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NEW YORK, June 13, 2024 (BennarNews) – Fiji and Papua New Guinea have urged the United Nations Decolonization Committee to expedite a visit to the French-controlled Pacific territory of New Caledonia following pro-independence riots that took place there last month.
The French government’s weakening of the voting rights of New Caledonia’s indigenous Kanak people sparked riots in the capital, Noumea, which left nine people dead, dozens injured and several businesses burned down.
Fiji’s permanent representative to the United Nations, Filippo Tarakinikini, also issued a statement on behalf of Papua New Guinea, saying both countries were “gravely concerned” about the large number of Kanak lives lost since the crisis began.
“We stress that the situation in New Caledonia is at a fork in the road,” Tarajniki told the committee at the U.N. headquarters in New York.
“History is full of great lessons that can guide situations like these towards peaceful resolution. Today we heard once again clearly the toll that colonialism has taken on people,” he said.
Tarakinikini said that Fiji and Papua New Guinea hope that the United Nations Special Committee on Decolonization will send a visiting delegation to New Caledonia as soon as possible to learn about the local situation firsthand.
He also criticised the militarisation of the island after France sent in hundreds of police and armoured personnel carriers to maintain order. Despite the stepped-up security, the unrest has continued.
“Arming each other is not the solution, nor is the militarization and defense of the region by the authorities the right signal for our blue Pacific continent,” Tarajni said.
New Caledonia’s international airport remains closed, preventing pro-independence President Louis Mapou and other delegates from travelling to the UN commission.
The local Chamber of Commerce estimated that the riots caused $200 million in economic losses and resulted in 7,000 job losses.
The Committee on Decolonization was established by the United Nations General Assembly in 1961 to monitor the international community’s commitment to granting independence to colonial peoples. It currently covers some 17 territories with a population of 2 million, most of which were part of the former British Empire.
Fiji and Papua New Guinea are both long-term members of the committee, which has listed New Caledonia as a UN Non-Self-Governing Territory under French administration since 1986.
In the Pacific, American Samoa, French Polynesia, Guam, Pitcairn and Tokelau also remain on the list.
Representatives of civil society organizations who addressed the committee criticized France’s control over New Caledonia and blamed it for sparking the crisis.
Loyalists making the submission likened the unrest to a coup d’état and a deliberate sabotage of what they said was a previous consensus between Kanaks and French settlers, “forcing those who did not comply with the independence plan to leave.”
France’s statement at the conference appeared to blame outside forces for the unrest. “Certain external forces far from the region are trying to escalate tensions through their campaign of manipulating information,” the country’s representative said, adding that the European country would “continue to cooperate with the United Nations, including during this critical period.”
Jean-Victor Castex, a French Guiana member of the French National Assembly, warned that the country had entered a “new phase of colonial oppression”.
Casteau also called on the United Nations to send a mission to “encourage France to fulfill its commitments and to pursue a concerted path of decolonization, which is the only guarantee for the restoration of peace.”
French control of New Caledonia, a country of about 270,000 people and home to the world’s largest nickel mine, gives the European nation a key security and diplomatic role in the Pacific as the United States, Australia and other Western countries resist China’s advance into the region.
The unrest, the worst political violence in the Pacific region bordering Australia and Fiji since the 1980s, broke out on May 12 as the lower house of the French parliament debated and later approved a constitutional amendment to unfreeze New Caledonia’s electoral roll, which would have given thousands of French immigrants the right to vote.
Final approval of the amendment would require a joint session of the French Chamber of Deputies and the Senate. But President Emmanuel Macron called an early French election earlier this week, and the prospects for the vote are currently unclear.
Referendums held in 2018 and 2020 produced moderate majorities in favor of France retaining a part of it, in line with the UN-mandated decolonization process.
In the third and final referendum in 2021, just under half of New Caledonians voted overwhelmingly to remain in France.
The Kanak independence movement boycotted the vote because the French government held it early without consultation and restricted campaigning during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Mareva Lechat-Kitalong, French Polynesia’s representative for international, European and Pacific affairs, told the committee that what happened in New Caledonia’s third referendum “should not happen again on a question as fundamental as independence or not.”
She also urged France to commit to a road map for French Polynesia, “with full support for a proper process of decolonization and self-determination under the supervision of the United Nations”. …PACNEWS
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