PARIS/SYDNEY: Seven more portable force units will soon appear as reinforcements in New Caledonia, the Elysee said in a statement on Monday, even indicating a state of emergency would stop as planned in the French Pacific territory on Tuesday morning native time.
The state of disaster would close on Monday night at 8:00 p. m. in Paris ( Tuesday 5:00 a. m. in Noumea ).
Seven people have been killed, hundreds arrested and large numbers of buildings and cars destroyed in a month of trauma triggered by a disputed electoral reform and fuelled by strong economic disparities between the aboriginal Kanak people and people of Western history.
Officers shot dead a gentleman on Friday night, a moment after French President Emmanuel Macron visited to try to relax conflicts.
The introduction of an extra 480 gendarmes may provide the number of European security forces in the Pacific place to some 3,500.
Macron’s determination not to maintain the state of emergency illustrates Paris’s desire to start the process of de-escalation and re-establish problems for dialogue, the statement added.
The primary pro-independence social coalition, FLNKS ( Kanak and Socialist National Liberation Front ) issued a statement on Saturday saying the focus was easing conflicts and the only viable option was a “political and non-repressive answer”.
Lifting the state of emergency was intended to allow FLNKS to meet, the French statement said.
Macron “recalls that the lifting of the roadblocks is the necessary condition for the opening of concrete and serious negotiations”, it added.
Christian Tein of the Field Action Coordination Cell (CCAT ), which organised the roadblocks that are impeding movement and supply of food and medicine across the island, said on Friday it “remain mobilised, we maintain the resistance in our neighbourhoods, in a structured, organised way”.
No announcement was made on a night curfew imposed by local authorities in New Caledonia.
The operator of Noumea international airport has announced it will remain closed until June 2.
