France yesterday deployed troops to New Caledonia’s ports and international airport, banned TikTok and imposed a state of emergency after three nights of clashes that have left four dead and hundreds wounded.
Pro-independence, largely indigenous protests against a French plan to impose new voting rules on its Pacific archipelago have spiraled into the deadliest violence since the 1980s, with a police officer among several killed by gunfire.
On roads, the torched detritus amassed over four days of unrest was scattered amid fist-size hunks of rock and cement that appeared to have been flung during riots.
Photo: AFP
Armored vehicles roved the city’s palm-lined boulevards, usually thronged with tourists.
Fearful locals set up make-shift roadblocks — piling wooden pallets, wheelbarrows, bed frames, plastic jerricans, tree fronds and scraps of fencing across the streets.
As part of a sweeping French response, security forces placed five suspected ringleaders under house arrest, according to a statement by the High Commission, which represents the French state in New Caledonia.
House searches will be carried out “in the coming hours,” it said.
More than 200 rioters have been arrested since the clashes broke out, the commission said.
Hundreds of people, including 64 police, have been wounded, officials said.
French authorities reported a third night of “clashes,” although correspondents in the streets of the capital, Noumea, said it appeared calmer than previous nights.
Residents in some neighborhoods sat on garden chairs, watched barricades and strung up improvised white flags, a symbol of their intention to keep peaceful watch over the streets.
Onlookers ambled around the husks of burned-out shops, navigating twisted shutters, looted shelves and discarded packaging.
“We just grabbed what there was in the shops to eat. Soon there will be no more shops,” said one woman in a suburb of the capital, who spoke on condition of anonymity. “We need milk for the children. I don’t see it as looting.”
France is establishing an “air bridge,” the commission said, to rapidly move in troop and police reinforcements, but also to bring in essential supplies for the population.
In Paris, French President Emmanuel Macron offered to hold talks with New Caledonian lawmakers and called for a resumption of political dialogue.
French Prime Minister Gabriel Attal told a crisis ministerial meeting that troops had been deployed to secure ports and the international airport, which has been closed to commercial flights.
TikTok had been banned because it was being used by rioters, Attal said.
New Caledonia, which lies between Australia and Fiji, is one of several territories around the globe that remain largely under French control in the post-colonial era. Colonized by France from the second half of the 19th century, it has special status, unlike the country’s other overseas territories.
While it has on three occasions rejected independence in referendums, independence retains strong support among the Kanak people.
The state of emergency enables authorities to enforce travel bans, house arrests and searches.
Along with a night curfew, there are bans on gatherings, the carrying of weapons and the sale of alcohol.
Nearly 1,800 law enforcement officers have been mobilized and a further 500 will reinforce them, a French government spokeswoman said.
As people took to the streets, France’s National Assembly on Tuesday voted to allow residents who have lived in New Caledonia for 10 years to cast ballots.
The reform must still be approved by a joint sitting of both houses of the French parliament.
Independence advocates say that would dilute the vote of Kanaks, who make up about 41 percent of the population.
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