France boosts police and military before New Caledonia vote
By Nic Maclellan
As New Caledonia moves towards a referendum on self-determination on 12 December, France is deploying new police and military forces to the French Pacific dependency. In a show of strength, nearly 2,500 extra security forces – backed by armoured cars, helicopters and other equipment – will spread out across New Caledonia in the next few weeks.
All independence parties had called for the referendum to be postponed until 2022, because of disruption to campaigning during a surge of COVID-19 cases since early September. However on 12 November, France’s High Commissioner Patrice Faure announced that the vote would proceed as scheduled: “New Caledonians who wish to go to the polls on 12 December will be able to do so in peace and calm.”
French officials stress that these new security forces are simply deployed to support the referendum and maintain order, but this build-up will be perceived differently by supporters of independence. Many indigenous Kanak remain wary of the police and military, recalling state violence in the mid-1980s as well as recent clashes with the “forces of order.”
The Parti de Libération Kanak (Palika) condemned the decision to continue with the referendum in December as a “political provocation” and says the decision “undermines any possibility of dialogue on the future of the country, akin to a declaration of war against the Kanak people and the progressive citizens of the country.”
New staff
Over the last six months, the French government has made a series of political and administrative appointments to New Caledonia, which highlight its hardening view of the security situation.
On 19 May, the French Council of Ministers announced Patrice Faure’s appointment as the new French High Commissioner in Noumea. In contrast to many diplomatic predecessors, Faure has a background in the armed forces, intelligence services and policing.
After serving as an instructor at France’s elite Saint Cyr military academy, he was assigned to a command detachment of the 14th parachute regiment. In 2002, he was seconded to France’s overseas intelligence agency, the Direction générale de la Sécurité Extérieure (DGSE), before transferring in 2004 to work as deputy head of the military division of the French Overseas Ministry. After a series of postings in the Overseas Ministry and Interior Ministry, he served in 2006-7 as Director of Police at the Paris police prefecture.
On 1 August, Brigadier General Valery Putz took up the post of commander of the Forces armées en Nouvelle-Calédonie (FANC) – the French armed forces based in New Caledonia. Brigadier General Putz has served as an officer with the French Foreign Legion, based in Guyane and Djibouti and deployed across Africa, Afghanistan and former Yugoslavia. He later held a number of staff posts in the military and defence think tanks. Just before taking up his command in Noumea, Putz worked at the Elysée presidential palace as a military adviser and liaison officer in the private staff of French President Emmanuel Macron.
Another controversial appointment came in July, when Colonel Éric Steiger was named as the new head of the gendarmerie in New Caledonia. However Steiger had been convicted last May of family violence offences and withdrew from the post after public outcry from women’s groups, political leaders and churches in Noumea. His successor is Gendarmerie Colonel Fabrice Spinetti.
Police and military deploy
On 16 October, 250 new gendarmes arrived in New Caledonia, the first unit of a contingent of 1,400 gendarmerie personnel to be deployed before December. These new forces include 100 police specialists and 15 squadrons of mobile gendarmes, amounting to 1,100 officers, supported by a small contingent of military personnel on attachment to the police. Paris will dispatch 130 vehicles, including 30 armoured cars, to support this deployment.
At a press conference on 22 October, Colonel Spinetti said the objective of this build-up was “to maintain a reinforced security deployment around the polling booths, in order to ensure the smooth running of the voting operations and to limit as much as possible and breaches of public order before, during and after the vote.”
New Caledonia’s referendum is largely invisible in the international media. But echoing US paranoia about foreign interference in elections, France will mobilise a specialist cyber-unit “to monitor false information from foreign countries that could destabilise the electoral process.” Dubbed Operation Viginum, the New Caledonia referendum will be used as a trial run for this 70-strong cyber unit, based with the Secrétariat général de la Défense et de la Sécurité nationale (SGDSN) in France. Beyond foreign interference, the police are already monitoring social media for messages attacking political leaders says Police General Christophe Marietti, and “this unit will aim to identify the authors of hate, insulting messages or death threats.”
Military force
To supplement existing military forces deployed in New Caledonia, another 250 soldiers and aircrew will be sent from France, together with two Puma helicopters and a CASA transport aircraft. The landing ship Bougainville will be deployed from Tahiti to support operations (the Noumea-based naval vessel D’Entrecasteaux is out of action after a fire).
Brigadier General Putz said that the military forces will deploy around the referendum to “support the internal security forces and allow them to fulfill their public order mission, while continuing to maintain the FANC missions of support to the population and guaranteeing France’s sovereignty.”
For the independence movement, the deployment of so-called “forces of sovereignty” is directed to an international as well as local audience. New Caledonia serves as a pivot for France’s Indo-Pacific policy and the “India-Australia-France axis” announced by President Macron in May 2018. However the recent announcement of the AUKUS partnership between Australia, the United Kingdom and United States has upended this policy.
Pierre-Chanel Tutugoro, Secretary General of Union Calédonienne, told Islands Business that Canberra’s abrupt axing of a $90 billion submarine contract with France has disrupted the strategic partnership with Australia.
“In my opinion, all this reflects the desire to show off French power,” he said. “Maybe they need this show to indicate that France is not small, but a great power in the Indo-Pacific. Maybe they’re sending a message to Australia and New Zealand, that even if you don’t want to buy our submarines, we still have a role and the Indo-Pacific axis promoted by President Macron will be maintained.”
Kanak memories of violence
As the FLNKS launched an active boycott of 1984 elections, there were widespread clashes between independence activists, armed settlers and French police. During this troubled era, known as Les évènements (the troubles), France deployed elite tactical units like the Groupe d’intervention de la Gendarmerie nationale (GIGN). Police sharpshooters from the GIGN shot and killed Kanak independence leader Eloi Machoro in 1985.
After the election of French Prime Minister Jacques Chirac in 1986, his new government deployed troops and police to every island and most villages, in a program dubbed ‘nomadisation.’ Chirac’s provocative policy led to clashes during an FLNKS boycott of the 1987 referendum on a new political status. The use of commandos and elite police during the Ouvea hostage crisis of May 1988 left two soldiers and 19 independence activists dead.
“This is what we went through in 1986 and 1987, the period known as nomadisation where the military and gendarmes mobile were deployed with numbers never seen before,” he said. “It seems we’re about to live through a similar period – we’ve never seen so many military and police in the country. The French High Commissioner told me that they were being deployed for general security, to stop thefts or road accidents and to support the referendum. But they’ve been told to be visible rather than remain in their barracks.”
There is little love lost between the police and many young Kanak, who face petty harassment and racism from French officers. In turn, many conservative New Caledonians are fearful and angry about vandalism, stone throwing and theft by unemployed, disenchanted youth, and urge stronger “law and order” campaigns by the police. In 2018, Right-wing parties like Les Républicains calédoniens used the referendum campaign to promote a law and order agenda, chastising “Kanak delinquency” and calling on the French High Commission to launch a police crackdown. Despite this, provincial and national authorities were reluctant to use heavy handed tactics just days before the referendum.
The scale of the current deployment is larger than for previous referendums held in November 2018 and October 2020. However this year, the official position of the FLNKS is to call for “non-participation” in the referendum, rather than an “active boycott” that could lead to disruption at town hall polling booths. FLNKS spokesperson Daniel Goa has called on all Yes voters to stay at home on 12 December, and “to stay away from the polling booths to avoid any confrontation with people turning out to vote.”
For Goa, the non-participation of many Kanak and other supporters of independence “will obviously result in an overwhelming victory for the No, in a proportion that will totally discredit the popular consultation.”
Even with the recent COVID state of emergency, France has decided to ignore repeated calls to delay the vote until after the 2022 elections. Last month, Overseas Minister Sebastien Lecornu stated that “police and gendarmes will be mobilised for the safety of those who turn out to vote”, adding ominously that these deployments “will guarantee public order the day after the vote, in case a few radicalised minorities decide to break the law.”
Such rhetoric about “radicalised minorities” suggests that peaceful Kanak have been stirred up by a few radical agitators. This fiction is belied by the unexpected, massive turnout for a Yes vote in 2018 and the increased independence vote in 2020. But the threat of a police crackdown is real: in recent years, there have been violent clashes between police riot squads and land rights activists at Kouaoua, unionists and customary landowners campaigning around the Goro nickel smelter, as well as Kanak youth from disadvantaged communities such as Saint Louis. Beyond December, New Caledonia faces troubled times ahead.
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