Pacific leaders have expressed mounting frustration over how Paris has handled turmoil in New Caledonia
By Harry Pearl and Stefan Armbruster
Nuku’alofa, Tonga (Benar News)-- French Polynesia’s president has urged France to change its diplomatic approach toward territories in the Pacific amid growing frustration about the way it has handled months of turmoil in New Caledonia.
Moetai Brotherson on Monday said France has “always had a problem with decolonization” in the South Pacific, where it controls the territories of French Polynesia, New Caledonia and Wallis and Futuna.
After a meeting of the sub-regional Polynesian Leaders Group in Tonga, Brotherson said they had been warning France for three years about the potential for unrest, but “they just wouldn't listen.”
The president was speaking on the sidelines of the 53rd Pacific Islands Forum, where decolonization will feature prominently in discussions between the 18-member bloc. French Polynesia and New Caledonia were given full membership status of the inter-governmental organization in 2016 despite being territories.
“They have to change the way they consider territories in the Pacific,” Brotherson said in the Tongan capital Nuku'alofa.
“They have to trust the voices of the Pacific about those issues more than their own diplomacy, because sometimes the feedback they get from their diplomacy is just biased or incorrect.”
France’s handling of pro-independence riots that engulfed the New Caledonian capital of Noumea in May has reinforced regional perceptions that it is an out-of-touch colonial power.
Control of New Caledonia and its surrounding islands gives the European nation a significant security and diplomatic role in the Pacific at a time when the U.S., Australia and other Western countries are pushing back against expanding Chinese influence in the region. New Caledonia also has valuable nickel deposits that are among the world’s largest.
The unrest was triggered by the French government’s backing of electoral reforms that would have diluted the voting power of New Caledonia’s indigenous Kanak people.
Eleven people were killed, dozens were injured and businesses were torched in weeks of riots that also saw the deployment of thousands of French police and special forces.
Tongan Prime Minister Siaosi Sovaleni said in his opening address to the Forum that leaders “must honor the vision of our forefathers regarding self-determination, including in New Caledonia.”
A Forum's fact-finding mission to New Caledonia, which was scheduled for last week, was deferred amid reports of disagreement between the territory’s pro-independence government and France.
French Polynesia was relisted by the U.N. General Assembly in 2013 as a territory that should be decolonized, but France has demanded the territory be removed again.
“We know that France has always had problems with decolonization and the road to self-determination, but we're not necessarily adopting the same strategy as New Caledonia,” said Brotherson, who was elected on a pro-independence platform last year.
“We have, I would say, a common colonizer, but we have different countries with different contexts. So we have to find our own way to self-determination.”
France’s Ambassador to the Pacific Veronique Roger-Lacan has aggressively prosecuted the European power’s case for its territorial rights over New Caledonia, causing consternation among regional leaders.
In July she publicly rebuked New Zealand foreign minister Winston Peters for suggesting the 2021 referendum on New Caledonia’s independence – boycotted by indigenous Kanaks – was “within the letter of the law ... but it was not within the spirit of it.”
When asked about the French diplomat’s efforts, Fijian Prime Minister Sitiveni Rabuka on Saturday said Paris had to make an effort to “understand the Pacific.”
Roger-Lacan, who is attending the meeting in Tonga, told BenarNews “the only diplomatic question there is the PIF mission.”
“French diplomacy is here at the PIFLM53 to reiterate, on behalf of President Macron, France's total and absolute availability for an information mission in New Caledonia in the context of the current crisis, whenever there is a consensus in the PIF on this perspective.
“Otherwise the voices that have to be heard by the Pacific leaders are all the voices mentioned in the Nouméa agreement of 1998, not only the independentists. There is no biased or incorrect feedback in those mere facts.”
Senior Solomon Islands diplomat Collin Beck said leaders would be looking to work out the next steps for a New Caledonia mission this week.
“We’ll hear more from the New Caledonia government and certainly I think we'll hear more from what the secretariat has received from the French government as well,” said Beck, the country’s Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and External Trade.
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