New Caledonia is in turmoil, with 200 arrests made and hundreds injured. Photo: Nicolas Jobe/AP
France accused Azerbaijan on Thursday of interfering in strife-torn New Caledonia amid warnings that Russia and China are trying to exploit the chaos in the French Pacific territory.
Five people have died, including two gendarmes, since riots sparked by a French parliament bill broke out three days ago. Pro-independence groups say the proposed new law will discriminate against the island's indigenous Kanak population.
New Caledonia, located between Australia and Fiji, has the world's second-largest nickel reserves, but its processing plants are on the brink collapse due to cheap competition from Indonesia and Chinese overproduction.
Prices have fallen despite the metal being a key component in electric vehicle batteries. Analysts say the economic crisis has exacerbated tensions that have brought the island “on the brink of civil war.”
“It is in [Beijing's] interest to encourage independence movements,” warns a recent French government report. Military Strategic Research Institute Irsem, “to gain market share or weaken potential competitors.”
President Emmanuel Macron declared a state of emergency. On Thursday, French Prime Minister Gabriel Attal announced he was sending 1,000 police reinforcements (up to 2,700 in total), as well as soldiers and elite GIGN units, to try to quell the unrest.
Smoke rises from the capital Noumea on Wednesday Photo: Nicholas Job/AP
“The people ambushed law enforcement officers, [with] continuous fire from hunting rifles,” New Caledonia's high commission said.
Hundreds of people, including 64 police officers, were injured and 200 people were arrested. The territory's population of about 270,000 is heavily armed, with more than 100,000 owning firearms.
“We are heading straight for civil war,” warned Louis Le Franc, the island’s high commissioner.
Describing the chaos, one French expat couple said neighbors banded together to form a “citizen's militia” and barricaded the entrance to the road. “We are afraid for our home and our lives,” said the couple, who live in the central Valledes Colon neighborhood and declined to give their names.
They added: “They are burning everything to the ground.” , even pharmacies, veterinarians and gas stations. There are areas where there is no power and no water supply.”
All commercial flights have been stopped, effectively leaving frightened residents trapped on the island.
French officials have long expressed concern about Azerbaijan's curious interest in France's overseas territories, including New Caledonia, 9,000 miles away, and their fight against “colonial rule.”
“This is not fantasy. This is reality,” Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin told France 2 television when asked whether Azerbaijan, China and Russia interfered in New Caledonia.
On Thursday, Paris announced it was sending 1,000 more police officers to the island. Photo: Delphine Mayer/AFP
“I regret that some pro-independence Caledonian leaders have made a deal with Azerbaijan. This is indisputable,” he said. Azerbaijan quickly rejected the accusations as “baseless.”
Relations between Paris and Baku deteriorated sharply following Azerbaijan's 2020 war and Azerbaijan's lightning offensive in 2023 to regain control of the breakaway region of Nagorno-Karabakh from ethnic Armenian separatists .< /p>
France is a traditional ally of Christian Armenia, a neighbor and historical rival of Azerbaijan, and is also home to a significant Armenian diaspora. Mr Darmanin said pro-Russian Azerbaijan was a “dictatorship”.
On Wednesday, Paris also banned TikTok from New Caledonia on the grounds that the social network, which has a Chinese parent, was widely used. used by rioters. This ban is considered the first in Europe.
Critics fear it is being used to spread disinformation from foreign countries.
Azerbaijan has invited separatists from the French territories of Martinique, French Guiana, New Caledonia and French Polynesia to Baku for a conference in July 2023.
< p>At the meeting, the “Baku Initiative Group” was created, the stated goal of which is to support “French liberation and anti-colonialist movements.”
President Macron chaired a Security Council meeting in Paris on Thursday Photo: Ludovic Marin/AFP
This week the group issued a statement condemning a proposed change to the New Caledonian constitution by the French parliament that would give outsiders who moved to the territory at least 10 years ago the right to vote in elections.
They advocate independence. forces say this will weaken the voices of Kanaks, who make up just 40 percent of the population.
“We stand in solidarity with our Kanak friends and support their just struggle,” the Baku Initiative Group said.
Raphael Glucksmann, a member of the European Parliament who heads the French Socialist list in the June European Parliament elections, said that Azerbaijan had made “attempts to intervene… for several months.”
While tensions over electoral reform were a major factor, he said Azerbaijan, among others, was “seizing on internal problems.”
“Authoritarian regimes such as Russia and Azerbaijan, as well as China, are seizing on the slightest weaknesses in our societies to polarize public debate and sow chaos,” he said.
President Macron has described France as a friendly “balancing power” between China and the US in the Indo-Pacific region. “France offers these Pacific territories true independence,” he said in a speech in Noumea last July.
Clarifying the situation with China, he added: “Look at the countries that were independent, that went and signed huge contracts with great powers that offered huge investments.
“Look how they ended up saddled with debt, losing their land, losing their industrial sovereignty, because these great powers took it away from them. This is the geopolitical reality of the region.”
However, various French experts have said that it is not “foreign interference” that is to blame for the growing violence, but the Macron government’s bumbling handling of the peace process in New Caledonia.
p CNRS researcher Benoit Treppier said: “If the French state shot itself in the foot in New Caledonia, I am not surprised that its political opponents took advantage of it, but it was not its opponents who did the shooting. »
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