Kanaky-New Caledonia: a year of relentless colonial repression

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On May 13, 2024, the day the National Assembly voted to unfreeze the electoral body for the provincial elections, the Pacific archipelago was ablaze. To a people who rose up to defend their rights and their existence, the French state responded with violence that continues. With political prisoners in France in 2025.

All these deaths and this waste for almost nothing, except for the behavior of the French state, which has only strengthened the determination of a people, and in particular its youth, now not only Kanak, to obtain independence, even at the cost of sacrifice. © MMIIAS / ABC / Andia.fr

Twelve months have passed, but the bitter taste of the immense waste remains. Thirty-six years of patiently negotiated peace and decolonization processes, brought down by three years of a government rediscovering its colonial reflexes , listening only to the radical fringe of the Caledonian right, to the point of appointing its representative, Sonia Backès, as Minister of the Republic. Months of warnings from both the left and the right about a text, the thawing of the electoral body, which touched on the very heart of the Noumea Accord and the original response to the root of the problem: Kanaky-New Caledonia is a settlement colony.

When the popular revolt broke out on May 13, 2024, after months of peaceful protests, it surprised everyone by its violence, determination, and location: the working-class neighborhoods of Greater Nouméa, which today accounts for nearly two-thirds of the archipelago's population. Roadblocks multiplied, and fires often targeted symbolic businesses...

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Published on May 9, 2025