AFP – French police arrested eight people in Pacific territory New Caledonia yesterday, prosecutors said, including one of the leaders of the pro-independence Field Action Co-ordination Cell (CCAT) movement that organised weeks of sometimes deadly unrest last month.
CCAT chief Christian Tein was the only detainee named by Yves Dupas, chief prosecutor in New Caledonia’s capital Noumea, as being arrested for “organised crime” offences, under which they can be held for up to 96 hours.
Violence erupted in New Caledonia, around 1,300 kilometres (km) northeast of Australia, on May 13 over French plans to update the electoral roll to include people with more than 10 years’ residency. Indigenous Kanak people feared that the move would leave them in a permanent minority in the territory and put independence definitively out of reach.
Nine people including two police officers have been killed, hundreds wounded, and around EUR1.5 billion (USD1.6 billion) of damage inflicted.
France responded by sending more than 3,000 troops and police to New Caledonia – almost 17,000km from Paris.
Since then, the constitutional reform needed to change the territory’s electoral law has de facto been abandoned, after French President Emmanuel Macron dissolved Parliament for a snap election on June 30 and July 7.
Pro-independence activist group CCAT was created in November last year to oppose the electoral reform plans.
