By Kirsty Needham and Camille Raynaud
SYDNEY/PARIS (Reuters) – French police reinforcements have begun arriving in New Caledonia as part of a major operation to regain control of the capital Noumea, France’s top official in the Pacific island nation said on Friday.
The number of police officers and gendarmes on the French-ruled island will rise from 1,700 to 2,700 on Friday evening.
After riots that started on Monday and resulted in four deaths and hundreds of arrests, things were relatively calm on Thursday evening, French High Commissioner Louis Le Franc told reporters at a televised news conference.
There were still areas of confrontation and concern in the city of Noumea, he said.
The operations to provide food and medicine to the public will begin with teams including mine clearance specialists and the removal of roadblocks where activists have set booby traps, he said.
“Reinforcements will arrive en masse, immediately (and will be) deployed to control the areas that have escaped our control in recent days … to recapture all the areas of the urban area that we have lost,” he said.
Rioters angry over electoral reform have torched businesses, torched cars, looted shops and set up roadblocks for three days, cutting off access to medicine and food, authorities said.
“Our calls for calm, peace and reconciliation are beginning to be heard. It is important that those who are at the origin of the clashes, of the blockades, hear this,” Le Franc said.
New Caledonia’s government said in a statement on Friday that the island has two months’ worth of food supplies and that the problem is distribution.
France has declared a state of emergency on the island, placed at least ten people under house arrest and banned TikTok.
Three young Kanak were killed in the riots, and a 22-year-old police officer died of a gunshot wound.
French Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin said Thursday that police have arrested the person responsible for shooting two Kanaks; Le Franc said one perpetrator had surrendered and investigations into other killings were continuing.
The riots broke out over a new bill passed by lawmakers in Paris on Tuesday that would allow French residents who have lived in New Caledonia for 10 years to vote in provincial elections. Some local leaders fear the move will dilute the indigenous Kanak vote.
The electoral reform is the latest flashpoint in a decades-long battle over France’s role in the mineral-producing island in the southwestern Pacific Ocean, about 1,500 kilometers east of Australia.
The Pacific Conference of Churches joined regional intergovernmental groups on Friday in calling on France to withdraw the draft constitution and said the United Nations should lead a dialogue mission to New Caledonia.
In a statement, the churches said there had been a breakdown in dialogue between the French government and the Kanak people.
Pacific Elders Voice, a group of former Pacific leaders, said Friday that decisions are being made in Paris without meaningful consultation and that France should listen to “indigenous Kanak voices and Pacific-wide support for self-determination.”
(Reporting by Kirsty Needham in Sydney, Lucy Craymer in Wellington and Camille Raynaud in Paris; Editing by Raju Gopalakrishnan)
