New Caledonia: A changed mood

Political Currents

New Caledonia: A changed mood after events of January 10

Well-known French ethnologist Professor JEAN GUIART analyses the events of January 10, 1983, in which two gendarmes were killed by Melanesian villagers in New Caledonia; He describes a change of mood in the territory following these events, and concludes that for all the political talk in Noumea, the territory’s future will be shaped not by what happens there, but by what happens outside it.

What happened in Coinde, on January 10, 1983, may turn out to be a landmark on New Caledonia’s troubled path to

independence.

Coinde is a small Melanesian

village clinging to the slopes of

the mountainous ranges which tower over La Foa on the west coast and Canala on the east. La Foa is a strongly Right-wing and racist municipality; Canala is a populous Melanesian area, inde pendence-minded, where dis turbances have happened al

ready, in September 1981.

Coinde has lived a quiet but dreary life, with its neighbor village Wi Point, since the 1878 native uprising, the consequ ences of which left the inhabit ants of the two villages, partly

former insurgents, partly tradi

tional dependents of the Canala chieftainships, with difficult mountainous lands which are near impossible to till. Nothing has been done since to dramatic ally improve this situation, and the pressure of racist graziers on the two villages has never ceased.

Twelve years ago a ranch owner bulldozed Wi Point’s yam fields in order to push the people further into the mountain. They resisted and threatened to open fire on him. The grazier backed off, but the people had to wait until 1982 for the obvious solu tion; that the land neighboring their reservation be bought back by the state and handed over to them, which has somewhat al leviated their problem.

Over the last six years, the forests surrounding the two vil lages have been left open to a

tree-felling and sawmilling enter

prise which has belonged to two successive owners. The first started major pollution of the water supply of the two villages, ignoring the fundamental fact that tropical soils are tenuous and fragile, and that the underlying

geological layers contain miner

als which readily become toxic if

brought in contact with water.

The people protested and condi tions were laid down for the second entrepreneur to observe.

None of the undertakings gi ven was observed. The pollution became worse.

The Melanesians have always considered the forests as their

own a point insufficiently

stressed and there has thus developed a permanent situation of conflict throughout the territ ory between the Melanesians and the Forestry Department.

What is more the forests in the Coinde-Wi Point area have been badly misused, with trees felled that should never have been fell ed, and some tree-felling carried out even in the Melanesian reservation.

In desperation, the Coinde and Wi Point people last year block ed the roads and seized as “hos

tages” the heavy equipment of

the entrepreneur, a Mr Barbou, until the compensation they were

asking for was paid.

Things nearly worked out

right. New promises were made.

But the pressure of the Right wing group and of the friends of the white Deputy to the National Assembly in Paris, Jacques Laf leur, in late December 1982,

brought these hopes to nothing,

and Mr Barbou had to renege on

his promises. Negotiations were

apparently continuing in

January.

The conditions under which

High Commissioner Roynette

decided to send a mobile police force in to help in the evacuation

of Mr Barbou’s equipment are unknown. There had been threats by Europeans in La Foa to take independent action against Coinde.

Whatever the circumstances, on Monday, January 10, in the early morning, a police expedi tion passed through the village of Coinde, to the protests of the local people, went further up, and returned escorting the bull dozers and graders and other equipment belonging to Mr Barbou.

When they were passing through the village for the second time, the chief tried to stop them, and asked for last-minute negoti ations. He was brushed aside and the people allege he was struck.

Then stones started to fly. The police responded with canisters of tear gas and so-called stun grenades. Women and children fell sprawled on the ground.

These people had never before had experience of tear gas and stun grenades.

Hearing the explosions the men thought they and their families were being attacked in an act of war. In their minds the memory of what they had been told about the events of 1878 still lives. They started shooting at the police. Two gendarmes were killed, four men were wounded, two of them severely. Two civi lians were among those wound ed, one of them a bulldozer driver, the other the La Foa postman, on leave, who could well have had something to do with the fact that Coinde’s tele

phone communications had been cut.

The next day a major military operation, with heavy helicopters and troop carriers, swamped Coinde. The village was thoroughly searched. A few arms were found and confiscated and most of the men arrested were mistreated when being ques tioned. All knives and hatchets were confiscated, leaving the few men left around, and those later set free, and the women, with a lack of tools with which to work in the yam gardens. Their lawyers found the 10 men ac cused of manslaughter had swol len eyes and legs through beatings.

The reaction all over the coun try was one of contradictory moods of indignation. The Euro peans condemned the shooting of servants of law and order, al though a year and a half before, they had not shed a tear over a gendarme murdered in Gomen, some white men even saying that it served him right. He had been killed at night, by a shot from a high-powered rifle, as he was in the process of writing a report to his superiors on the arms smuggling practised on a grand scale by the New Caledonian Right-wing.

The Melanesians were hor rified by the brutality shown to the inhabitants of two small vil lages in the mountains and vow ed to a man that they would have shot at police if they had faced the same conditions.

The political situation stem ming from these events is entire ly new, and fluid. Nobody knew this was coming. No one knows any more where things are going.

Just three days before, a group of young men, encouraged by wo men, stoned the police station at Touho, in northeast New Caledonia, for hours during the night, and the police had to shoot into the air to get some respite.

In both cases we have Catholic villages, the descendants of peo-

pie who last century suffered the force of military repression of their resistance to European land encroachments. They have long been slumbering, but are waking now with very short tempers.

They are poor, devoid of suffi cient lands and without gains from the recent movement for land reforms through the opposi

tion of Right-wing European

mayors to any concessions to them. The stupid idea that one should never yield to Melanesian demands is now responsible for two more deaths. The tally of murders arising from the political situation in New Caledonia is now eight, as against only three in the course of the independence process in Vanuatu.

Up to now, European reac tions have been rather muted.

Meetings have been held around World War I monuments, but drawing smaller crowds than be fore. Activists have threatened once more to take to arms, but

the High Commissioner slapped

down an Order-in-Council ban ning the carrying of arms. Set

tiers out of town do not relish the idea of being caught up in a game where they might be shot at.

Right-wing activities, murders, death threats all round, are all right just as long as the Kanaks do not shoot back.

Everybody is waiting. What is difficult to see is what the young Melanesian generation will do, those up to 30 and over. This generation has been raised in the schools, has done military ser vice, has no future other than unemployment, due to the im migration policies practised by the local right over the years.

This generation isn’t afraid of anyone and is capable of the most courageous, and maybe rash, actions.

It is neither controlled by the churches, nor by the Noumea centred political parties. It has a capacity for organising itself in out-of-the-ordinary ways and for rapid mobilisation. It is support ed in its impatience by the wo men, who have accepted the idea of having numerous children to gain greater power for the

Melanesian people but want a future for them.

Things might get difficult, or even nasty, for certain Europeans on the east coast, or in the Loyal ty islands. But mostly it would need very little, just another stupid (but considered “dynam ic”) entrepreneur, and there are some, getting into conflict with another group of villages, and the guns might come out before the police have time to arrive.

The political game in Noumea will be shaped by what happens outside Noumea. Europeans and Tahitians, hundreds of them pre paring to leave the country, will be encouraged to do so. Settlers in the interior are suddenly find ing a new patience and prudence, and are much less heard from, not wanting to take the consequ ences because some silly ass has gone too far. The only activists still sounding off are in Noumea, encouraged if not dominated by former settlers from Algeria and Indochina. Their leaders have sent away their capital, as a precaution, to Switzerland,

America, Australia, New Zea land and even to the tax haven of Vanuatu.

In this situation, a referendum or elections would be inconclu sive. The electoral roll has been severely tampered with in the last 10 years, to the benefit of the

Right-wing. No significant elec

tions can be held before the rolls are thoroughly revised on the basis of the Census to be taken in 1983.

In the meantime, troubled wa ters lie ahead.

Cooks PM

looks to Oz

New Cook Islands Prime Minis ter Geoffrey Henry said after the election that he would like the Cook Islands to move closer to Australia and he sees the Aust ralian Labor Party as a natural

ally.

“I don’t mean that we want to lessen our traditional ties with New Zealand, but we think we’ve got a lot to gain by being closer to Australia,” he said.