotiations. The subsequent Matignon and Oudinot Accords, sealed by a handshake between FLNKS leader Jean-Marie Tjibaou and anti-independence leader Jacques Lafleur, provided for amnesties for crimes committed before August 1988.

The legacy of grief and division contributed to the assassination of Tjibaou and fellow Kanak leader Yeiwene Yeiwene the following year. They had come to the island on 4 May 1989 to mark la levée du deuil, the end of a year-long period of mourning for the nineteen. At the ceremony, Tjibaou and Yeiwene were shot and killed by Djubelli Wea, who was immediately gunned down by Tjibaou’s bodyguard.

It took a decade and a half to reconcile the families, clans and supporters of these dead. Led by customary chiefs, priests and pastors from the Protestant and Catholic churches, this cultural process of reconciliation and pardon has been vital in sealing a breach that could not be healed by judicial mechanisms.

One person who seems keenly aware of the continuing sensitivities is French president Emmanuel Macron, who visited New Caledonia in May this year, and included Ouvea on his itinerary. For the first time, a French president tried to pay homage at the memorial to the nineteen Kanaks killed by the French army.

At his home among the Kanak tribe of Gossanah, Djubelli Wea’s brother, Maki, tells me there was local opposition to Macron’s visit. Because of this, the French president left Ouvea without placing a wreath on the memorial at Hwadrilla. “They announced Macron’s arrival here without contacting the customary chiefs on the island, without contacting the families of the victims,” he says. “The FLNKS announced it in the media, but the people of Gossanah were surprised and we raised our finger to all the people over there.”

For the first time in thirty years, the people of Gossanah didn’t place flowers on the graves of the nineteen on the anniversary, he says. “The high commissioner even lobbied us over Macron’s visit. But we didn’t cede ground — we’re not like the people of the FLNKS who give in.”

“We say no”: Maki Wea of the Kanak tribe of Gossanah. Nic Maclellan

Meanwhile, like other low-lying atolls around the Pacific, Maki Wea continues to advocate for Kanak Socialist Independence, the guiding slogan of the 1980s. Since July, he has been speaking out in public, calling for non-participation in this year’s referendum, both as a member of the small Parti Travailliste (or Labour Party) and also as “a child of Gossanah.”

“Today, I can’t just act like an old man, working in the gardens, without saying something, because I think of the next generations, the sons of my sons and their sons after them. For they will ask, ‘Papa, what did you do when the French state and the local right-wing parties and the leaders of the FLNKS moved away from the objective for which so many have sacrificed their lives — the goal of indépendance Kanak et socialiste?’”

He criticised those independence groups on Ouvea who campaign for a Yes vote on self-determination within France: “There are plenty of fine speeches out there: ‘Vote Yes, to remember those who died for independence.’ But we say no, this referendum is just neo-colonialism.”

As I was hitchhiking up the forty-six kilometre road that runs along the spine of the island, a young man stopped to offer a lift. We talked about fishing and Australia and the weather, and then drifted on to politics.

“I’m part of the generation who grew up after les évènements,” he told me. “So thinking about independence is different for me compared to my parents. We look differently at the referendum and I have questions about what it means.” Does that mean he will vote No or stay at home on 4 November? “Oh no, I’m voting Yes, for independence. But we have to build this independence. We have to be involved to make it happen.”

For the first time since 1958, the looming referendum poses a clear option — whether to stay within the French republic or leave as a sovereign nation. New Caledonians will vote on the question: “Do you want New Caledonia to accede to full sovereignty and become independent?”

Some people may go fishing on 4 November, but Wea’s call for non-participation is not accepted by most independence supporters on the island. Activists from the largest independence parties, Union Calédonienne and the Parti de Libération Kanak, have been out for weeks, seeking to mobilise people to turn out on the day. At the last provincial elections in 2014, only 65.2 per cent of eligible residents of Ouvea went to vote, so the FLNKS is seeking to boost numbers, organising community meetings to explain the significance of this year’s decision.

One quiet night, I joined a small team of activists at Hulup, near Ouvea’s airstrip. In a local community hall, twenty-five people had gathered to hear a presentation about the referendum, followed by discussion on reasons to vote (and to vote Yes).

The FLNKS has produced a short film highlighting the economic and political milestones achieved by the independence movement since the mid 1970s (such as the 51 per cent local control of the Koniambo nickel smelter in the Northern Province, an unprecedented example of engagement with a transnational resource corporation in Melanesia).

Then there’s a PowerPoint presentation setting out the FLNKS vision of a sovereign Kanaky–New Caledonia, with the current Congress transformed into a national assembly and an elected president replacing the French high commissioner. There’s also a presentation about public finances and budgetary options for an independent state, an attempt to calm fears that a Yes vote will lead to Paris turning off the financial taps.

And then there are questions and sharp comment, with a wide-ranging discussion over what independence might mean. Much of the discussion is in the local languages of Iaai and Fagauvea, leaving your correspondent adrift, but the tone of one woman’s voice suggested that the FLNKS activists have some questions to answer about who will pay for her pension.

Ouvea’s deputy mayor, Robert Ismael, talks of the potential to give greater capacity to the local municipal council, if the Article 27 powers are transferred from Paris to Noumea (currently, New Caledonia’s provincial assemblies and local Congress come under the authority of the government in Noumea, but the communs, or municipal councils, are still controlled and financed as French state institutions).

Ismael also cites the possibility of extending development partnerships with Australia, New Zealand and neighbouring Melanesian countries, along the lines of the municipality’s current engagement with health authorities from Vanuatu. “We need to decolonise our heads and be proud like Vanuatu,” he declares.

With just a week to go before 4 November, time is running out for mobilising Ouvea’s 4351 registered voters — some on the island and some planning to use “delocalised” voting booths in Noumea. Local activists are planning a final festival on the island to promote a Yes vote, and will then join a major national rally in the capital, organised by the FLNKS at Ko We Kara on 30 October. •

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On the outskirts of town, we’re halted by a contingent of French gendarmes. The police block both exits from the bus and send a sniffer dog through, searching for drugs. After the dog reacts to one bag, a young Kanak girl is taken off for questioning. She returns shamefaced after the gendarmes had rummaged through her bag in front of everyone, waving her underclothes in the air, without finding any pakalolo.

New Caledonia has changed a lot since the armed conflict of the mid 1980s, known as les évènements (the Troubles). But interactions like this suggest that inter-community reconciliation still has a way to go.

Last September, a fight between students outside a high school in Noumea saw police deploy a helicopter and thirty-five gendarmes to break up the fight. With footage of the incident going viral, there was much pontification on social media about the problems of the younger generation, and quite a bit of racist abuse aimed at young Kanaks, the indigenous Melanesian people of New Caledonia.

Media commentary frequently portrays young people as delinquents, as layabouts, as a “social problem,” belying the commitment and enthusiasm of young New Caledonians. Given the opportunity, they surge forward to have their say.

They have similar aspirations — about jobs, sexuality, family life and getting involved in community activities — to their counterparts’ in other island nations. But in a colonial society, core differences remain between young Kanaks and those from other ethnic communities.

Despite efforts to improve education and vocational training for Kanaks, vast disparities in qualifications and employment still exist. As young Kanaks move from rural areas to the capital, seeking education, employment and enjoyment, they face competition from the sons and daughters of French bureaucrats arriving from Paris. The new arrivals are armed with better qualifications and fewer cultural obligations to clan and community. With public servants receiving massive subsidies courtesy of the French taxpayer, housing costs have been pushed out of reach of many locals.

With the referendum campaign intensifying, anti-independence politicians have tapped into the prejudice against young Kanaks, making coded complaints about “youth delinquency.” As with Aboriginal and Islander youth in Australia, a climate of moral panic leads to demands for tougher action in the courts.

“Where do we see the benefits from this process of decolonisation that’s under way?” asks a leader of the local branch of the National Front. “In these bands of hooligans, eyes red from alcohol and cannabis, who threaten tourists, or smash up and burn cars?”

Youth leader Bilo Railati of the Association Jeunesse Kanaky Monde, or AJKM, says the justice system lacks appropriate programs for youth diversion and alternatives to incarceration. “They always talk about delinquency, but it’s a word I don’t like to use,” he says. “It’s true we have an upsurge in carjackings and home break-ins. But 90 per cent of prisoners in the Camp Est prison are Kanak, even though we only make up 40 per cent of New Caledonia’s population.”

For Railati, the solution lies in better training and job opportunities. “There are waves of people going overseas for training, however I think we need to change our structures here at home,” he says. “Earlier this year, there was a demonstration because there are many Kanaks, Tahitians and Wallisians [Polynesians from Wallis and Futuna] who can’t find a place in higher education.”

Teacher and historian Paul Fizin has worked as a youth consultant with New Caledonia’s Customary Senate, which brings together chiefs from the country’s eight cultural regions. Many of those leaders recognise the need to support young Kanaks and address their concerns over cultural values, the environment, jobs and training.

“The figures are stark,” he says. “Nearly half the population of New Caledonia is aged less than thirty years, but only two out of five young people have a job. There are enormous educational disparities. One in every two Europeans has a higher degree — the figure is nearer one in twenty for Kanaks and Wallisians.”

With support from the Customary Senate, Fizin helped to organise a series of youth consultations in each of New Caledonia’s eight cultural regions. These were followed by three national congresses for Kanak youth between 2010 and 2015. Other programs focus on cultural activities, tapping the widespread creativity in dance, painting, hip-hop and kaneka — the fusion of reggae, rock and traditional Kanak rhythms popular with young people around the country.

Fizin says all young people have common concerns over education, jobs, family and sexuality, but there are variations between people living in outlying rural areas and those in the working-class suburbs of Noumea.

“There is a problem that urban youth are sometimes accused of not being ‘real’ Kanaks,” he says. “Growing up in the quartiers populaires, they don’t know village life and aren’t fluent in their traditional languages. But they have their own culture and identity in the twenty-first century, often outside the churches and the traditional political parties.”

Walking around Noumea or the bush, you often see young people wearing hoodies emblazoned with the Kanaky flag or pictures of three icons of rebellion: Bob Marley, Che Guevara or Eloi Machoro (a Kanak independence leader gunned down by French police in 1985). But in spite of these symbols, many young people are not fully aware of the history of Kanak nationalism in the 1970s and 80s.

As one teenager told me, “Our parents don’t talk much about les évènements, even though they were on the barricades. In school we don’t hear much about that time, so you have to go and ask if you want to understand the struggle of the Kanak people.”

Next year, eighteen-year-olds who are registered to vote will have the opportunity to participate in a referendum on self-determination. This will be the culmination of a twenty-year transition under the Noumea Accord, which has seen economic, social and political “rebalancing” across the country and the transfer of powers from Paris to the local administration.

But first-time voters were not born when the Noumea Accord was signed in May 1998. Daniel Goa, president of the independence party Union Calédonienne, highlights the need to register thousands of young voters, mobilising them in the face of a widespread lack of interest in elite politics.

“Currently, about 40 per cent of Kanaks — or at least 30 per cent — don’t vote,” he tells me. “So we must work at the level of the family, to provide information so these people can be found. We will find a way to reach out to each tribe, to each extended family, to contact people who are not registered to vote or who abstain. Our objective for 2018 is to mobilise the majority of electors who might participate.”

Bilo Railati says that AJKM, which is aligned with Union Calédonienne, the oldest political party in New Caledonia, is reaching out to young people, trying to stress the importance of next year’s vote. “The fundamental problem we have now in New Caledonia,” he says, “is that we’re heading towards a referendum, but there are still some people who don’t know what the Noumea Accord or the transfer of sovereign powers means.

“For a small minority, they don’t want to participate in the electoral process, because for them democracy in New Caledonia is a fraud. But this is only a minority view. The real problem is that there are many young Kanaks who’d like to vote, but they have problems enrolling because they lack the necessary documentary proof and have been turned away by bureaucrats at their mairie [town hall].”

Without compulsory voting, mobilising the electorate is a major challenge. Many voters in Kanak-majority areas abstained from voting in the French presidential elections in June this year. In the Loyalty Islands, for instance, less than one in ten eligible voters turned out, while in the Northern Province, participation ranged between 20 and 30 per cent. Voting was higher in areas where many Europeans live, such as the capital Noumea (62.9 per cent) and surrounding towns like Dumbea (61.4 per cent), Mont-Dore (57.4 per cent) and Paita (58.8 per cent).

But Railati thinks that most young Kanaks understand the importance of next year’s referendum. “I truly think that people will turn out,” he says. “Every month we go out to the villages, to the tribes to talk to people. Everyone knows that next year’s vote is different to the French presidential or legislative elections — it’s a decision on our own destiny. Many young people are waiting for 2018 with impatience.”

For non-indigenous New Caledonians, the referendum debate poses complex questions of sovereignty and reconciliation. New Caledonia has a large community from Wallis and Futuna, with many migrants arriving from their Polynesian homeland during the nickel boom of the 1970s. Today, more Wallisians live in New Caledonia than on their home islands. For a younger generation born in Noumea and surrounding towns, the Melanesian nation is their home.

Although most Wallisians are opposed to independence, some support Kanak sovereignty through the USTKE trade union confederation or the Rassemblement Démocratique Océanien party. Arnaud Chollet-Leakava, president of the RDO’s youth wing, Mouvement de Jeunesse Ocèanienne, believes that younger Wallisians must stay to build the country. “Whatever the outcome of the 2018 referendum,” he says, “our future is here in Kanaky-New Caledonia and will never be elsewhere. We will make all efforts to see the emergence of a new country, this new nation, the Caledonian people.”

Women will also play a vital role in the referendum campaign. A few years ago, arriving by helicopter at the site of the new Koniambo nickel smelter in New Caledonia’s Northern Province, I noticed that all the firefighters at the airport were Kanak women. The construction of this nickel processing plant had created new jobs in the north, and Koniambo Nickel Society — 51 per cent controlled by the Northern Province — proudly proclaimed that a third of its workforce was female.

Since the independence uprising of the 1980s, the lives of women have changed in many ways. Under the Noumea Accord, a major focus on education and training has created new pathways for women to enter non-traditional employment. Since the end of the conflict in 1988, women have seized opportunities in training programs such as 400 Cadres and Cadres Avenir. In 1989, women only made up 20 per cent of participants; by 2015, the figure was 42 per cent.

The French parity law, ensuring equal participation of men and women in electoral lists, has transformed municipal councils and the national Congress. In 2004, Marie-Noelle Themereau and Dewe Gorode served as the first elected female president and vice-president in the Pacific islands. Today, women make up 46 per cent of the Congress, a sharp contrast to neighbouring Melanesian nations, where women are rarely present in the legislature. In an unprecedented victory, Sonia Lagarde was elected mayor of Noumea in 2014.

But all these role models have not ended violence against women in the home or workplace, nor cultural constraints that limit participation in some community activities.

Rose Waen Wete, who comes from a family of leading Kanak theologians, lived much of her childhood in Fiji and Australia, where her parents were undertaking religious studies. Today, she is president of the Yaqona Koneksen Sunset, a kava circle that links a polyglot mixture of young people — French and New Caledonian, Kanak and Caldoche, with the occasional Aussie or Kiwi thrown into the mix.

“We hold regular talanoa nights around the kava bowl, to debate politics and culture and the future of our society,” she says. While many members are actively involved in political activity, they are often critical of an older generation of leaders, and eager to debate the type of society that might follow any change in political status for New Caledonia.

In her poem “Being a Modern Kanak Woman,” Wete writes about the dilemmas of juggling cultural obligations, career and family:

I have lived and grown up all my life outside my Island home
I have lived and grown up in a Pacific mixed culture
But when I returned to my Island home, I always return to my roots
I know my history, culture, custom and family tree
I have become a woman now and I see myself as modern
Not because I’m educated, employed or have material wealth
But because I do not always agree with what my parents want of me
I am independent, I don’t need a man, don’t need to get married, and don’t need to link my clan to another
I am modern, I work and have a career and I am very ambitious!
Yes, I contribute to my “obligation coutumier”
I send money for engagements, weddings and funerals
But hey, enough is enough
I have my responsibilities as a mother, to bring food to the table, to pay bills
I love my culture, my “coutume,” but I love my children even more!

As voters prepare to decide on the future of their country, this concern for the next generation will play a key part in the decision — whether to stay with France or take the leap into the future as a new sovereign nation. •

The post New Caledonia’s date with destiny appeared first on Inside Story.

Just a few words signalled a momentous change. Since its founding in 1971, the Forum has been an organisation made up exclusively of sovereign nations, linking Australia, New Zealand and independent island nations. But during their forty-seventh annual meeting at Pohnpei, in the Federated States of Micronesia, the Forum’s leaders had decided to welcome two French-controlled territories as full members.

The lack of any explanation or declaration in the communiqué reflects ongoing concerns about France’s objectives among some member states, and awareness that other territories might also seek membership. The consensus decision was forged despite calls by leading Kanak and Maohi independence activists to defer a decision, in New Caledonia’s case until after a scheduled referendum on independence in 2018.

The pro-French leaders of the two territories welcomed the news. “It’s really a great thing for New Caledonia,” Philippe Germain, president of the Government of New Caledonia, told me after the announcement was made. “It will certainly allow us to participate in discussions about the management of our region in all sectors: not only the environmental questions that are worrying the whole world, but also issues of economy, health, education and governance.”

French Polynesian president Edouard Fritch, who had lobbied independent nations to give his territory a greater role in the Forum, was similarly upbeat. “This decision comes after discussions we’ve been holding with our friends from the Pacific, where we strongly expressed our desire to become full members of the family,” he told me in Pohnpei. “Despite obstacles on the path, the main reality – for us and for most Pacific countries – is that we are Pacific islanders like any other. It’s not because we are French that we’re in this meeting, but because we’re islanders.”

Any reasons for excluding French Polynesia no longer applied, said Fritch. “In contrast, many countries see New Caledonia and French Polynesia as a pathway to France and to Europe, for Europe is present here in the Pacific.”

The decision has extra historical significance because of the Forum’s origins. In the 1970s, a group of independent island states created a new gathering as a response to a ban by France and other colonial powers on political debate within the existing regional organisation, the South Pacific Commission. Leaders like Fiji’s Ratu Sir Kamisese Mara and Nauru’s Hammer DeRoburt were angry that they couldn’t discuss nuclear testing and self-determination for the colonies of the region.

After forty-five years as an organisation of independent nations, though, times are changing. Over the past decade, Forum leaders have been working to expand their engagement with the remaining US, French and New Zealand territories of the Pacific. The decision to upgrade the status of French Polynesia and New Caledonia, bringing the Forum’s membership to eighteen, fulfils the vision expressed by leaders in 2004 to better integrate the non-self-governing territories.

Samoan prime minister Tuilaepa Sailele Malielegaoi, a supporter of the change, acknowledged that it was “a political decision.” According to the incoming Forum chair, Federated States of Micronesia president Peter Christian, “There were concerns about how we are doing it, but at the end of the day, doing it the Pacific way, we agreed that French Polynesia and New Caledonia have been knocking on our doors for many, many years. One of the things that really helped us make a decision is that most of the issues we’re talking about are cross-border issues; they have no respect for political borders.”

Not all leaders favoured the change. Nauru’s president Baron Waqa and Tuvalu’s prime minister Enele Sopoaga are understood to have raised concerns during the leaders’ retreat. It was their two nations, together with Solomon Islands, that lodged a resolution to relist French Polynesia as a non-self-governing territory with the UN General Assembly in 2013, ending a sixty-five-year period during which it was absent from the list of countries recognised as colonial possessions. The success of that move was greeted with fury by French authorities because it opened the way for the UN Special Committee on Decolonisation to monitor governance in French Polynesia and the legacies of thirty years of French nuclear testing.

The rapprochement with France has worrying implications for the Kanak independence coalition, the Front de Libération Nationale Kanak et Socialiste, or FLNKS, which has long relied on Forum support in its quest for decolonisation. After the signing of the 1998 Noumea Accord, New Caledonia’s elected government engaged increasingly with the Forum, obtaining observer status in 1999. It was joined as an observer by French Polynesia in 2004, and both countries were upgraded to associate member status at the 2006 Forum meeting in Apia. The territory of Wallis and Futuna, another French “overseas collectivity,” also joined as observer at that meeting. (After last month’s decision, Wallis and Futuna remains a Forum observer, with no clear pathway to full membership.) US territories like Guam and American Samoa gained observer status in 2011.

Since the Noumea Accord and the end of French nuclear testing, the government in Noumea, and its counterpart in the French Polynesian capital, Papeete, have been granted significant new powers and gained the right to negotiate regional agreements in some sectors. Under the French Constitution, however, Paris still controls the military, courts, police, currency and other sovereign matters, and the constitutional power to sign many treaties still remains with the French Republic. Successive governments in New Caledonia – all led by presidents opposed to independence from France – have lobbied to upgrade from associate to full membership of the Forum, even though New Caledonia is not a fully independent and sovereign nation.

The FLNKS Congress in February this year began discussing a revised position on Forum membership. Some leaders from two of FLNKS’s member parties, Palika and UPM, support the change as part of the broader regional integration of New Caledonia with its Melanesian neighbours. But leaders from the UC-FLNKS and Nationalists parliamentary group, led by long-time independence leader Roch Wamytan, opposed full membership until after the territory’s 2018 independence referendum. Wamytan unsuccessfully lobbied Forum Secretary General Dame Meg Taylor to delay the decision.

Since New Caledonia gained Forum associate membership in 2006, all delegations have included both supporters and opponents of independence. One noticeable feature of the Pohnpei Forum was the absence of any Kanak leaders among New Caledonia’s delegates.

Last month’s decision followed a special Forum ministerial mission to French Polynesia in July 2015, led by PNG foreign minister Rimbink Pato, which assessed Papeete’s application for full membership. At the 2015 summit in Papua New Guinea, leaders deferred a decision on the mission’s report. A key concern was whether the existing governance arrangements of French Polynesia would enable its government “to participate independently and effectively as a full member, in the full complement of political deliberation, decision-making and commitments of the Forum.”

Since then, the Forum secretariat had developed new criteria for membership for consideration at this year’s meeting. Despite this, Forum leaders in Pohnpei failed to set out any clear rationale for the decision. Many observers expressed surprise at its timing, but there had been plenty of evidence that pressure from France was mounting.

The issue was raised by France’s overseas minister, George Pau-Langevin, at the 2015 Post-Forum Dialogue in Port Moresby. Then, at the November 2015 France-Oceania summit in Paris (held just before the global talks that led to the Paris agreement on climate change), French president François Hollande expressed a hope that the Pacific Islands Forum “could welcome to its breast both New Caledonia and French Polynesia as full members and Wallis and Futuna as an associate member. These three territories will be our representatives.” France and its local representatives have lobbied sub-regional bodies like the Polynesian Leaders Group and Melanesian Spearhead Group.

Regional relations with France have certainly improved since the days of nuclear testing and the 1985 terrorist attack on the Rainbow Warrior by French intelligence operatives. Today, France is an active partner on climate change, development programs and EU relations. As a major contributor to the Green Climate Fund, Paris has increased its climate finance for small island states, and President Hollande joined island leaders at a High Level Dialogue on Climate Change in Noumea during his 2014 visit to the region.

Supporters of change: Australia’s Malcolm Turnbull and the NZ prime minister John Key. Nic Maclellan

Through the governments of New Caledonia and French Polynesia and via its own bilateral programs, France has offered to bankroll a range of regional initiatives. President Fritch offered funding for a Polynesian Leaders Group secretariat, while President Germain has offered – and Paris has approved – visa-free travel to New Caledonia for citizens of Vanuatu. Other Pacific island countries have been offered improved air services and support for civil aviation, a crucial concern for smaller island states lacking good transport networks.

Through the Melanesian Spearhead Group, Papua New Guinea has been a long-time supporter of the FLNKS. But the PNG government has also been improving its diplomatic and economic ties to France, and this no doubt weighed on Port Moresby’s decision to support the two territories’ full membership this year. Prime minister Peter O’Neill’s state visit to France in June had been a first for a PNG leader. “With our strengthening relationship direct with France,” he said at the time, “I hope we will see an increase in business and tourism. France is increasingly our trade gateway to Europe and we would like to see Papua New Guinea become a significant hub for France in the Pacific.”

Alongside these political developments, the French energy corporation Total has been expanding its investment in PNG’s LNG industry. The company’s chief executive, Patrick Pouyanné, travelled to PNG last April, and later announced that his company would strengthen its partnership with Oil Search and InterOil for gas exploration. During his Paris visit, O’Neill and his ministers met with Total directors to discuss a potential US$10 billion investment by the company and its partners in PNG’s Gulf province.

Since the 2010 signing of the Joint Statement of Strategic Partnership Between Australia and France, successive governments in Canberra have supported the push for New Caledonia and French Polynesia to become full members, even before a decision on self-determination. Reluctant to be seen as advancing France’s agenda, though, Australian officials have left it for others to take the running. During his press conference on arrival in the Federated States of Micronesia, prime minister Malcolm Turnbull declined to respond to questions on the topic.

Under the 1992 FRANZ agreement, Australia, New Zealand and France have long collaborated on maritime surveillance and humanitarian responses in the Pacific. This year, Canberra also announced that the French shipbuilding corporation DCNS had won an A$50 billion contract to build the next generation of submarines for the Royal Australian Navy. The ANZUS allies will now be happy for France to upgrade its involvement in the South Pacific Defence Ministers Meeting, where Paris currently has observer status. (Paris rather than Noumea or Papeete controls all French military deployments in the region.)

In contrast to Turnbull, NZ prime minister John Key was a very vocal supporter of the change. The Key government shifted policy after a visit by French prime minister Manuel Valls last May, the first visit to New Zealand by a French PM since 1991. Key conceded that it was possible to make a case that the two territories don’t fit the Forum’s criteria for membership, but, he added, “the scale of their activities, the contribution they could potentially make, I think argues the case that they should be allowed full membership.” Pacific academics have argued that New Zealand was partly motivated by the hope that this gesture of goodwill might discourage a French veto for Helen Clarke’s bid for the post of UN secretary-general.

With other Pacific territories – including Tokelau, American Samoa and Guam – seeking greater engagement with the Forum, Samoa’s prime minister Tuilaepa referred to the particular circumstances of France’s lengthy campaign for its territories. “There are many others, but these two have a long association,” he said. “They’ve been knocking and knocking and knocking on the door.” And if others like West Papua or Bougainville come knocking? “We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.”

Meanwhile, France seems to be in the Pacific to stay. During a flying visit to Tahiti last February, François Hollande reaffirmed his country’s intention to remain a power in the region. “That’s another reason for my visit here,” he told the Assembly of French Polynesia, “to show that there are no far-off territories of the French Republic – there is only the Republic… You are not far from France, because you are France, because I am here in France.”

Some commentators have suggested that France can play a greater role in limiting Chinese power in the Pacific. But French patrol boats in Noumea and Papeete have limited military capacity and are based thousands of kilometres away from current tensions in the South China Sea. Moreover, the governments of French Polynesia and New Caledonia have both welcomed extensive Chinese investment in tourism and other sectors. This year, Noumea has expanded nickel exports to China, as traditional markets like Australia have reduced their imports of nickel ore.

Of greater importance is France’s strategic interest in maritime resources like tuna fisheries and deep-sea mining. Seeking to uphold his country’s self-image as a mid-sized global power, Hollande has reaffirmed the strategic importance of France’s seven-million-square-kilometre Exclusive Economic Zone in the Pacific.

As Pacific governments seek to expand their control of ocean resources, France and other European powers are increasingly interested in the wealth of this liquid continent. “We have to protect the EEZ,” Hollande said in Tahiti. “We have to ensure our presence so that no one can come to exploit the EEZ without our consent or authorisation. It’s our common heritage – it’s yours, it’s ours and we share it. So we must ensure that other people can’t interfere with part of our territory.”

With French presidential and legislative elections to be held in mid 2017 and New Caledonia’s referendum on self-determination scheduled for late 2018, there are uncertain times ahead. Meanwhile, start rewriting all the textbooks about governance in the Pacific. •

The post France and the Forum appeared first on Inside Story.

Nearly 800 of the smelter’s employees have lost their jobs this year, and are relying on the federal government’s Fair Entitlements Guarantee for unpaid entitlements. Legal battles are looming over who controls Queensland Nickel and how much the company’s debts to staff and creditors will end up costing taxpayers.

But Palmer’s woes extend to New Caledonia, just 2000 kilometres from Townsville, which has long been a major supplier of laterite ores to the Yabulu smelter. The mining and export of ores bearing nickel and cobalt provides a range of economic benefits to the French Pacific territory, which holds an estimated 25 per cent of global reserves. The minerals and metallurgy sector is the largest private employer in the island nation of 265,000 people.

In March, as Queensland Nickel went into liquidation, New Caledonia’s president, Philippe Germain, announced a new plan to tackle the current downturn. “Our mining framework has always prioritised traditional partners like Australia and Japan,” Germain said. “But if Australia can no longer buy the same levels from us, we need an alternative in the current circumstances, because we have mines, miners and sub-contractors who are dependent on this activity.”

Although New Caledonia has long looked to Japan and Australia for exports, it has mostly avoided selling high-grade ore directly to other countries, including China, in the hope of protecting the local smelting industry’s metal exports. As part of what he called a “temporary” plan, Germain announced that his government will allow increased exports of ore to China for twelve to eighteen months.

The recent fall in the price of nickel on the London Metals Exchange has come at a bad time for the French Pacific dependency. Globally, over 400,000 tonnes of nickel were stockpiled as production boomed with China’s economy still brisk. Now, the slowdown in Chinese steel production has contributed to falling prices. Beyond this, the island nation’s Asian competitors, Indonesia and the Philippines, have also been transforming their nickel policies. Jakarta banned the export of unprocessed ore in early 2014, and Manila has announced a floor price for the export of ore.

Many of New Caledonia’s east coast mines, along with the ageing Doniambo smelter in the capital, Noumea, are run by the dependency’s largest producer, Société Le Nickel, or SLN. Through its Strategic Investment Fund, the French government holds a minority stake in SLN’s parent company, ERAMET; the balance is owned by private investors.

Local New Caledonian leaders have criticised SLN for issuing more than €900 million (A$1.4 billion) in dividends in 2012 and 2013, but then seeking government support now that times are tough. SLN lost nearly €250 million last year and Doniambo continues to lose hundreds of thousands of euros each week.

“Metal markets, and nickel markets especially, are going through a very deep crisis; one that we have not known for at least fifteen years,” ERAMET chief executive Patrick Buffet said during a recent visit to Noumea. “For the most part, the crisis is due to a very unfavourable change in demand in China, as well as excess capacity over the last few years. Moreover, for a variety of reasons, and especially local ones, SLN is faced with higher production costs than those of its main competitors.”

Earlier this month ERAMET’s board of directors agreed to provide additional financing of €40 million to ensure that SLN operates until the end of June. (ERAMET has already provided temporary financing to SLN amounting to €150 million.) This will allow time for a decision on a €200 million loan foreshadowed by French prime minister Manuel Valls, who visited New Caledonia in late April.

The new financing to SLN will be issued through the Société Territoriale Calédonienne de Participations Industrielles, or STCPI, a holding company for New Caledonia’s three provinces in the mining and smelting sector; in return, STCPI wants to increase its shareholding in ERAMET from 34 to 51 per cent.

In Noumea, government policy since 2009 has tried to add value to the country’s vast nickel stocks by expanding nickel smelting rather than exporting raw laterite ore. Despite this, ore exports grew by 24 per cent between 2013 and 2015, with the growth focused on Japan and Korea. Exports to Japan alone grew from 26 per cent of the market in 2013 to 32 per cent last year; over the same period, exports to Australia halved from 27 to 13.6 per cent.

SLN’s exports of nickel metal have faced competition from two new smelting operations in New Caledonia, though both are experiencing problems with debt, technology and markets. The Goro smelter in the Southern Province, managed by Brazil’s Vale Corporation, has also made significant losses, amounting to US$400 million in 2015. Following major technical problems, which led to releases of acidic pollutants into nearby rivers and bays in April 2009 and May 2014, Vale is reviewing its strategy in New Caledonia.

Production delays and falling international prices have hit the Koniambo nickel smelter, in New Caledonia’s Northern Province, too. This project is managed by Koniambo Nickel SAS (KNS), a joint venture between New Caledonia’s SMSP nickel company (51 per cent) and the Anglo-Swiss corporation Glencore (49 per cent). Glencore inherited its stake in KNS in a May 2013 merger with Xstrata, and CEO Ivan Glasenberg has previously said “we are not married” to the Koniambo project.

Last August, protesting truckers blockaded Noumea for weeks, calling on the government to expand exports to China and other countries. And in February this year the government formally declared a crisis in the industry, opening the way for the allocation of grants from New Caledonia’s Nickel Fund, a subsidy scheme to assist miners and related sectors like transport and energy.

Even if new management can help Palmer’s Yabulu smelter revive production, President Germain said that “no one has a crystal ball to see if this is a sustainable solution. Today there is no calendar of boats scheduled to come from Australia to New Caledonia, so there is a danger for miners to transport the ore from the mountains to the coast.” For the next eighteen months, Germain said, “the mining companies are invited to prioritise exports to Chinese steelmakers, and not pig-iron manufacturers, in order not to undercut New Caledonian metal producers.”

Maintaining stability in the nickel sector has crucial political, as well as economic, importance for New Caledonia. In the 1980s, the French dependency was riven by violent conflict between the French state, the independence coalition Front de Libération Nationale Kanak et Socialiste, or FLNKS, and opponents of independence among the territory’s large European population.

The signing of the Noumea Accord in May 1998 set out a twenty-year transition to a referendum on self-determination. Today, New Caledonia’s politics are marked by a level of intercommunal engagement that is quite different from the era of violent clashes that divided the country between 1984 and 1988. But in spite of fifteen years of multiparty government, economic restructuring and extensive funding from the French government, a significant gulf still exists between parties supporting political independence from France and those opposing it.

Before the Noumea Accord was signed, the Bercy Accord of February 1998 had opened the way for the transfer of nickel reserves and the construction of the Koniambo smelter in the Northern Province, where the population is mainly indigenous Kanaks and pro-independence parties dominate. The deal on Koniambo was a crucial precondition for the political settlement that came a few months later between supporters and opponents of independence.

The future for nickel once again weighs on Noumea’s political class, as New Caledonia moves towards its late-2018 referendum to decide whether to remain within the French Republic or achieve full independence and sovereignty. As Philippe Gomes – leader of the conservative Calédonie Ensemble party – says, “There can be no exit from the Noumea Accord without a consensus amongst us on nickel.”

Daniel Goa, president of the pro-independence Union Calédonienne, has stressed the importance of support for SLN and other nickel operators at a time New Caledonia is moving to a decision on its future political status. “We need SLN to maintain the peace,” he says. “The French state must act on its responsibility to ensure the future of employees and of the subcontractors who rely on SLN.”

For New Caledonia, the economic and political stakes could not be higher. •

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I can’t see it myself. In the past year, I’ve travelled both to Scotland and to New Caledonia. For the life of me, I couldn’t detect much resemblance between the Scottish glens and the mountain valleys of Grande Terre, the main island of New Caledonia that so bewitched Cook.

In spite of this, there’s one contemporary connection between old Caledonia and New Caledonia. In Edinburgh and Noumea, people are debating independence.

Over four million residents of Scotland, aged 16 and over, will go to the polls on 18 September to decide whether to stay with the United Kingdom or become an independent country. New Caledonia, one of Australia’s closest neighbours, is also scheduled to hold an independence referendum – in its case, sometime before 2018. Today, the French tricolour and the flag of Kanaky fly outside town halls, schools and other public buildings; within a few years, just one of them may be flying.

Many commentators regard debates about flags, sovereignty and statehood as a nineteenth-century anachronism. In the 1990s, as the Soviet Union imploded and Yugoslavia exploded, the “national question” was resolved in conflict and corruption, with an atavistic return to blood-and-soil nationalism. Decades later, there are new debates about borders and imagined communities, about cultural identity in a globalised world. The creative tension between nationalism and globalisation is being played out today in Scotland, Belgium, Spain, France and across the islands of Melanesia.

In his wonderful polemic, Arguing for Independence, the late Stephen Maxwell described globalisation as “the growth of multi-level interdependence between societies around the world, which limits the freedom of all states, while bearing down with particular weight on small states.” Maxwell, the leading intellectual of modern Scottish nationalism, welcomed interdependence. He believed that Scotland’s independence would improve relations with Europe and the rest of the United Kingdom, rather than create a permanent breach between neighbours.

His arguments echo the vision of the Kanak leader Jean-Marie Tjibaou, who campaigned for New Caledonia’s independence until his assassination in 1989. Tjibaou argued that independence from France would allow better relations both with Paris and with countries in our region: “It is sovereignty that gives us both the right and the power to negotiate our interdependences. For a small country like our own, independence allows us to determine our interdependences.”

As a modern capitalist economy, Scotland is fundamentally different from New Caledonia, a developing country struggling with the legacies of French colonialism. But the quest for independence unites the two nations.

With just over a week to the vote in Scotland, pollsters report a late surge in support for the Yes campaign led by the Scottish National Party, or SNP.

There’s a panicked tone to the interventions of Better Together, the unionist campaign led by former Labour chancellor Alistair Dowling. Their “Let’s stay together” initiative has wheeled out a range of politicians, celebrities, musicians and business leaders to highlight the damage that would be caused by a vote for independence.

The No campaign is mobilising supporters from across the spectrum. It doesn’t matter if you’re a Stones fan or a Beatlemaniac – both Mick Jagger and Paul McCartney have declared their opposition to independence. The Pope and atheist superstar Richard Dawkins agree that the break-up of the United Kingdom is a danger to global stability. Tony Blair, Hillary Clinton and the boss of BHP Billiton have all called for a No vote. J.K. Rowling is one of the many English-born residents of Scotland who will vote against independence.

Facing this parade of millionaires, the SNP has been joined in the Yes campaign by a range of left-of-centre groups that have traditionally been hostile to Scottish nationalism and the SNP’s pragmatic conservatism.

Polling shows that working-class voters are more likely to vote Yes than the rich, in the hope of protecting the social democratic advances that Scotland maintains over the rest of the United Kingdom (no tuition fees at university, free medical prescriptions for the elderly, booming investment in wind and hydro power, and policies to promote investment in the National Health Service).

During a visit to Scotland last year, I was struck by the diversity of grassroots organising, as the members of a broad coalition try to mobilise their neighbours and workmates in a debate about creating a different sort of society. One night, we travelled halfway across Edinburgh in the pouring rain to attend a community debate in Leith, but were turned away at the door. So many people had turned out that the organisers decided to give priority to the undecided, and were refusing entry to those who’d made up their mind or outsiders who couldn’t vote.

Another day, on a bus to Balmaclellan, we spotted a woman with a bag emblazoned with the simple slogan “Yes.” Later, over a cuppa in her home, she explained that she was an SNP member and responsible for doorknocking in Balmaclellan and nearby farms. “There’s another young lass from the next village who is involved in Radical Independence,” she explained. “She has green hair, but we get along pretty well – we’re both working for the same thing.”

From staid SNP supporters to the youthful troops of Radical Independence, from the artists of the National Collective to the activists of the Scottish Socialist Party, the act of voting Yes is part of a broader debate about the future. Should the Queen stay as head of state, or do we want a modern democratic republic? Should we stay in NATO and the European Union? The pound or the euro? How can we overcome Britain’s democratic deficit (no constitution, first-past-the-post voting and a House of Lords packed with Church of England bishops and the enemies of social democracy)?

The Yes campaign has remobilised a generation of Scots who have fought against a range of Westminster policies, from Maggie Thatcher’s poll tax to David Cameron’s bedroom tax, from Tony Blair’s invasion of Iraq to Britain’s bipartisan support for the £80 billion renewal of Trident nuclear submarines. In spite of the integration of Scottish elites in the British Empire, there hasn’t been a Tory majority in Scotland since 1955.

Our own English-born, Rhodes Scholar–educated Tory prime minister weighed in on the other side of the debate during a recent visit to London. “As a friend of Britain, as an observer from afar, it’s hard to see how the world would be helped by an independent Scotland,” Tony Abbott said in August. “I think that the people who would like to see the break-up of the United Kingdom are not the friends of justice, the friends of freedom, and the countries that would cheer at the prospect… are not the countries whose company one would like to keep.”

Abbott’s intervention in the independence debate was widely reported as a gaffe: in the past, his ideological enthusiasms have led to the occasional awkward statement, such as telling the US Heritage Foundation that “few Australians would regard America as a foreign country.”

Rather than a blunder, though, I’d suggest that it was a more calculated intervention. Abbott recognises that independence for Scotland would open a wider debate about neoliberalism and nuclear policy, the role of the secret state and the “Five Eyes” UKUSA alliance, the United Kingdom’s permanent seat on the UN Security Council, how Scotland and England will coexist in NATO and the European Union, the role of the banking sector – a complex debate that would upset the relaxed and comfortable.

His intervention also comes at a time when debates about self-determination and independence, about borders and sovereignty, are occurring around the world, from old Caledonia to New Caledonia, from Corsica and Catalonia to Bougainville.

You wouldn’t know it from the Australian media, but the Coalition government will soon be facing strategically significant debates about self-determination in our own region. Over the next five years, there may be major changes in two of Australia’s closest neighbours, as New Caledonia and Bougainville move towards a new political status.

Both islands suffered traumatic periods of armed conflict, in New Caledonia in the 1980s and in Bougainville in the 1990s. In spite of the widespread calls for independence, there were significant divisions within the population and both conflicts ended with innovative political agreements to delay a vote on a final political status.

Since 1998, both have been undertaking lengthy transitions towards a self-determination referendum and the possible creation of two new sovereign and independent nations. Indigenous peoples and migrant communities are debating cultural identity, the future role of mining, and how to develop a viable post-independence economy.

These transitional periods are now coming to a head. Under the 1998 Noumea Accord, New Caledonia is scheduled to hold a referendum before 2018. In a similar period, Bougainville will come to the end of the ten-to-fifteen-year transition initiated by the 2005 election of the Autonomous Bougainville Government. Will these referendums be held as scheduled, or will there be pressure to maintain the status quo in the interest of “stability”?

Tony Abbott has often spoken of the Anglosphere – his vision of a set of civic institutions marked by pluralism, democracy and fairness. But the term has taken on a broader strategic meaning in Canberra’s policy community, best shown in Keep Calm and Carry On: Reflections on the Anglosphere, a 2013 report from the Australian Strategic Policy Institute.

Institute director Peter Jennings argues that the Anglosphere has taken on a new meaning in the age of Edward Snowden. “A more modern term is the Five Eyes community,” he writes, “which refers to the post Second World War intelligence collecting and sharing relationship developed between the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, Australia and New Zealand.” His view is that “the Anglosphere demonstrates itself time and time again to be the engine of global order and the essential enforcer of international stability, even at a time of sweeping strategic change.”

Reflecting concern over China’s emerging strategic power, many Australian policy wonks argue that the old Anglo alliance must be strengthened in the Asia-Pacific region through closer cooperation with India (uranium sales), Japan (increased interoperability with ANZUS forces) and France (military cooperation in the South Pacific).

In recent years, both major parties in Canberra have welcomed France’s ongoing presence in the Pacific, arguing that the French state is a “positive influence in the region.” Australian think tanks like Jennings’s organisation and the Lowy Institute are holding strategic dialogues with French officials (but not Kanak or Tahitian leaders), promoting closer engagement with the French armed forces in the Pacific. This creates some tension with our closest island neighbours in Melanesia, which are actively supporting independence movements in New Caledonia and French Polynesia.

To the disquiet of leaders in Canberra, Jakarta and Port Moresby, Bougainvilleans and West Papuans are asserting their right to self-determination within postcolonial nations like Papua New Guinea and Indonesia. The issues of self-determination, autonomy and independence are on the agenda of organisations like the Melanesian Spearhead Group – a dilemma indeed, when many of your nearest neighbours are countries that cheer at the prospect of independence.

As Stephen Maxwell has argued, this issue is a very contemporary one. “It is not an accident that the right of the self-determination of peoples is so widely acknowledged,” he wrote. “It reflects a judgement that those best qualified to decide how a community should manage its collective interests are the members of that community. They are in the best position to know their own needs and the best options available to them for meeting those needs. They are more likely than anyone else to be guided by an enlightened self-interest in balancing the claims of individuals and minorities within the community against the claims of the majority and of present generations against those of future generations.” •

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