New Caledonia: Clashes and one dead in hotbed of independence struggle (2024)

It came as the culmination of weeks of heightened tensions. On the morning of Thursday, August 15, a man was killed during clashes with mobile gendarmes in Thio, the cradle of mining activity in New Caledonia, but also a hotbed of the independence struggle of the 1980s.

At dawn, militants from the pro-independence CCAT group at the heart of the mobilization had, according to prosecutor Yves Dupas, erected a new roadblock at the Saint-Pierre tribe. The road had been cleared "for several days, thanks to the work of the customary leaders," emphasized the commander of the gendarmerie, General Nicolas Matthéos. "We therefore intervened to prevent any attempt to reblock the axis."

It was during this intervention that the 43-year-old man was fatally wounded in the jugular vein in an exchange of fire with the gendarmes. Another man was seriously injured and remains between life and death, while a gendarme had been hit in the face by a stone earlier in the day.

Archipelago hot spots

The death immediately put the town into uproar. Société Le Nickel (SLN) facilities at the Plateau mine were destroyed. By Thursday evening, homes of the company's managers were burning.

In the vast majority of the territory, the protests against the unfreezing of the electoral body, which degenerated into riots on May 13, have clearly stalled over time. But Thio, like the village of Saint-Louis in the suburbs of Nouméa and the town of Poya in the Northern Province, is among the hot spots of the archipelago.

Security is so precarious in this town of 2,500 inhabitants that the medical dispensary closed at the end of July, as did the dialysis unit. For treatment, those who can – all public transport in the area has been at a standstill since May 13 – have to travel the 47 kilometers of winding road through the mountain range to the village of Boulouparis on the west coast.

Loyalist stronghold, then independence stronghold

Elsewhere in the territory, demonstrations have picked up considerably in recent weeks, with calls from the CCAT and leaders of the Socialist Kanak National Liberation Front. But in Thio, the local CCAT has stopped following the slogans of the national CCAT, judged to be too soft. This radicalism is linked to the village's history. A loyalist bastion on the east coast before the events of the 1980s, Thio was seized at the very start of the quasi-civil war that ravaged the archipelago, at the end of a veritable siege carried out in 1980 under the leadership of Eloi Machoro, which led to the evacuation without return of almost the entire European population to the west coast. When Machoro was killed by law enforcement officers in 1985, the village became a pro-independence stronghold.

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