Author Angelina Hurley was caught up in the Kanak protests in New Caledonia, sparked by a controversial voting "reform" imposed from Paris. Image: NITV montage
“In the aftermath of the ‘No’ denying an Indigenous Voice to Parliament in Australia, I deeply sympathise with the Kanak people’s frustration, fear, and anger at being outvoted and dismissed,” writes Angelina Hurley.
COMMENTARY: By Angelina Hurley
After the trauma of completing a PhD on decolonising Australian humour, I needed a well-deserved break.
I always avoid places with throngs of patriotic Aussies, so I chose Nouméa, in New Caledonia, over Bali, settling on a small outer island.
One night, a smoke alarm jolted me awake. I went to the balcony and smelled smoke, seeing fires and smoke clouds from the mainland. The next morning, I learned from the only English-speaking news channel that riots had erupted there.
Author Angelina Hurley was caught up in the Kanak protests in New Caledonia, sparked by a controversial voting “reform” imposed from Paris. Image: NITV montage
Protests against French control of New Caledonia have resulted in seven dead — five Kanaks, and two police officers (one by accodent) — and a state of emergency
I woke to a fleet of sailboats, houseboats, and catamarans anchoring near the island, ready to offer a quick escape for the rich (funny how the privileged are always the first to leave before things are handed back to them on return).
Travelling from hotel to hotel, I reached a quiet and desolate Nouméa in the late afternoon. Finding transport was difficult, but a kind French taxi driver picked me up, and we bypassed barricaded streets.
At the hotel, an atmosphere of anxiety and confusion lingered among tourists and staff, although I felt safe.
The staff worked tirelessly, maintaining normalcy while locals lined up for food outside supermarkets. With reports of deaths, I constantly scanned the internet for news from both French and Kanak perspectives. As days passed, the Aussie tourist twang grew louder and more restless.
Amusing, strange, disappointing: the reactions of the privileged The airport closed, and flights were cancelled indefinitely, fuelling frustration among Australians (and New Zealanders) who couldn’t access the consulate.
Australian government representatives eventually arrived to update us on the situation, leading to a surge of complaints.
Despite concerns about being stuck, I didn’t feel significantly inconvenienced beyond travel delays and added expenses. We were being well taken care of.
Not everyone agreed. Some found the answers insufficient.
The reactions of the privileged are amusing, strange, and disappointing: while anxiety about the unknown is understandable, some people need to get a grip.
Complaints poured in about the lack of access to information from Australia, despite the State of Emergency. There were debates and demands for updates via text (sorry, Gill Scott Heron, this revolution will be broadcast on WhatsApp).
It was amusing to hear people discussing social media information sharing while claiming lack of access, despite the readily available internet, English news on TV, and information from hotel staff.
As I listened, I humorously observed the gradual rise of White Aussie Privilege.
Their perception of disadvantage was very different to mine: an elderly migaloo woman requested daily personal phone updates to her room, while boomers threw tantrums over not being called on quickly enough.
There’s always the outspoken sheila, interrupting whenever she feels like it, and the experts proclaiming knowledge exceeding that of all the officials.
A rude collective sigh followed a man’s inquiry about the wellbeing of those handling the crisis outside, with someone retorting, ‘It’s their bloody job.’
The highlight was GI Joe informing the French, as if they didn’t know, of the presence of a helicopter pad attached to the hotel, angrily suggesting Chinook helicopters from Townsville should evacuate everyone.
What?! I burst out laughing, but no one seemed to find it as hilarious as I did.
The irony eluded him: the helicopters, named after the Chinook people, a Native American tribe Indigenous to the Pacific Northwest USA, would have First Nations saviours flying in to rescue the Straylians.
Despite the severity of the emergency situation, white travellers still found cause to complain about a lack of WhatsApp updates. Image: NITV
Despite the severity of the emergency situation, white travellers still found cause to complain about a lack of WhatsApp updates.
The Australian consulate rep patiently reminded everyone of the serious State of Emergency, with lives lost and the focus on safety and unblocking roads, making our evacuation less of a priority for the French at that time.
When crises hit, White people often react uncomfortably towards the only Black person in the room (which I was, besides an African couple).
They either look at you suspiciously, avoid eye contact, ignore you, or become overly ally-friendly.
The White Aussie Privilege resembled narcissistic behaviour — the selfishness, lack of empathy, and entitlement was gross.
The First Nations struggle around the world
Sitting safely in the hotel, the juxtaposition as an Indigenous person felt bizarre.
This isn’t my first such travel experience; I’ve been the bystander before in North America, Mexico, Belize, South America, South Africa, and India.
As a First Nations traveller, I’m always aware of the First Nations situation wherever I go.
Recently, the French National Assembly adopted a bill expanding voting rights for newer residents of Kanaky (New Caledonia), primarily French nationals.
It’s a move likely to further disenfranchise the Kanak people, impacting local political representation and future decolonisation discussions.
At least at home, we have representation in the government.
There are currently no representatives from Kanaky New Caledonia sitting in the French National Assembly.
No consultation with the First Nations people took place (sounds familiar).
In 1998, the Nouméa Accord was established between French authorities and the local government to transition towards greater independence and self-governance while respecting Kanak indigenous rights.
Since 2018, three referendums on independence have been held, with the latest in 2021 boycotted by Indigenous voters due to the covid-19 pandemic’s impact on Kanaks.
With the Accord now lapsed, there is no clear process for continuing the decolonisation efforts.
As stated by Amnesty International (Schuetze, 2024), “The response must be understood through the lens of a stalled decolonisation process, racial inequality, and the longstanding, peacefully expressed demands of the Indigenous Kanak people for self-determination.”
An all-too familiar story
Relaying the story back to mob in Australia, conversations often turn to the behaviour of the colonisers.
We compare our predominantly passive and conciliatory approach as Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, offering the hand of reconciliation only to be slapped away.
Despite not promoting violence, we note the irony of colonisers condoning violence as retaliation, considering it was their primary tactic during invasion.
As my cousin aptly put it, “French hypocrisy. So much for a nation that modelled itself on a revolution against an oppressive monarchy, now undermining local democracy and self-determination for First Nations people.”
After the overwhelming “No” vote denying an Indigenous Voice to Parliament in Australia, following decades of tireless campaigning by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples, I deeply sympathise with the Kanak people’s frustration, fear, and anger at being outvoted and dismissed.
In French Polynesia, there are both movements for and against decolonisation.
As I sit amid this beautiful place, observing locals on the beaches and tourists enjoying their luxuries, I know things will return to the settler norm of control — and First Nations people are told they should be grateful.
Dr Angelina Hurley is a Gooreng Gooreng, Mununjali, Birriah, and Gamilaraay writer from Meanjin Brisbane, a Fulbright Scholar and recent PhD graduate from Griffith University’s Film School. This article was first published by NITV (National Indigenous Television).
The International Court of Justice has ordered Israel to halt its military offensive in Rafah. The court ruled on Friday that Israel must immediately cease its military actions and other operations in the area, citing the immediate risk to the Palestinian people.
South Africa sought additional measures from the court following Israel’s ground defensive into Rafah. Following a case brought by South Africa accusing Israel of genocide, the court issued provisional measures in January, which stopped short of ordering a ceasefire.
For more, Democracy Now! presenter Amy Goodman is joined by two people. In their New York studio is Hossam Bahgat, Egyptian human rights activist, founder and executive director of the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights (EIPR) in Cairo. And the programme is joined by Reed Brody, human rights attorney, war crimes prosecutor, author of To Catch a Dictator.
Democracy Now! Headline news on 24 May 2024. Video: DN
AMY GOODMAN:Reed, we’re going to begin with you. Can you talk about the significance of the International Court of Justice’s ruling today [24 May 2024]?
REED BRODY: Well, this is just huge. You know, the International Court of Justice, South Africa has been asking the court to order Israel to halt its military activities since the first attempt in January.
And the court has never wanted to do that, because Hamas is not before the court. You don’t want to order one side to do something. And the situation has gotten so bad, and particularly in Rafah, that the court has risen to the occasion, and the court has given very, very specific orders this time.
In the past, the court said, “Don’t do anything that’s going to violate the Genocide Convention. You know, don’t — preserve everybody’s rights.” And here, this time, they have said very clearly that Israel must immediately halt its military offensive in the Rafah governorate. Very clear.
It also said, “You must open the Rafah crossing. You must allow in international fact-finding missions approved by official bodies.” So these are very clear orders. The court really has stepped up to the plate here.
And, you know, these are almost unanimous rulings — 13 to 2 — including all the West . . . including the US judge, Sarah Cleveland, including all of the Western judges.
And this is going to be very difficult for Israel, and particularly for Israel’s allies, who are — you know, Israel has not been impressed so far by what the ICJ has ordered them to do, but it’s increasingly going to isolate Israel, particularly this one-two punch we have.
AMY GOODMAN: But what kind of enforcement does the International Court of Justice have?
REED BRODY: Well, these are binding orders, and the court made it very clear. They didn’t need to, because it’s in the statute, but the court made it clear that these are binding legal orders. Israel is under an international binding legal obligation to halt its military offensive in the Rafah governorate.
Now, the only enforcement mechanism available in the entire international community is the Security Council. And, of course, we know that the United States has a veto at the Security Council. But that veto is going to be hard.
That’s going to — there’s going to be a huge political cost to the United States to exercise this veto. I mean, all of this, this entire situation, is exacting a huge political cost to Israel and to the United States as they become increasingly, increasingly isolated, as they try to seek countries to stand up to Russian aggression in Ukraine and Russian crimes in Ukraine, to be defending Israel.
And particularly, more and more — I mean, we saw this week, of course, three European countries recognise — say that they were going to recognise Palestine. The US is becoming increasingly isolated here.
AMY GOODMAN: Hossam Bahgat, you are a leading human rights advocate in Egypt, just released after an eight-year travel ban there. You’re sitting with me here in New York. You watched the court decision. What most struck you?
HOSSAM BAHGAT: I am struck, of course, by the majority, including judges that we know have been on the fence. This is 13 out of 15, really. And . . .
AMY GOODMAN: Israel and Uganda ruling against.
HOSSAM BAHGAT: Yes. But also, as Reed just said, the specificity this time. I mean, these are not open for interpretation. I mean, we have basically the court, in its reasoning, saying the situation has changed since January, the situation has changed since the last measures in March, in the last two months, that everything the court said it had feared has actually come to be materialised right now, that there is a risk of irreparable harm to Palestinians and that the situation is urgent, and that the previous provisional measures need to be modified.
So, they basically considered, I mean, on all of these . . . I mean, endorsed all of these arguments put forward by South Africa.
But then, when we see the modifications, the new provisional measures, it is — again, it is not just — we have to look carefully at the wording. It is not just for Israel to immediately halt its Rafah military offensive, but its military offensive and any other action that could contribute to the genocide, the destruction of Palestinians, or to situation of life that could lead to the destruction of life in Palestinians.
That is key. And it is important not just for Israel, but also for the United States, because we have seen this dance that the Biden administration and the National Security Council keep giving us for the last couple of weeks, which is that Biden’s red line has not been crossed, because it’s not a comprehensive offensive in Rafah, right?
The court is saying that it doesn’t need to reach the level of a military offensive. Any other action in the Rafah area, including the evacuations, including the bombing of shelters, including the nonexistent, you know, protected or safe areas, but including also the denial of aid and access to the area, all of this would constitute a violation of the Genocide Convention, to which both Israel and the United States are parties.
And this is the ICJ, so they cannot say, “We don’t recognise this court,” or that, you know, it’s one-sided, or that, you know, it’s the moral equivalency and all of this. This is a court that not only has a US judge, but that had the full participation of the Israeli government in all its proceedings.
And when it comes to the aid question, it is just as specific. It is not to, you know, allow or even increase humanitarian aid. It is for Israel to take effective measures to maintain the crossings open, specifically the Rafah crossing. And the wording here is “unimpeded, at-scale” provision of humanitarian aid.
So, Israel cannot just, you know, allow in the 100 trucks a day and say, you know, “We’re letting it in.” It has to be unimpeded, and it has to be at scale, for us to reverse the famine that has already started in parts of Gaza and now risks the entirety of Gaza.
And on the entirety of Gaza — this is the third important point — is that the court reaffirmed all its previous provisional measures that apply to all of Gaza, not just to the Rafah.
So, while these new measures are specifically linked to the military offensive or any other action on the ground in Gaza and the Rafah crossing, the previous ones, that have just been reaffirmed, again, by a majority of the court, including the US judge and all of the Western judges, apply to the entirety of Gaza and are binding to Israel, as well as any other governments that have been and continue to be in complicity, like the United States and Germany. So, this is really important.
And what I expect in terms of enforcement, I expect, you know, a group of countries to immediately call an emergency session of the Security Council, without waiting for the report in one month by Israel on its measures of implementation, to really call on Israel to immediately implement those new measures.
And many of them are actually in line with what the U.S. government is publicly saying. So, let’s see what the US government does this time, because I think this veto is going to be more costly than any of the previous ones for the United States. This is not one that the United States is going to easily exercise its veto power over.
AMY GOODMAN: Hossam, talk about Egypt. You’ve just come from Egypt. What should Egypt be doing at this point, from your perspective as a leading human rights advocate there?
HOSSAM BAHGAT: This is the moment for Egypt to change course. They have to seize this moment, because the new provisional measures, you know, whether or not the Egyptian government wanted it, they just made Egypt a party to the case. The measures are about keeping the Rafah crossing open, are about unimpeded and at-scale provision of humanitarian aid.
These are measures that can only be implemented if the Egyptian government does not give Israel an exit, does not give Israel the appearance of, really, you know, partial opening of Rafah or, you know, the trickling of aid into Gaza, as we have seen in the last seven months.
For the first seven months of the war, we have been calling on Egypt to not accept those terms imposed by Israel on, you know, people coming out of Gaza or into Gaza, on allowing journalists and investigators into Gaza, or accepting the so-called inspection mechanism that the US and Israel have created in order — that have led to this manmade famine in Gaza.
Only recently, when Netanyahu and his Cabinet ordered the operation into Rafah, crossing Egypt’s so-called red line, did Egypt announce that it was going to stop its coordination with Israel on the access of military aid, therefore giving the responsibility — putting the responsibility entirely on the shoulders of the Israeli government when it comes to the humanitarian situation.
Egypt needs to stand by this position and really act as if it is party to this case, and work with South Africa, with a group of countries, a coalition of countries, to the Security Council, to make sure that these measures are implemented immediately.
The halt is not just on a military offensive, but any actions on Rafah that could contribute to this partial or full destruction of Palestinian lives in Rafah, but also all the previously announced provisional measures.
Egypt must immediately announce that it will allow investigators, fact-finding missions, commissions of inquiries from all UN organs, including the ICC, to cross into Gaza, in implementation of today’s provisional measures.
And then it is on the Israeli army whether or not to let them — to allow them access, to turn them back, to impede their access. Egypt must fulfill its part of these provisional measures, because they can only be fulfilled with Egypt’s cooperation for geographical reasons.
AMY GOODMAN: I’m just looking at Reuters. And, you know, this is all breaking news as we’re doing this interview. Israel’s Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said that those who demand Israel stop the war are demanding it should decide to cease to exist, and Israel will not agree to that.
An Israeli government spokesperson said, on the eve of Friday’s decision, that no power on Earth will stop Israel from protecting its citizens and going after Hamas in Gaza. Your response, Hossam?
HOSSAM BAHGAT: Well, the court has spoken unanimously This is the world’s top court. If these measures, if the military offensive or any other action in Gaza, if the policy of impeding humanitarian aid — if they continue, they would plausibly constitute a violation of the Genocide Convention. That is the international crime of genocide.
This is now the legal reality. It will certainly affect the ongoing ICC investigation, which has so far fell short of charging the crime of genocide when it comes to both Israel and Hamas. It is now up to not just the Israeli government, but also all its Western backers, to really show on which side they are going to stand, but also carry the legal responsibility that will come with aiding and abetting the crime of genocide, which the court reaffirmed today was plausibly being committed in Palestine.
AMY GOODMAN: I should also quote the Israeli Cabinet minister Itamar Ben-Gvir. In the past, of course, he himself was convicted of aiding a terrorist group and of inciting anti-Palestinian hatred.
He said, “The order of the antisemitic court in The Hague should have only one answer — the occupation of Rafah, the increase of military pressure and the crushing of Hamas, until the complete victory in the war is achieved.”
Your response to not a fringe government official in Israel, but a member of the Cabinet and the war cabinet, a key to Prime Minister Netanyahu remaining prime minister?
HOSSAM BAHGAT: OK, two points here. Of course, the continuing and revolting weaponisation of the charge of antisemitism when it comes to describing — again, this is not the ICC. This is the world’s top court, part of the UN, the highest legal body of the United Nations, with judges nominated by their governments, from the United States, from Germany. All the Western judges joined today’s decision and today’s provisional measures.
And secondly, I refuse — I’ve been hearing this, especially on this trip, all the time. This is not a Netanyahu problem. This is not a Smotrich and Ben-Gvir problem. There is just, you know, this — I mean, they are the ones that maybe these two ministers, you know, call it like it is and, like, say the quiet part loudly.
But we have to look also at the Israeli political landscape, all the political parties that are currently represented in the Knesset, and, you know, see, like, how many of them are opposed to the current conduct of the war, how many of these parties are officially, you know, endorsing the two-state solution.
It takes one look to see that, you know, if the Netanyahu government falls, if these two ministers quit and this coalition is changed, who do you think is going to form the new Israeli government? And what are going to be their views?
And apart from this, I mean, we can just look at the Israeli public opinion, you know, the polls conducted by reputable Israeli pollsters and public opinion survey organisations, to show that also Israeli public opinion is opposed currently to a ceasefire. So, yes, of course, we need to point the crazies, but only because they say the quiet part loudly, but this is a problem that goes far beyond them.
AMY GOODMAN: Hossam Bahgat, if you can talk about the fact-finding mission they have demanded be allowed into Rafah right now? Who exactly are they talking about? International reporters are banned from Gaza by the Israeli government.
HOSSAM BAHGAT: The language the court used is quite broad. They said any commission of inquiry, any fact-finding mission, any investigation commissions that are mandated by any UN organs must be allowed in for the specific purpose of the preservation of evidence, so that the court or any other investigation in the future can establish on the merits whether the crime of genocide or other grave violations of international humanitarian law have been committed.
There is, of course, an International Commission on Human Rights in the Occupied Palestinian Territories that was formed by the Human Rights Council and is led by, you know, the South African judge, Navi Pillay, who is the former high commissioner for human rights.
And, of course, the Israeli government has refused to collaborate with that international commission. There is, of course, the UN special rapporteur on human rights and the entire system of UN human rights rapporteurs. But then, most importantly, there are the teams of the ICC Office of the Prosecutor, who have visited Israel but have not yet, to our knowledge, visited Gaza or been allowed access to Gaza.
The ICC prosecutor, Karim Khan, early in the war, visited the Rafah area, held a press conference there, and, again, did not go in, was not allowed in. For his investigation to continue and to succeed, his team needs to be on the ground and needs to be not just collecting evidence, but making sure the evidence is preserved.
And now he has the ICJ court order today to guarantee this right, and it is binding to the state of Israel.
And again, it is an opportunity for Egypt to seize this moment and announce that, you know, on the Egyptian side, the border is open, Rafah is open, the international investigative teams are welcome to come in and go into Gaza.
AMY GOODMAN: Could Egypt open up other crossings into Gaza?
HOSSAM BAHGAT: Rafah is the only crossing that Egypt has with Gaza. I mean, the Kerem Shalom crossing is with the state of Israel and under Israeli control.
AMY GOODMAN: We just saw another report. This is from Middle East Eye, and it says, “Egyptian army turns to Sinai tribes to prepare for influx of Palestinians from Rafah.” Do you know anything about this?
HOSSAM BAHGAT: This is, of course, a very worrying development. This is a new body composed of Sinai tribes that had in the past cooperated with the Egyptian Army in its operation against the ISIS in Sinai. And, of course, they were engaged in some documented acts of extrajudicial killings, but also the conscription of children in armed conflict.
The problem is, these are the same people that have been also behind the, again, very widely documented and reported now, war profiteering. These are, you know, the people running the front companies that are charging exorbitant amounts of, you know, thousands of dollars from each Palestinian member of a Palestinian family in order to be allowed access to Egypt.
And now these are the people that, you know, have been — have received sort of the official endorsement to form something called the Union of Arab Tribes. And, of course, everyone is concerned about the risk of creating this type of, you know, militia-like body in Sinai.
And we have seen, of course, what that led to in other countries and in different situations. And many political parties and political activists and civil society voices have spoken out and to raise serious concern about, like, any endorsement, official endorsement, or acceptance of such a militia-like presence in Egypt.
AMY GOODMAN:Reed Brody, the war crimes prosecutor, talked about the one-two punch this week. It started with the International Criminal Court chief prosecutor Karim Khan announcing that he’s pursuing arrest warrants for the Israeli prime minister, the defence minister, as well as three Hamas leaders.
And again, just to be clear who Karim Khan is, he was Israel’s choice in 2021 to be the chief war crimes prosecutor.
HOSSAM BAHGAT: Officially, of course, Israel does not accept the jurisdiction of this court. But, of course, there were serious concerns raised at the time about, you know, where the new prosecutor, or, back then, the candidate, Karim Khan, would stand on two very sensitive investigations that were active situations before the court.
One is Afghanistan, and the other was Palestine.
It’s important to know that when it comes to the ICC, the mandate it has, the investigation that is open right now is not just linked to Gaza and was not just opened after October 7. The court accepted Palestine as a member state and accepted to look into the Palestine-Israel situation for the period starting from 2014, from Operation Cast Lead, you know, including the violence related to the Right of Return marches.
And then, of course, that, you know, included — was expanded to include the actions after October 7.
So, yes, of course. I mean, the timing is very important to have these two processes yield these concrete results, although, of course, the ICC arrest warrants only remain a request, an application right now, that has to be accepted by the pretrial chamber. But it’s important to note that the ICC investigation has been open for years.
AMY GOODMAN:And then you have Antony Blinken, the Biden administration — of course, Blinken, secretary of state — suggesting he’s working with lawmakers in the US on potential sanctions against Karim Khan and the International Criminal Court for saying they’re bringing these charges against Netanyahu.
HOSSAM BAHGAT: Yes, and Lindsey Graham telling the Senate, you know, “If we allow these arrest warrants, we are next.” And, you know, again, this is the quiet part being said out loud. And it’s really a sad moment, but also a revealing moment, when you have people in this administration, the Blinken State Department, which has an ambassador at large for global criminal justice, whose only job is to promote global accountability and, you know, the ICC and the kind of protections and investigations from these mass atrocities.
You know, I mean, that we see this public and blatant disregard for international norms, and even an openness, a willingness to work on punishing ICC judges — and, you know, as some members of Congress said, and their families — for really doing their jobs, is just a sad moment for this country.
AMY GOODMAN: So, Hossam, as we wrap up this interview, once again, the significance of the court’s ruling, the International Court of Justice, and what you expect to see in the coming weeks?
HOSSAM BAHGAT: First of all, we expect like every country in the world to come out forcefully to endorse these new provisional measures and emphasise that they are legally binding, effective immediately. And that should include, you know, the governments of Germany and the United States, because that is what the court laid down clearly today.
I expect a group of countries to move to urgently convene the Security Council to, you know, discuss and debate these new provisional measures. You know, that may or may not include a new draft resolution, given, of course, the chances of the United States yielding its veto again.
But what is important to watch right now is also what Egypt is going to do in terms of its part of these provisional measures, specifically related to allowing the unimpeded access of United Nations investigators and fact-finders for the preservation of evidence and the unhindered, at-scale provision of humanitarian aid through an open Rafah crossing.
These are the signs, really, to watch on the ground. But again, the emphasis should be that the court did not only say immediately halt the Rafah military offensive, but also any other action in Rafah that could lead to the worsening conditions and the destruction of the Palestinian lives in Gaza, in part or in full.
AMY GOODMAN: Hossam Bahgat, we want to thank you so much for being with us, founder, executive director of the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights (EIPR), based in Cairo. And I want to thank Reed Brody, at the top of this discussion, human rights attorney, war crimes prosecutor, author of To Catch a Dictator.
This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org. I’m Amy Goodman. Thanks so much for joining us.
A young Kanak boy carries the flag of independence as his elders carry the body of Jybril who was shot dead last week . . . he was bound for a sea voyage home to Nengone in the Loyalty Islands. Image: @LDinclaux screenshot APR
OPEN LETTER: By a Kanak from Aotearoa New Zealand in Kanaky New Caledonia
I’ve been trying to feel cool and nice on this beautiful sunny day in Kanaky. But it has already been spoiled by President Emmanuel Macron’s flashy day-long visit on Thursday.
Currently special French military forces are trying to take full control of the territory. Very ambitously.
They’re clearing all the existing barricades around the capital Nouméa, both the northern and southern highways, and towards the northern province.
Today, May 25, after 171 years of French occupation, we are seeing the “Lebanonisation” of our country which, after only 10 days of revolt, saw many young Kanaks killed by bullets. Example: 15 bodies reportedly found in the sea, including four girls.
[Editor: There have been persistent unconfirmed rumours of a higher death rate than has been reported, but the official death toll is currently seven — four of them Kanak, including a 17-year-old girl, and two gendarmes, one by accident. Lebanonisation is a negative political term referring to how a prosperous, developed, and politically stable country descends into a civil war or becomes a failed state — as happened with Lebanon during the 1975-1990 Lebanese Civil War.]
One of the bodies was even dragged by a car. Several were caught, beaten, burned, and tortured by the police, the BAC and the militia, one of whose leaders was none other than a loyalist elected official.
With the destruction and looting of many businesses, supermarkets, ATMs, neighbourhood grocery stores, bakeries . . . we see that the CCAT has been infiltrated by a criminal organisation which chooses very specific economic targets to burn.
Leaders trying to discredit our youth
At the same time, the leaders organise the looting, supply alcohol and drugs (amphetamines) in order to “criminalise” and discredit our youth.
A dividing line has been created between the northern and southern districts of Greater Nouméa in order to starve our populations. As a result, we have a rise in prices by the colonial counters in these dormitory towns where an impoverished Kanak population lives.
President Macron came with a dialogue mission team made up of ministers from the “young leaders” group, whose representative in the management of high risks in the Pacific is none other than a former CIA officer.
The presence of DGSE agents [the secret service involved in the bombing of the Greenpeace flagship Rainbow Warrior in 1985] and their mercenaries also gives us an idea of what we are going to endure again and again for a month.
The state has already chosen its interlocutors who have been much the same for 40 years. The same ones that led us into the current situation.
Therefore, we firmly reaffirm our call for the intervention of the BRICS, the Pacific Islands Forum members, and the Melanesian Spearhead group (MSG) to put an end to the violence perpetrated against the children of the indigenous clans because the Kanak people are one of the oldest elder peoples that this land has had.
There are only 160,000 individuals left today in a country full of wealth.
New Caledonia police kill Kanak protester https://t.co/7fnNPlx5W8
A day after president Macron’s visit..
Food and medical aid needed
Each death represents a big loss and it means a lot to the person’s clan. More than ever, we need to initiate the decolonisation process and hold serious discussions so that we can achieve our sovereignty very quickly.
Today we are asking for the intervention of international aid for:
The protection of our population;
food aid; and
medical support, because we no longer trust the medical staff of Médipôle (Nouméa hospital) and the liberals who make sarcastic judgments towards our injured and our people.
This open letter was written by a long-standing Kanak resident of New Zealand who has been visiting New Caledonia and wanted to share his dismay at the current crisis with friends back here and with Asia Pacific Report. His name is being withheld for his security.
A masked Kanak protester near Nouméa . . . back in the 1980s masks were rare, but surveillance methods have now forced changes among militants for protection. Image: Al jazeera screenshot APR
COMMENTARY: By Eugene Doyle
“Only the struggle counts . . . death is nothing.” Éloi Machoro — “the Che Guevara of the Pacific” — said this shortly before he was gunned down by a French sniper on 12 January 1985.
Machoro, one of the leaders of the newly-formed FLNKS (Kanak and Socialist National Liberation Front) — today the main umbrella movement for New Caledonia’s indigenous Kanak people — slowly bled to death as the gendarmes moved in.
The assassination is an apt metaphor for what France is doing to the Kanak people of New Caledonia and has been doing to them for 150 years.
As the New Zealand and Australian media fussed and bothered over tourists stranded in New Caledonia over the past week, the Kanaks have been gripped in an existential struggle with a heavyweight European power determined to keep the archipelago firmly under the control of Paris. We need better, deeper reporting from our media — one that provides history and context.
According to René Guiart, a pro-independence writer, moments before the sniper’s bullets struck, Machoro had emerged from the farmhouse where he and his comrades were surrounded. I translate:
“I want to speak to the Sous-Prefet! [French administrator],” Machoro shouted. “You don’t have the right to arrest us. Do you hear? Call the Sous-Prefet!”
The answer came in two bullets. Once dead, Machoro’s comrades inside the house emerged to receive a beating from the gendarmes. Standing over Machoro’s body, a member of the elite mobile tactical unit said: “He wanted war, he got it!”
Photographed Machoro
Weeks earlier, New Zealand journalist David Robie had photographed Machoro shortly before he smashed open a ballot box with an axe and burned the ballots inside. “It was,” says Robie, “symbolic of the contempt Kanaks had for what they saw as France’s manipulated voting system.”
Every year on January 12, the anniversary of Machoro’s killing, people gather at his grave. Engraved in stone are the words: “On tue le révolutionnaire mais on ne tue pas ses idées.”You can kill the revolutionary but you can’t kill his ideas. Why don’t most Australians and New Zealanders even know his name?
Decades after his death and 17,000 km away, the French are at it again. Their National Assembly has shattered the peace this month with a unilateral move to change voting rights to enfranchise tens of thousands of more recent French settlers and put an end to both consensus building and the indigenous Kanak people’s struggle for self-determination and independence.
Thanks to French immigration policies, Kanaks now number about 40 percent of the registered voters. New Zealand and Australia look the other way — New Caledonia is France’s “zone of interest”.
But what’s not to like about extending voting rights? Shouldn’t all people who live in the territory enjoy voting rights?
“They have voting rights,” says David Robie, now editor of Asia Pacific Report, “back in France.” And France, not the Kanaks, control who can enter and stay in the territory.
Back in 1972, French Prime Minister Pierre Messmer argued in a since-leaked memo that if France wanted to maintain control, flooding the territory with white settlers was the only long-term solution to the independence issue.
Robie says the French machinations in Paris — changing the boundaries of citizenship and voting rights – and the ensuing violent reaction, is effectively a return to the 1980s — or worse.
The violence of the 1980s, which included massacres, led to the Matignon Accords of 1988 and the Nouméa Accords of 1998 which restricted the voting to only those who had lived in Kanaky prior to 1998 and their descendents. Pro-independence supporters include many young whites who see their future in the Pacific, not as a white settler colonial outpost of France.
Most whites, however, fear and oppose independence and the loss of privileges it would bring.
After decades of calm and progress, albeit modest, things started to change from 2020 onwards. It was clear to Robie and others that French calculations now saw New Caledonia as too important to lose; it is a kind of giant aircraft carrier in the Pacific from which to project French power. It is also home to the world’s third-largest nickel reserves.
How have the Kanaks benefitted from being a French colony? Kanaks were given citizenship in their own country only after WWII, a century after Paris imposed French rule. According to historian David Chappell:
“In practice, French colonisation was one of the most extreme cases of native denigration, incarceration and dispossession in Oceania. A frontier of cattle ranches, convict camps, mines and coffee farms moved across the main island of Grande Terre, conquering indigenous resisters and confining them to reserves that amounted to less than 10 percent of the land.”
It was a pattern of behaviour similar to France’s colonies in Africa, Asia and the Caribbean. Little wonder the people of Niger have recently become the latest to expel them.
Deprived of education — the first Kanak to qualify for university entrance was in the 1960s — socially and economically marginalised, subjected to what historians describe as among the most brutal colonial overlordships in the Pacific, the Kanaks have fought to maintain their languages, their cultures and their identities whilst the whites enjoy some of the highest standards of living in the world.
“There was no consultation — except with the anti-independence groups. Any new constitutional arrangement needs to be based around consensus. France has now polarised the situation so much that it will be virtually impossible to get consensus.”
Author Dr David Robie . . . warned for years that France is pushing New Caledonia down a slippery slope. Image: Alyson Young/PMC
Macron also pushed ahead with a 2021 referendum on independence versus remaining a French territory. This was in the face of pleas from the Kanak community to hold off until the covid pandemic that had killed thousands of Kanaks had passed and the traditional mourning period was over.
Having created the problem with actions like the disputed referendum and the current law changes, Macron now condemns today’s violence in New Caledonia. Éloi Machoro rebukes him from the grave: “Where is the violence, with us or with them?” he asked weeks before his killing. “The aim of the [law changes] is to destroy the Kanak people in their own country.” That was 1985; as the French say: “Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose. The more things change, the more they stay the same thing.
Kanaky and Palestine . . . “the same struggle” against settler colonialism. Image: Solidarity/APR
Young people are at the forefront of opposing Paris’s latest machinations. Hundreds have been arrested. Several killed. The White City, as Nouméa is called by the marginalised Melanesians, is lit by arson fires each night. Thousands of French security forces have been rushed in.
Leaders who have had nothing to do with the violence have been arrested; an old colonial manoeuvre.
“What happened was clearly avoidable,” Robie says “ The thing that really stands out for me is: what happens now? It is going to be really extremely difficult to rebuild trust — and trust is needed to move forward. There has to be a consensus otherwise the only option is civil war.”
Nadia Abu-Shanab, an activist and member of the Wellington Palestinian community, sees familiar behaviour and extends her solidarity to the people of Kanaky.
“We Palestinians know what it is for people to choose to ignore the context that leads to our struggle. Indigenous and native people have always been right to challenge colonisation. We are fighting for a world free from the racism and the theft of resources and land that have hurt and harmed too many indigenous peoples and our planet.”
Eugene Doyle is a Wellington-based writer and community activist who publishes the Solidaritywebsite. His first demonstration was at the age of 12 against the Vietnam War. This article was first published at Solidarity under the title “The French are at it again: New Caledonia is kicking off”. For more about Éloi Machoro, read Dr David Robie’s 1985 piece “Éloi Machoro knew his days were numbered”.
French security forces sent to quell deadly violence in New Caledonia could remain indefinitely if the country’s decolonisation process continues to stall and political polarisation is not addressed.
President Emmanuel Macron arrived in the Pacific territory on Thursday unsuccessfully seeking a political solution with local parties following the eruption of protests and violence that included sporadic gun battles, which claimed the lives of two gendarmes (French paramilitary police) and four civilians.
Macron, who left Nouméa early today, said the 3000-strong force deployed from France would remain “as long as necessary”, emphasising a return to calm and security was “the absolute priority”.
He met with politicians and business representatives during a summit that included independence leaders.
Before the summit, Macron faced anger from those who hold his hubris responsible for the chaos.
“Here comes the fireman after he set the fire!” Front de Liberation Nationale Kanak et Socialiste (FLNKS) of New Caledonia’s Jimmy Naouna posted on X after Macron’s office announced his surprise visit.
In a further post, Naouna said Macron and those accompanying him on the visit, Overseas and Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin and Armed Forces Minister Sébastien Locornu, had ignored calls for peaceful talks to resolve issues over self-determination for the island nation for months and that they could not be trusted anymore.
‘Republican order will be restored’
About 1000 more security force members were being sent to the Pacific archipelago at the weekend, when France’s High Commissioner Louis Le Franc vowed in a televised address that “Republican order will be re-established, whatever the cost”, adding if indigenous kanak pro-independence activists “want to use their arms, they will be risking the worst”.
He said French security forces would stage “harassment” raids to reclaim territory held by pro-independence groups, which were ongoing.
Darmanin claimed to French TV that Azerbaijan was behind the protests, citing the appearance of Azerbaijani flags alongside Kanak flags at the protests. The Caucasus country called the accusations baseless.
Azerbaijan has been vocal in condemning French colonialism in recent times.
In July last year it invited pro-independence groups from several dependencies, including “French” Polynesia and New Caledonia, for a conference towards the complete elimination of colonialism. It was organised by the Buku Initiative Group, which released a statement last week in solidarity with Kanaks resisting the France’s constitutional changes.
The crisis began after France’s National Assembly (lower house) on May 13 passed a bill removing electoral restrictions protecting the demographic status of the nation’s indigenous Kanak people, as guaranteed under the Nouméa Accord.
The 1998 agreement had charted a path to decolonisation after decades of conflict. The bill will get rid of one of the agreement’s provisions by allowing residents who arrived in the country after 1998 to vote, shifting the balance of power away from the indigenous population and weakening their chances of winning independence via a referendum.
The change, which followed a constitutional review initiated by Darmanin, would allow French nationals living in the territory for at least 10 years continuously to vote in local elections.
Macron on the French troops in New Caledonia. Video: Al Jazeera.
Strategic, economic interest
France retains a strategic and economic interest in the small territory of 270,000 residents. It is the third-largest exporter of nickel globally, while France is also attempting to reposition itself as a Western security partner in the Pacific with its own Indo-Pacific strategic policy.
Last Sunday, about 600 security force members burst through about 70 barricades, which included dozens of burn-out vehicles, that had been blocking a 65 km stretch of road from the capital Nouméa to La Tontouta international airport. Some of the barricades were immediately re-erected.
A 6pm to 6am curfew remains in place until the end of a state of emergency next Monday. Disenfranchised youth have been responsible for most of the rioting. Tik Tok has also been banned and more than 230 people have so far been arrested.
Both New Zealand and Australia began emergency repatriations on Tuesday, May 21 using military aircraft flying from the local Magenta airport, 4km outside the capital.
Macron has been accused of sparking the turmoil by imposing a colonial agenda on the country, running contrary to the Nouméa Accord.
Eddy Banare, a researcher in comparative literature with an interest in Kanak identity/political discourse at the Université de la Nouvelle-Calédonie, told Café Pacific that Macron and his government had demonstrated a serious lack of understanding of the New Caledonian issue and had failed to maintain a dialogue with local parties.
“The Nouméa Accord is based on an agreement between political actors in New Caledonia. This agreement has been compromised,” he said.
Macron ‘aligned with hardest right’
“Macron has aligned himself with the hardest right of the New Caledonian political spectrum, which, in its fervour to maintain a French New Caledonia, rejects the spirit of collegiality established by the Nouméa Accord by disregarding the Kanak independence claim and sabotaging the conditions for dialogue.”
Macron had three meetings of his Defence and National Security Council within a week before travelling to New Caledonia and his decision to send more troops is a reflection of a serious breakdown of order in New Caledonian society not seen since the 1980s.
“Everything seems to be set for the long term,” Banare said, adding that 100,000 firearms currently circulating in the country also needed to be taken out of the equation. Armed pro-France loyalist militias and anti-colonial groups have been active during the protests.
Three of those killed were Kanaks, shot by armed civilians.
Banare said, in the absence of an impartial arbitrator, Australia and New Zealand should host roundtable talks, bringing together New Caledonian parties, a representation of the French government, and experts in international law and indigenous issues in the Pacific.
The Pacific Regional Non-Governmental Organisations Alliance (PRNGA) on Monday, May 20 also urged the UN and Pacific leaders to mediate dialogue towards restoring “a just and peaceful transition”.
In a statement, the organisation criticised Macron for his “poorly hidden agenda to prolong colonial control over the territory” and for ignoring warnings by indigenous groups that the unilateral decision to impose electoral changes could end 30 years of relative peace in New Caledonia.
‘Misuse of institutional processes’
“This week, as the United Nations Decolonisation Committee (C24) sits in Caracas, Venezuela, to hear updates on the list of non-self-governing territories to be decolonised, France imposes a state of emergency on Kanaky-New Caledonia and sends more troops to the Pacific territory to restore order,” it said.
“Ironically, its overtures for law and order and for peace are in stark contrast to the misuse of institutional processes to inflict violence on the Kanaky people, as evidenced by behaviour in Paris.”
The deaths and destruction of property have left many in the economically divided country wary and on edge. The conflict is having a serious impact on the fragile economy, as well as affecting medical and food supplies across the island.
Whakatane-based Kanak Rodney Pirini said youth at the forefront of the protests were profoundly marginalised, their positions made worse after Kanak people began moving into urban centres over past decades, particularly into the capital, where extremes of wealth and poverty were most pronounced.
Pirini, a former Union Calédonienne (UC) member (part of the FLNKS) who had been jailed several times during protests in the mid-1980s, said the destructiveness of last week’s protests was a reflection of that social reality.
“Forty years after I was protesting, you have a lot of young people in town, with no job, with nothing, living side by side with rich French people. One block could be rich people, 20 metres away you have a block of poor people. It’s crazy.”
Louis Lagarde, an associate professor of literature, language and social sciences at University of New Caledonia, said initiating talks among the local communities should be a priority.
“It is still too early to predict when troops will leave the archipelago,” he told Café Pacific. “Their present role is to secure the airports, the port, gain and allow access to hospitals, preserve the last standing shops and their restocking, and free the blockades on the main roads. Patients under dialysis are at heavy risk, and so are other patients with heavy treatments, pregnant women and so on
“One has to understand that the present New Caledonia government, with a pro-independence majority and president, as well as the customary senate president, have urged calm on multiple occasions, to no – or little – avail. As harsh as it seems, the presence of military and police reinforcements is still crucial.”
Colonial history France officially took possession of Kanaky, or New Caledonia, in 1853 and colonisation saw the Kanaks forced from their lands, resulting in several failed rebellions over the decades to come.
New Caledonia’s modern political trajectory towards decolonisation was put in motion after the Matignon-Oudinot Accords were signed in 1988 by Kanak and Socialist National Liberation Front (FLNKS) leader Jean-Marie Tjibaou and leader of the anti-independence Rally for Caledonia in the Republic (RPCR) party, Jacques Lafleur and France. It was approved in a referendum by 80 percent of the electorate.
The agreement sought compromise and a peaceful settlement after a period of civil war and armed resistance to French rule.
FLNKS leaders Jean-Marie Tjibaou and Yeiwéné Yeiwéné were assassinated by FLNKS militants opposed to the peace deal less than a year later.
The Nouméa Accords recognised Kanaks as the indigenous peoples of Kanaky and set out mechanisms to address both historical wrongs and transfer governance powers from France. Kanaks make up approximately 40 percent of New Caledonia’s population and the provisions to restrict voting to those resident in the country prior to 1998 were designed to keep Kanaks’ electoral strength while a peaceful transition towards independence unfolded.
A series of referendums on independence was proposed, the first of which took place in 2018, registering a 43.3 percent in favour of independence, followed by a higher 46.7 percent vote in a 2020 referendum.
The third referendum in December 2021 marked a slide towards today’s polarisation and is a key antecedent to the riots.
Calls for a postponement by independence parties after indigenous communities were hit hard by the covid-19 delta variant were ignored by France and the vote went ahead. After taking the issue to the UN Fourth Committee on Decolonisation, independence parties boycotted the referendum, resulting in a 44 percent voter turnout — or half of numbers that turned out in 2020.
The vote delivered a mere 3.5 percent backing for independence.
Macron at the time hailed the vote as a “massive victory” for the pro-loyalist side. Pro-independence groups have been calling for another referendum.
Mick Hall has been a journalist for more than 20 years, in both the UK and, since 2009, in New Zealand. He has worked for the Irish Post in London, the Belfast Telegraph, Pagemasters, a former subsidiary of the Australian Associated Press, as well as News Corp in Australia.
Pro-Kanak self-determination protesters at a rally at the Place de la Bastille in Paris . . . ironically this is where the citizens of the French capital stormed the hated Bastille prison during the French Revolution and later completely destroyed it between 14 July 1789 and 14 July 1790. Image: APR
Liberation “must come” for Kanaky New Caledonia, says one of the few New Zealand journalists who have worked consistently on stories across the French Pacific territories.
Journalist David Robie was arrested at gunpoint by French police in January 1987, and is no stranger to civil unrest in New Caledonia.
Writing his first articles about the Pacific from Paris in 1974 on French nuclear testing when working for Agence France-Presse, Robie became a freelance journalist in the 1980s, working for Radio Australia, Islands Business, The Australian, Pacific Islands Monthly, Radio New Zealand and other media.
‘A subversive in Kanaky’: An article about David Robie’s first arrest by the French military in January 1987. Published in the February edition of Islands Business (Fiji-based regional news magazine). Image: David Robie/RNZ Pacific/ Lydia Lewis
The Asia Pacific Report editor, who has been on the case for 50 years now, arrived at his interview with RNZ Pacific with a bag of books packed with images and stories from his days in the field.
“I did get arrested twice [in Kanaky New Caledonia], in fact, but the first time was actually at gunpoint which was slightly unnerving,” Robie explained.
“They accused me of being a spy.”
Dr David Robie standing with Kanak pro-independence activists and two Australian journalists at Touho, northern New Caledonia, while on assignment during the FLNKS boycott of the 1984 New Caledonian elections. (Robie is standing with cameras strung around his back). Image: Wiken Books/Back Cover
Liberation ‘must come’
Robie said liberation “must come” for Kanaky New Caledonia.
“It’s really three decades of hard work by a lot of people to build, sort of like a future for New Caledonia, which is part of the Pacific rather than part of France,” Robie said.
He said France has had three Prime Ministers since 2020 and none of them seem to have any “real affinity” for indigenous issues, particularly in the South Pacific, in contrast to some previous leaders.
“From 2020 onwards, basically, France lost the plot,” after Édouard Philippe was in office, Robie said.
He called the current situation a “real tragedy” and believed New Caledonia was now more polarised than ever before.
“France has betrayed the aspirations of the indigenous Kanak people.”
Robie said the whole spirit of the 1998 Nouméa Accord was to lead Kanaky towards self determination after the bloody conflict in the 1980s when many massacres and assassinations happened, including the killing of Éloi Machoro by French snipers.
New Caledonia on UN decolonisation list
New Caledonia is listed under the United Nations as a territory to be decolonised — reinstated on 2 December 1986.
“Progress had been made quite well with the first two votes on self determination, the two referendums on independence, where there’s a slightly higher and reducing opposition.”
In 2018, 43.6 percent voted in favour of independence with an 81 percent voter turnout. Two years later 46.7 percent were in favour with a voter turnout of 85.7 percent, but 96.5 percent voted against independence in 2021, with a voter turnout of just 43.8 percent.
France maintains it was legitimate, despite first insisting on holding the third vote a year earlier than originally scheduled, and in spite of pleas from indigenous Kanak leaders to postpone the vote so they could properly bury and mourn the many members of their communities who died as a result of the covid-19 pandemic.
Robie said France was now taking a deliberate step to “railroad” the indigenous vote in Kanaky New Caledonia.
He said the latest “proposed amendment” to the constitution would give thousands more non-indigenous people voting rights.
“[The new voters would] completely swamp indigenous people,” Robie said.
‘Hope’ and other options Robie said there “was hope yet”, despite France’s betrayal of the Kanaks over self-determination and independence, especially over the past three years.
French President Emmanuel Macron is under increasing pressure to scrap proposed constitutional reform by Pacific leaders which sparked riots in New Caledonia.
Pacific leaders and civil society groups have affirmed their support for New Caledonia’s path to independence.
Robie backed that call. He said there were options, including an indefinite deferment of the final stage, or Macron could use his presidential veto.
“So [I’m] hopeful that something like that will happen. There certainly has to be some kind of charismatic change to sort out the way things are at the moment.”
A masked Kanak militant near La Foa in western Grande Terre island during the 1980s . . . this photo is a screenshot from the cover of the Swedish edition of David Robie’s 1989 book Blood on their Banner: Nationalist Struggles in the South Pacific. Image: Lydia Lewis/David Robie/RNZ Pacific
Having Édouard Philippe — who has always said he had grown a strong bond with New Caledonia when he was in office until 2020 — on the mission would be “a very positive move”, said Robie.
“Because what really is needed now is some kind of consensus,” he said.
‘We don’t want to be like the Māori in NZ’ New Caledonia could still have a constructive “partnership” with France, just like the Cook Islands has with New Zealand, Robie said.
“The only problem is that the French government doesn’t want to listen,” New Caledonia presidential spokesperson Charles Wea said.
“You cannot stop the Kanak people from claiming freedom in their own country.”
Despite the calls, Wea said concerns were setting in that Kanak people would “become a minority in their own country”.
“We [Kanak people] are afraid to be like Māori in New Zealand. We are afraid to be like Aboriginal people in Australia.”
He said those fears were why it was so important the controversial constitutional amendments did not go any further.
Robie said while Kanaks were already a minority in their own country, there had been a pretty close parity under the Nouméa Accord.
Vote a ‘retrograde step’
“Bear in mind, a lot of French people who’ve lived in New Caledonia for a long time, believe in independence as well,” he said.
But it was the “constitutional reform” that was the sticking point, something Robie refused to call a “reform”, describing as “a very retrograde step”.
In 1998, there was “goodwill” though the Nouméa accord.
“The only people who could participate in New Caledonian elections, as opposed to the French state as a whole, were indigenous Kanaks and those who had been living in New Caledonia prior to 1998,” something France brought in at the time.
Robie said a comparison can be drawn “much more with Australia”, rather than Aotearoa New Zealand.
“Kanak people resisting French control a century and a half ago were executed by the guillotine,” he said.
To Robie, Aotearoa was probably the better example of what New Caledonia could be.
“But you have to recall that New Caledonia began colonial life just like Australia, a penal colony,” he said.
Robie explained how Algerian fighters were shipped off to New Caledonia, Vietnamese fighters were also sent during the Vietnam War, among other people from other minority groups.
“A lot of people think it’s French and Kanak. It’s not. It’s a lot more mixed than that and a lot more complicated.”
‘France lost the plot’: Journalist David Robie on Kanaky/New Caledonia riotshttps://t.co/IYVTSyKJlP
The media and the blame game As Robie explained the history, another issue became apparent: the lack of media interest and know-how to cover such events from Aotearoa New Zealand.
He said he had been disappointed to see many mainstream outlets glossing over history and focusing on the stranded Kiwis and fighting, which he said was significant, but needed context.
He said this lack of built-up knowledge within newsrooms and an apparent issue of “can’t be bothered, or it’s too problematic,” was projecting the indigenous population as the bad guys.
“There’s a projection that basically ‘Oh, well, they’re young people… looting and causing fires and that sort of thing’, they don’t get an appreciation of just how absolutely frustrated young people feel. It’s 50 percent of unemployment as a result of the nickel industry collapse, you know,” Robie explained.
When it came to finger pointing, he believed the field activist movement CCAT did not intend for all of this to happen.
“Once the protests reached a level of anger and frustration, all hell broke loose,” said Robie.
“But they [CCAT] have been made the scapegoats.
“Whereas the real culprits are the French government, and particularly the last three prime ministers in my view.”
The Paris-based global media freedom watchdog Reporters Without Borders (RSF) has called for guaranteed safety for journalists in the French Pacific territory of Kanaky New Caledonia after an increase in intimidation, threats, obstruction and attacks against them.
After a week of violence that broke out in the capital of Nouméa following a controversial parliamentary vote for a bill expanding the settler electorate in New Caledonia, RSF said in a statement that the crisis was worrying for journalists working there.
RSF called on the authorities and “all the forces involved” to ensure their safety and guarantee the right to information.
While covering the clashes in Nouméa on Friday, May 17, a crew from the public television channel Nouvelle-Calédonie La 1ère, consisting of a journalist and a cameraman, were intimidated by about 20 unidentified hooded men.
They snatched the camera from the cameraman’s hands and threatened him with a stone, before smashing the windows of the journalists’ car and trying to seize it.
“The public broadcaster’s crew managed to escape thanks to the support of a motorist. France Télévisions management said it had filed a complaint the same day,” RSF reported.
According to a dozen accounts gathered by RSF, working conditions for journalists deteriorated rapidly from Wednesday, May 15, onwards.
Official death toll now six, including two police officers. Video: Al Jazeera
Acts of violence
As the constitutional bill amending New Caledonia’s electoral body was adopted by the National Assembly on the night of May 14/15, a series of acts of violence broke out in the Greater Nouméa area, either by groups protesting against the electoral change or by militia groups formed to confront them.
The territory has been placed under a state of emergency and is subject to a curfew from which journalists are exempt.
RSF is alerting the authorities in particular to the situation facing freelance journalists: while some newsrooms are organising to send support to their teams in New Caledonia, freelance reporters find themselves isolated, without any instructions or protective equipment.
“The attacks on journalists covering the situation in New Caledonia are unacceptable. Everything must be done so that they can continue to work and thus ensure the right to information for all in conditions of maximum safety,” said Anne Bocandé,
editorial director of RSF.
“RSF calls on the authorities to guarantee the safety and free movement of journalists throughout the territory.
“We also call on all New Caledonian civil society and political leaders to respect the integrity and the work of those who inform us on a daily basis and enable us to grasp the reality on the ground.”
While on the first day of the clashes on Monday, May 13, according to the information gathered by RSF, reporters managed to get through the roadblocks and talk to all the forces involved — especially those who are well known locally — many of them are still often greeted with hostility, if not regarded as persona non grata, and are the victims of intimidation, threats or violence.
“At the roadblocks, when we are identified as journalists, we receive death threats,” a freelance journalist told RSF.
“We are pelted with stones and violently removed from the roadblocks. The situation is likely to get worse”, a journalist from a local media outlet warned RSF.
As a result, most of the journalists contacted by RSF are forced to work only in the area around their homes.
“In any case, we’re running out of petrol. In the next few days, we’re going to find it hard to work because of the logistics,” said a freelance journalist contacted by RSF.
Distrust of journalists The 10 or so journalists contacted by RSF — who requested anonymity against a backdrop of mistrust — have at the very least been the target of repeated insults since the start of the fighting.
According to information gathered by RSF, these insults continue outside the roadblocks, on social networks.
The majority of the forces involved, who are difficult for journalists to identify, share a mistrust of the media coupled with a categorical refusal to be recognisable in the images of reporters, photographers and videographers.
On May 15, President Emmanuel Macron declared an immediate state of emergency throughout New Caledonia. On the same day, the government announced a ban on the social network TikTok.
President Macron is due in New Caledonia today to introduce a “dialogue mission” in an attempt to seek solutions.
To date, six people have been killed and several injured in the clashes.
For more than 76 years, Palestinians have resisted occupation, dispossession and ethnic cleansing, culminating in Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza.
Yet in the midst of this catastrophic seven months of “hell on earth”, it is a paradox that there exists an extraordinary oasis of peace and nature.
Nestling in an Al-Karkarfa hillside at the University of Bethlehem is the Palestine Institute for Biodiversity and Sustainability (PIBS), a remarkable botanical garden and animal rehabilitation unit that is an antidote for conflict and destruction.
Palestine’s environmental justice advocate Professor Mazin Qumsiyeh . . . “There is both a genocide and an ecocide going on, supported by some Western governments. Image: Radio Inqilaab screenshot APR
“There is both a genocide and an ecocide going on, supported by some Western governments against the will of the Western public,” says environmental justice advocate Professor Mazin Qumsiyeh, the founder and director of the institute.
It has been a hectic week for him and his wife and mentor Jessie Chang Qumsiyeh.
On Wednesday, May 15 — Nakba Day 2024 — they were in Canberra in conversation with local Palestinian, First Nations and environmental campaigners. Nakba – “the catastrophe” in English — is the day of mourning for the destruction of Palestinian society and its homeland in 1948, and the permanent displacement of a majority of the Palestinian people (14 million, of which about 5.3 million live in the “State of Palestine”.)
Three days later in Auckland, they were addressing about 250 people with a Palestinian Christian perspective on Israel’s illegal occupation of Palestine and the war at the 2024 David Wakim Memorial lecture in the historic St Mary’s-in-Holy-Trinity Church in Parnell.
This followed a lively presentation and discussion on the work of the PIBS and its volunteers at the annual general meeting of Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa (PSNA) along with more than 100 young and veteran activists such as chair John Minto, who had just returned from a global solidarity conference in South Africa.
Professor Mazin Qumsiyeh’s delivery of the 2024 David Wakim Memorial lecture at Saint Mary’s-in-Holy-Trinity Church in Parnell. Video: Radio Inqilaab
Environmental impacts less understood
While the horrendous social and human costs of the relentless massacres in Gaza are in daily view on the world’s television screens, the environmental impacts of the occupation and destruction of Palestine are less understood.
As Professor Qumsiyeh explains, water sources have been restricted, destroyed and polluted; habitat loss is pushing species like wolves, gazelles, and hyenas to the brink; destruction of crops and farmland drives food insecurity; and climate crisis is already impacting on Palestine and its people.
The PIBS oasis as pictured on the front cover of the institute’s latest annual report. Image: David Robie/APR
The institute was initiated in 2014 by the Qumsiyehs at Bethlehem University along with a host of volunteers and supporters. After 11 years of operation, the latest PIBS 2023 annual report provides a surprisingly up-to-date and telling preface feeding into the early part of this year.
“In 2023, there were increased restrictions on movement, settler and soldier attacks on Palestinians throughout the occupied territories, combined with the ongoing siege and strangulation of the Gaza Strip, under Israel’s extreme rightwing government.
“This led to the Gaza ghetto uprising that started on 7 October 2023. The Israeli regime’s ongoing response is a genocidal campaign in Gaza.
Professor Mazin Qumsiyeh . . . In contrast to false perceptions of violence about Palestinians, “these methods have been the exception to what is a peaceful and creative.” Image: Del Abcede/Pax Christi
“[Since that date], 35,500 civilians were brutally killed, 79,500 were wounded (72 percent women and children) and nearly 2 million people displaced. Thousands more still lay under the rubble.
“An immense amount – nearly two-thirds – of Gaza’s infrastructure was destroyed , including 70 per cent of residential buildings, hospitals, schools, universities and government buildings.
Total food, water blockade
“Israel also imposed a total blockade of, among other things, fuel, food, water, and medicine.
“This fits the definition of genocide per international law.
“Israel also attacked the West Bank, killing hundreds of Palestinians in 2023 (and into 2024), destroyed homes and infrastructure (especially in refugee camnps), arrested thousands of innocent civilians, and ethnically cleansed communities in Area C.
“Many of these marginalised communities were those that worked with the institute on issues of biodiversity and sustainability.”
This is the context and the political environment that Professor Qumsiyeh confronts in his daily sustainability struggle. He is committed to a vision of sustainable human and natural communities, responding to the growing needs for education, community service, and protection of land and environment.
Popular Resistance in Palestine cover (2011). Image: Pluto Press/APR
In one of his many books, Popular Resistance in Palestine: A history of Hope and Empowerment, he argues that in contrast to how Western media usually paints Palestine resistance as exclusively violent: armed resistance, suicide bombings, and rocket attacks. “In reality,” he says, “these methods have been the exception to what is a peaceful and creative
Call for immediate ceasefire
An enormous global movement has been calling for an immediate and permanent ceasefire in Gaza, to end decades of colonisation, and work toward a free Palestine that delivers sustainable peace for all in the region.
Professor Qumsiyeh reminded the audience at St Mary’s that the first Christians were in Palestine.
“The Romans used to feed us to the lions until the 4 th century,” when ancient Rome adopted Christianity and it became the Holy Roman Empire.
He spoke about how Christians had also paid a high price for Israel’s war on Gaza as well as Muslims.
PSNA’s Billy Hania . . . a response to Professor Qumsiyeh. Image: David Robie/APR
Christendom’s third oldest church and the oldest in Gaza, the Greek Orthodox church of Saint Porphyrius in the Zaytoun neighbourhood — which had served as a sanctuary for both Christians and Muslims during Israel’s periodic wars was bombed just 12 days after the start of the current war.
There had been about 1000 Christians in Gaza; 300 mosques had been bombed.
He said “everything we do is suspect, we are harassed and attacked by the Israelis”.
‘Don’t want children to be happy’
“They don’t want children to be happy, they have killed 15,000 of them in Gaza. They don’t want us to survive.”
Palestine action for the planet . . . a slide from Professor Qumsiyeh’s talk earlier in the day at the PSNA annual general meeting. Image: David Robie/APR
He said colonisers did not seem to like diversity — they destroy it, whether it is human diversity, biodiversity.
“Palestine is a multiethnic, multicultural and multireligious country.”
“Diversity is healthy, an equal system. We have all sorts of religions in our part of the world.
“Life would be boring if we were all the same – that’s human. A forest with only one kind of trees is not healthy.’
Professor Qumsiyeh was critical of much Western news media.
“If you watch Western media, Fox news and so on, you would be told that we are people who have been fighting for years.”
That wasn’t true. “We had the most peaceful country on earth.”
“If you go back a few years, to the Crusades, that is when political ideas from Europe such as principalities and kingdoms started to spread.”
Heading into nuclear war
He warned against a world that was rushing headlong into a nuclear war, which would be devastating for the planet – “only cockroaches can survive a nuclear war.”
“Humanity for Gaza” . . . a slide from Professor Qumsiyeh’s talk earlier in the day. Image: David Robie
Professor Qumsiyeh likened his role to that of a shepherd, “telling the world that something must be done” to protect food sovereignty and biodiversity as “climate change is coming to us with a vengeance. So please help us achieve the goal.”
The institute says that they are leaders in “disseminating information and ideas to challenge the propaganda spread about Palestine”.
It annual report says: “We published 17 scientific articles on areas like environmental justice, protected areas, national parks, fauna, and flora.
“Our team gave over 210 talks locally, only and abroad, and over 200 interviews (radio and TV).
“We produced statements responding to attacks on institutions for higher education, natural areas, and cultural heritage.
“We published research on the impact of war, on Israel’s weaponisation of ‘nature reserves’ and ‘national parks, and a vision for peace based on justice and sustainability.”
When it is considered that Israel destroyed all 12 universities in Gaza, the sustaining work of the institute on many fronts is vital.
Professor Qumsiyeh also appealed for volunteers, interns and researchers to come to Bethlehem to help the institute to contribute to a “more liveable world”.
With New Caledonia entering its second week of deadly riots, French authorities have mounted a massive law enforcement operation to regain control of the main roads in and around the capital Nouméa.
French Prime Minister Gabriel Attal — after a 12-day presidential state of emergency was declared mid-week — is now chairing daily meetings of an “inter-ministerial crisis cell”, also involving Home Affairs and Overseas Minister Gérald Darmanin, his deputy Marie Guévenoux, Army Minister Sébastien Lecornu and Justice Minister Eric Dupont-Moretti.
NC La Première television reports on the clearing of barricades after a week of protests and rioting in the capital Nouméa. Video: NC 1ère TV
Attal also hosted a parliamentary “liaison committee” on the crisis in New Caledonia meeting on Friday. The meeting involved parliamentary representatives of New Caledonia and parliamentary groups specialising in the French Pacific archipelago.
French Prime Minister Gabriel Attal hosts a parliamentary liaison committee in Paris on the crisis in New Caledonia. Image: RNZ/Le Monde
A ‘dialogue mission’ for New Caledonia
It emerged after the conference that a “dialogue mission” was now very likely to be set up and to travel to New Caledonia in order to restore dialogue and trust between Paris and its South Pacific dependency.
The notion of the mission, which would have to be “impartial” and “bipartisan”, had been called by several key players within the French political scene.
This high-level dialogue mission could involve Senate President Gérard Larcher or National Assembly President Yaël Braun-Pivet.
Also mentioned have been former prime ministers such as Lionel Jospin (who signed the Nouméa Accord in 1998 on behalf of France) or Edouard Philippe, who has always said he had grown a strong bond with New Caledonia when he was in office (until 2020).
The constitutional amendment was endorsed by the French Senate on April 2 and the National Assembly on May 14.
However, a joint sitting of both upper and lower houses of the French Parliament, which President Emmanuel Macron intended to convene before the end of June to endorse the amendment, was “unlikely to take place within this timeframe”, Braun-Pivet and Larcher told French media on Friday.
French High Commissioner Louis Le Franc speaks at a press conference yesterday . . . trust broken between indigenous Kanaks and the French State. Image: French Highcom/Facebook
Feeling of ‘disrespect’ Several high-level experts and officials said that the spirit of the Matignon Accords — an agreement between loyalists and pro-independence groups which was signed in 1988, a decade before the Nouméa Accord — had been lost along the way. The breach of that consensus had led to a loss of trust and growing defiance between New Caledonian pro-independence players and the French State.
They also said the Kanak people felt “disrespect” when a request to delay the third independence referendum at the end of 2021 was ignored. That ended in a boycott of the final consultation on New Caledonia’s self-determination.
They also resented the fact that at one stage, Loyalist Party leader Sonia Backès had been appointed the French government’s Secretary of State (associate minister) for citizenship.
She was forced to resign in September 2023 after losing her bid for a seat at the senatorial elections.
More recently, tensions arose when another prominent pro-France leader, Nicolas Metzdorf, was appointed rapporteur for the the debates on the proposed constitutional amendment at the National Assembly.
Since the beginning of the unrest, there have been calls for the issue to be transferred back to the Prime Minister’s Office, as had been an unwritten rule since peace was restored back in the 1980s through negotiations with then-prime minister Michel Rocard.
Experts said this “special bond” was broken in 2020, after French Prime Minister Edouard Philippe was replaced by Jean Castex and the Overseas portfolio was transferred to Sébastien Lecornu, who is now France’s minister of armed forces.
Attal was also tasked to set a date for talks to be held in Paris with New Caledonian politicians for inclusive talks on the territory’s political future, but several players have refused, saying the time was not appropriate as yet.’We have pierced all the roadblocks’
‘We have broken through all the roadblocks’
Last night, an operation involving about 600 security personnel was launched in the outskirts of the capital to regain control of the highway between Nouméa and Tontouta International Airport, French High Commissioner Louis Le France said.
The main objective was to “restore republican order”, he said, adding that he now had sufficient numbers of law enforcement officers after reinforcements had arrived from France.
“We have broken through all the roadblocks . . . Now to restore normal traffic, we have to clean the debris,” he said.
Overnight, French special forces would “carry out harassment operations” throughout the greater Nouméa area, he said.
All schools would remain closed this week from tomorrow, New Caledonia’s government said in a release.
A roadblock at Tamoa close to Tontouta International Airport. Image: APR screenshot from “X”
“This time will be used to work on the best scenarios to prepare the resumption and integrate all of the material, security, human and psychological implications.”
Nouméa’s archbishop Michel-Marie Calvert, speaking at the Catholic Sunday mass for Pentecost, said the community had “betrayed our faith, our baptism and Jesus” through its divisions.
“Our island, once known as ‘closest to paradise’, has now become closest to hell. So many political voices are disqualified. They are no longer audible or credible.
“Let’s sound a strong signal to say ‘no’ to violence. Let’s call for a stop to violence, let’s demand from our elected leaders an obligation of results for a shared peaceful future, of lost and found fraternity.”
More buildings were destroyed by fire on Saturday night in Nouméa, including a media centre in Rivière Salée.
Patrick Decloitre is a RNZ Pacific correspondent of the French Pacific desk. This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ and Asia Pacific Report.
Former journalist and media publisher Jo Nata spent 24 years in jail for his role in the 2000 Fiji coup . . . "It is the family that suffers. The family are always the silent victims. It is the family that stands by you." Image: Islands Business
SPECIAL REPORT:Islands Business in Suva
Today is the 24th anniversary of renegade and failed businessman George Speight’s coup in 2000 Fiji. The elected coalition government headed by Mahendra Chaudhry, the first and only Indo-Fijian prime minister of Fiji, was held hostage at gunpoint for 56 days in the country’s new Parliament by Speight’s rebel gunmen in a putsch that shook the Pacific and the world.
Emerging recently from almost 24 years in prison, former investigative journalist and publisher Josefa Nata — Speight’s “media minder” — is now convinced that the takeover of Fiji’s Parliament on 19 May 2000 was not justified.
He believes that all it did was let the “genie of racism” out of the bottle.
He spoke to Islands Business Fiji correspondent, Joe Yaya on his journey back from the dark.
The Fiji government kept you in jail for 24 years [for your media role in the coup]. That’s a very long time. Are you bitter?
I heard someone saying in Parliament that “life is life”, but they have been releasing other lifers. Ten years was conventionally considered the term of a life sentence. That was the State’s position in our sentencing. The military government extended it to 12 years. I believe it was out of malice, spitefulness and cruelty — no other reason. But to dwell in the past is counterproductive.
If there’s anyone who should be bitter, it should be me. I was released [from prison] in 2013 but was taken back in after two months, ostensibly to normalise my release papers. That government did not release me. I stayed in prison for another 10 years.
To be bitter is to allow those who hurt you to live rent free in your mind. They have moved on, probably still rejoicing in that we have suffered that long. I have forgiven them, so move on I must.
Time is not on my side. I have set myself a timeline and a to-do list for the next five years.
Jo Nata’s journey from the dark, Islands Business, April 2024. Image: IB/Joe Yaya/USP Journalism
What are some of those things?
Since I came out, I have been busy laying the groundwork for a community rehabilitation project for ex-offenders, released prisoners, street kids and at-risk people in the law-and-order space. We are in the process of securing a piece of land, around 40 ha to set up a rehabilitation farm. A half-way house of a sort.
You can’t have it in the city. It would be like having the cat to watch over the fish. There is too much temptation. These are vulnerable people who will just relapse. They’re put in an environment where they are shielded from the lures of the world and be guided to be productive and contributing members of society.
It will be for a period of up to six months; in exceptional cases, 12 months where they will learn living off the land. With largely little education, the best opportunity for these people, and only real hope, is in the land.
Most of these at-risk people are [indigenous] Fijians. Although all native land are held by the mataqali, each family has a patch which is the “kanakana”. We will equip them and settle them in their villages. We will liaise with the family and the village.
Apart from farming, these young men and women will be taught basic life skills, social skills, savings, budgeting. When we settle them in the villages and communities, we will also use the opportunity to create the awareness that crime does not pay, that there is a better life than crime and prison, and that prison is a waste of a potentially productive life.
Are you comfortable with talking about how exactly you got involved with Speight?
The bulk of it will come out in the book that I’m working on, but it was not planned. It was something that happened on the day.
You said that when they saw you, they roped you in?
Yes. But there were communications with me the night prior. I basically said, “piss off”.
So then, what made you go to Parliament eventually? Curiosity?
No. I got a call from Parliament. You see, we were part of the government coalition at that time. We were part of the Fijian Association Party (led by the late Adi Kuini Speed). The Fiji Labour Party was our main coalition partner, and then there was the Christian Alliance. And you may recall or maybe not, there was a split in the Fijian Association [Party] and there were two factions. I was in the faction that thought that we should not go into coalition.
There was an ideological reason for the split [because the party had campaigned on behalf of iTaukei voters] but then again, there were some members who came with us only because they were not given seats in Cabinet.
Because your voters had given you a certain mandate?
A masked gunman waves to journalists to duck during crossfire. Image: IPI Global Journalist/Joe Yaya/USP Journalism
Well, we were campaigning on the [indigenous] Fijian manifesto and to go into the [coalition] complicated things. Mine was more a principled position because we were a [indigenous] Fijian party and all those people went in on [indigenous] Fijian votes. And then, here we are, going into [a coalition with the Fiji Labour Party] and people probably accused us of being opportunists.
But the Christian Alliance was a coalition partner with Labour before they went into the election in the same way that the People’s Alliance and National Federation Party were coalition partners before they got into [government], whereas with us, it was more like SODELPA (Social Democratic Liberal Party).
So, did you feel that the rights of indigenous Fijians were under threat from the Coalition government of then Prime Minister Mahendra Chaudhry?
Perhaps if Chaudhry was allowed to carry on, it could have been good for [indigenous] Fijians. I remember the late President and Tui Nayau [Ratu Sir Kamisese Mara] . . . in a few conversations I had with him, he said it [Labour Party] should be allowed to . . . [carry on].
Did you think at that time that the news media gave Chaudhry enough space for him to address the fears of the iTaukei people about what he was trying to do, especially for example, through the Land Use Commission?
I think the Fijians saw what he was doing and that probably exacerbated or heightened the concerns of [indigenous] Fijians and if you remember, he gave Indian cane farmers certain financial privileges.
The F$10,000 grants to move from Labasa, when the ALTA (Agricultural Landlord and Tenants Act) leases expired. Are you talking about that?
I can’t remember the exact details of the financial assistance but when they [Labour Party] were questioned, they said, “No, there were some Fijian farmers too”. There were also iTaukei farmers but if you read in between the lines, there were like 50 Indian farmers and one Fijian farmer.
Was there enough media coverage for the rural population to understand that it was not a one-sided ethnic policy?
Because there were also iTaukei farmers involved. Yes, and I think when you try and pull the wool over other people, that’s when they feel that they have been hoodwinked. But going back to your question of whether Chaudhry was given fair media coverage, I was no longer in the mainstream media at that time. I had moved on.
But the politicians have their views and they’ll feel that they have been done badly by the media. But that’s democracy. That’s the way things worked out.
“The Press and the Putsch”, Asia Pacific Media Educator, No 10, January 2021. Image: APME/Joe Yaya/USP Journalism
Pacific journalism educator, David Robie, in a paper in 2001, made some observations about the way the local media reported the Speight takeover. He said, “In the early weeks of the insurrection, the media enjoyed an unusually close relationship with Speight and the hostage takers.”
He went on to say that at times, there was “strong sympathy among some journalists for the cause, even among senior editorial executives”.
David Robie is an incisive and perceptive old-school journalist who has a proper understanding of issues and I do not take issue with his opinion. And I think there is some validity. But you see, I was on the other [Speight’s] side. And it was part of my job at that time to swing that perception from the media.
Did you identify with “the cause” and did you think it was legitimate?
Let me tell you in hindsight, that the coup was not justified
and that is after a lot of reflection. It was not justified and
could never be justified.
When did you come to that conclusion?
It was after the period in Parliament and after things were resolved and then Parliament was vacated, I took a drive around town and I saw the devastation in Suva. This was a couple of months later. I didn’t realise the extent of the damage and I remember telling myself, “Oh my god, what have we done? What have we done?”
And I realised that we probably have let the genie out of the bottle and it scared me [that] it only takes a small thing like this to unleash this pentup emotion that is in the people. Of course, a lot of looting was [by] opportunists because at that time, the people who
were supporting the cause were all in Parliament. They had all marched to Parliament.
So, who did the looting in town? I’m not excusing that. I’m just trying to put some perspective. And of course, we saw pictures, which was really, very sad . . . of mothers, women, carrying trolleys [of loot] up the hill, past the [Colonial War Memorial] hospital.
So, what was Speight’s primary motivation?
Well, George will, I’m sure, have the opportunity at some point to tell the world what his position was. But he was never the main player. He was ditched with the baby on his laps.
So, there were people So, there were people behind him. He was the man of the moment. He was the one facing the cameras.
Given your education, training, experience in journalism, what kind of lens were you viewing this whole thing from?
Well, let’s put it this way. I got a call from Parliament. I said, “No, I’m not coming down.” And then they called again.
Basically, they did not know where they were going. I think what was supposed to have happened didn’t happen. So, I got another call, I got about three or four calls, maybe five. And then eventually, after two o’clock I went down to Parliament, because the person who called was a friend of mine and somebody who had shared our fortunes and misfortunes.
So, did you get swept away? What was going on inside your head?
George Speight’s forces hold Fiji government members hostage at the parliamentary complex in Suva. Image: IPI Global Journalist/Brian Cassey/Associated Press
I joined because at that point, I realised that these people needed help. I was not so much as for the cause, although there was this thing about what Chaudhry was doing. I also took that into account. But primarily because the call came [and] so I went.
And when I was finally called into the meeting, I walked in and I saw faces that I’d never seen before. And I started asking the questions, “Have you done this? Have you done that?”
And as I asked the questions, I was also suggesting solutions and then I just got dragged into it. The more I asked questions, the more I found out how much things were in disarray.
I just thought I’d do my bit [because] they were people who had taken over Parliament and they did not know where to go from there.
But you were driven by some nationalistic sentiments?
I am a [indigenous] Fijian. And everything that goes with that. I’m not infallible. But then again, I do not want to blow that trumpet.
Did the group see themselves as freedom fighters of some sort when you went into prison?
I’m not a freedom fighter. If they want to be called freedom fighters, that’s for them and I think some of them even portrayed themselves [that way]. But not me. I’m just an idiot who got sidetracked.
This personal journey that you’ve embarked on, what brought that about?
When I was in prison, I thought about this a lot. Because for me to come out of the bad place I was in — not physically, that I was in prison, but where my mind was — was to first accept the situation I was in and take responsibility. That’s when the healing started to take place.
And then I thought that I should write to people that I’ve hurt. I wrote about 200 letters from prison to anybody I thought I had hurt or harmed or betrayed. Groups, individuals, institutions, and families. I was surprised at the magnanimity of the people who received my letters.
I do not know where they all are now. I just sent it out. I was touched by a lot of the responses and I got a letter from the late [historian] Dr Brij Lal. l was so encouraged and I was so emotional when I read the letter. [It was] a very short letter and the kindness in the man to say that, “We will continue to talk when you come out of prison.”
There were also the mockers, the detractors, certain persons who said unkind things that, you know, “He’s been in prison and all of a sudden, he’s . . . “. That’s fine, I accepted all that as part of the package. You take the bad with the good.
I wrote to Mr Chaudhry and I had the opportunity to apologise to him personally when he came to visit in prison. And I want to continue this dialogue with Mr Chaudhry if he would like to.
Because if anything, I am among the reasons Fiji is in this current state of distrust and toxic political environment. If I can assist in bringing the nation together, it would be part of my atonement for my errors. For I have been an unprofitable, misguided individual who would like to do what I believe is my duty to put things right.
And I would work with anyone in the political spectrum, the communal leaders, the vanua and the faith organisations to bring that about.
I also did my traditional apology to my chiefly household of Vatuwaqa and the people of the vanua of Lau. I had invited the Lau Provincial Council to have its meeting at the Corrections Academy in Naboro. By that time, the arrangements had been confirmed for the Police Academy.
But the Roko gave us the farewell church service. I got my dear late sister, Pijila to organise the family. I presented the matanigasau to the then-Council Chairman, Ratu Tevita Uluilakeba (Roko Ului). It was a special moment, in front of all the delegates to the council meeting, the chiefly clan of the Vuanirewa, and Lauans who filled the two buses and
countless vehicles that made it to Naboro.
Our matanivanua (herald) was to make the tabua presentation. But I took it off him because I wanted Roko Ului and the people of Lau to hear my remorse from my mouth. It was very, very emotional. Very liberating. Cathartic.
Late last year, the Coalition government passed a motion in Parliament for a Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Do you support that?
Oh yes, I think everything I’ve been saying so far points that way.
Do you think it’ll help those that are still incarcerated to come out and speak about what happened in 2000?
Well, not only that but the important thing is [addressing] the general [racial] divide. If that’s where we should start, then we should start there. That’s how I’m looking at it — the bigger picture.
It’s not trying to manage the problems or issues of the last 24 years. People are still hurting from [the coups of] 1987. And what happened in 2006 — nothing has divided this country so much. Anybody who’s thought about this would want this to go beyond just solving the problem of 2000, excusing, and accusing and after that, there’s forgiveness and pardon.
That’s a small part. That too if it needs to happen. But after all that, I don’t want anybody to go to prison because of their participation or involvement in anything from 1987 to 2000. If they cooked the books later, while they were in government, then that’s a different
matter.
But I saw on TV, the weeping and the very public expression of pain of [the late, former Prime Minister, Laisenia] Qarase’s grandchildren when he was convicted and taken away [to prison]. It brought tears to my eyes. There is always a lump in my throat at the memory of my Heilala’s (elder of two daughters) last visit to [me in] Nukulau.
Hardly a word was spoken as we held each other, sobbing uncontrollably the whole time, except to say that Tiara (his sister) was not allowed by the officers at the naval base to come to say her goodbye.
That was very painful. I remember thinking that people can be cruel, especially when the girls explained that it was to be their last visit. Then the picture in my mind of Heilala sitting alone under the turret of the navy ship as she tried not to look back. I had asked her not to look back.
I deserved what I got. But not them. I would not wish the same things I went through on anyone else, not even those who were malicious towards me.
It is the family that suffers. The family are always the silent victims. It is the family that stands by you. They may not agree with what you did. Perhaps it is among the great gifts of God, that children forgive parents and love them still despite the betrayal, abandonment, and pain.
For I betrayed the two women I love most in the world. I betrayed ‘Ulukalala [son] who was born the same year I went to prison. I betrayed and brought shame to my family and my village of Waciwaci. I betrayed friends of all ethnicities and those who helped me in my chosen profession and later, in business.
I betrayed the people of Fiji. That betrayal was officially confirmed when the court judgment called me a traitor. I accepted that portrayal and have to live with it. The judges — at least one of them — even opined that I masterminded the whole thing. I have to decline that dubious honour. That belongs elsewhere.
This article by Joe Yaya is republished from last month’s Islands Business magazine cover story with the permission of editor Richard Naidu and Yaya. The photographs are from a 2000 edition of the International Press Institute’s Global Journalist magazine dedicated to the reporting of The University of the South Pacific’s student journalists. Joe Yaya was a member of the USP team at the time. The archive of the award-winning USP student coverage of the coup is here.
