Deadly unrest in New Caledonia tied to old colonial wounds
New Caledonia, the French overseas territory in the southwest Pacific, has been rocked by its most violent clashes since the 1980s. While the unrest was triggered by constitutional changes to the voting system, it also highlights frustrations over the long process of decolonisation.
Deadly rioting broke out in the New Caledonian capital, Noumea, on 13 May as Paris prepared to vote on imposing new rules that could give voting rights to tens of thousands of non-indigenous residents.
Under legislation agreed as part of the 1998 Noumea Accord, which paved the way for decolonisation, the right to vote in provincial elections and local referendums was limited to natives and those who had arrived on the archipelago before 1998, along with their children.
The idea was to give greater representation to the indigenous Kanaks, who had gradually become a minority population following waves of European migration.
Kanaks now make up around 44 percent of the territory’s 270,000 inhabitants. Thirty-four percent are Europeans (mostly French), with the rest made up of other minority groups including Wallisians and Tahitians.
Excluded from voting
The voting restrictions effectively excluded new arrivals to the territory and those born there after 1998 – around 20 percent of the current population.
“It amounts to about 25,000 more citizens on the electoral roll, mainly French from the mainland,” explains Isabelle Merle, a historian of colonialism specialising in New Caledonia.
Read more on RFI English
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