(Reuters) – Gendarmerie forces have begun to clear the road linking the Caledonian capital Nouméa to La Tontouta international airport by breaking through the roadblocks set up by the rioters, the High Commissioner of the Republic said on Sunday in Nouvelle -Caledonia, Louis Le Franc.
The operation is not finished and a lot of waste still needs to be cleared before traffic between Nouméa and the airport – closed – can resume, which will require several days of work, he said.
“(This) massive global operation which lasted all day made it possible to regain (…) control of this important axis to allow logistical resupply which was no longer possible,” declared Louis Le Franc during a press briefing.
“About sixty very important dams have been dismantled and which we are going to hold to prevent them from being reconstituted overnight or tomorrow to keep control of this route,” he added.
Around 600 gendarmes, including around a hundred members of the GIGN, were mobilized.
The High Commissioner of the Republic in New Caledonia also indicated that, to deal with an initial lack of food linked to the violence, he had to organize logistical resupply convoys of food products and medicines.
Emmanuel Macron will chair a new defense and national security council on Monday at 6:30 p.m. on monitoring the situation on site, the Elysée announced on Sunday.
For almost a week, the French Pacific archipelago has been plagued by unrest linked to a constitutional reform project – contested by Kanak separatists – aimed at extending the body to people residing for ten years in the archipelago. electoral, which has remained frozen since the Nouméa agreement of 1998.
The violence, which has left six dead so far, has included burning of businesses and cars, looting of stores and roadblocks that disrupt the transport of medicine and food.
“The situation that New Caledonia is going through is an unprecedented situation and something serious. But, with the forces that I now have, we will be able to re-establish republican order throughout the Nouméa metropolitan area and we will do it in the coming days,” Louis Le Franc said on Sunday.
The High Commission of the Republic in New Caledonia had previously reported in a press release that the night was “calmer, in particular thanks to the implementation of measures relating to the state of emergency decreed by the President of the Republic and the significant arrival of reinforcements on the territory.
The night was, however, marked by two fires and looting, with a total of 230 rioters arrested.
Dominique Fochi, secretary general of the Caledonian Union, the territory’s main independence movement, called for calm but said the government must suspend constitutional change.
“We need strong gestures to calm the situation, the government must stop adding fuel to the fire,” he told Reuters.
The reform project, adopted by the National Assembly on the night of Tuesday to Wednesday, must now be submitted for approval to parliamentarians during a Congress that Emmanuel Macron has undertaken to convene at the end of the month of June in the absence of a broader political agreement between New Caledonian representatives.
(Reporting Benjamin Mallet, Camille Raynaud and Layli Foroudi)
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