Unrest in French-controlled New Caledonia is being fuelled by foreign interference, a Paris-based official said on Thursday, as local officials battled to restore order in the South Pacific territory.
French Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin said that the violence, which has claimed the lives of three indigenous Kanak people and two police officers, had been fomented by Azerbaijan, according to media reports.
Demonstrators hold Kanak and Socialist National Liberation Front (FLNKS) flags during a gathering in Paris.Credit: AP
“This isn’t a fantasy,” he insisted on Thursday. “I regret that some of the separatists have made a deal with Azerbaijan.”
“Even if there are attempts at interference … France is sovereign on its own territory, and so much the better,” he added.
Azerbaijan swiftly denied the allegations as “baseless”.
Violence raged across New Caledonia for the third consecutive day on Thursday, hours after France imposed a state of emergency in the French Pacific territory, boosting security forces’ powers to quell unrest in the archipelago that has long sought independence.
A French military plane arrives at Noumea-Magenta airport, New Caledonia on Thursday.Credit: AP
French authorities in New Caledonia and the interior ministry in Paris said five people, including two police officers, were killed after protests earlier this week over voting reforms pushed by President Emmanuel Macron’s government turned deadly.
Separately, Politico quoted a French intelligence official, who said that “we’ve detected activities from Russia and Azerbaijan in New Caledonia for weeks, even a few months. They’re pushing the narrative of France being a colonialist state”.
Azerbaijan had invited separatists from the French territories of Martinique, French Guiana, New Caledonia and French Polynesia to Baku for a conference in July 2023, the Telegraph reported.
At the meeting, an organisation called “Baku Initiative Group” was formed, whose stated aim is to support “French liberation and anti-colonialist movements”, according to the newspaper.
In a statement posted on a restricted X account, the Baku Initiative Group said: “As a consequence of the persistent efforts of the French authority, based on the French colonialist doctrine that denies the right to self-determination of peoples under its control, the people of Kanaky [New Caledonia] finds [sic] themselves engulfed in flames today.”
“The furious will of the French state, the so-called ‘country of human rights’ which violates the people of the Kanaky’s inalienable right to self-determination by expanding the electorate illegally in order to marginalise Kanaks in their own country, caused the degradation of the current situation.”
Backing genuine independence movements inside a targeted country has long been a tactic for nations to interfere with each other’s foreign affairs. This strategy, used heavily during the Cold War, has been given new life by the internet giving more granular awareness of foreign affairs.
French Socialist Raphael Glucksmann said Azerbaijan had made “attempts to interfere... for months”, the Telegraph reported.
While tensions over election reform were the main factor, he said that Azerbaijan, among others, was “seizing on internal problems”.
“Authoritarian regimes like Russia and Azerbaijan, but also China, seize on the slightest flaw in our societies to polarise public debate and sow chaos,” he said.
Dating back to Soviet times Russia - which staged a full-scale invasion of neighbour Ukraine in 2022 - has criticised the colonial legacy of Western nations such as France and Britain.
France is a traditional ally of Armenia, Azerbaijan’s neighbour with which Armenia fought a war in 2020 and 2023.
with wires
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