On election day the sale of alcohol was prohibited, as well as the sale of retail fuel, and the transport of ammunition and arms – such as guns traditionally used for hunting and machetes for chopping wood and coconuts – was also forbidden. In 2018, 43% voted for independence, and in 2020 this rose to 47%, and the participation rate was more than 85%.įears were raised of violence after the latest vote, and over the past month 2,000 French military officers had arrived in New Caledonia, along with armoured vehicles and military equipment. It was the third referendum on whether New Caledonia should become independent from France. This referendum does not resolve anything: we the indigenous people will have to be there and united for what’s next and the negotiations to come, we’ll never give up the idea of independence.” “I hope everybody will respect the non-violence call, because we don’t want to give the French militaries the opportunity to demonstrate their power of repression. “Here in my village everyone respects the boycott and we are more preoccupied by the cyclone coming on Monday than by the vote,” said Adolphe Wamytan, a Saint-Louis resident. Many of the people of Saint-Louis, a predominantly Kanak village, agreed. Photograph: Dominique Catton/The Guardian “I will not vote, in sign of solidarity with all the Kanak community and because the indigenous people have a right to independence.”įrench police patrol the Baie de l’Orphelinat, in the south of Nouméa, New Caledonia. “I did not go to vote and I will not today,” said Bernard Christian, 40, a Kanak inhabitant of Mont-Dore, a town close to Nouméa. Queues outside polling booths were by contrast long in the predominantly white and wealthy southern districts of Nouméa after polling opened at 7am on Sunday. The Kanak people are very united, in the north, in the south, in the islands. We did not vote because we are in mourning. “The Kanak people were asked not to vote, and the slogan was followed. “It’s very simple,” said Roland Berlo, 58, at the polling station. At a polling station in the territory’s capital, Nouméa, for relocated Belep Islanders to vote, just six out of a registered 200 people did so. In the Belep Islands, where the population is entirely Kanak, no one went to vote.
Participation figures clearly indicate that the call to boycott was heeded, and they were particularly low in independence-supporting indigenous areas, where security forces maintained checkpoints at many polling stations and queues were sparse. The pro-independence Kanak and Socialist Liberation Front (FLNKS) had called for indigenous Kanaks not to participate in the vote, arguing that Covid – which has disproportionately affected Kanak and Pasifika communities – had made pro-independence campaigning impossible, as entire villages observe customary mourning rites.
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Free from the binary choice of yes or no, we must now build a common project, while recognising and respecting the dignity of everyone,” he said.
The French president, Emmanuel Macron, said after the result that the territory would remain French and hailed it as a resounding confirmation of France’s role in the Indo-Pacific, but announced negotiations on the territory’s future status. In the third referendum on the matter, the decision to stay within the French republic was carried by 96.49% to 3.51%, but a turnout of just over 40% suggested the indigenous Kanak people have not given up on dreams of independence.
Residents of the Pacific territory of New Caledonia have voted overwhelmingly to remain part of France in a referendum boycotted by pro-independence groups.