riots and tensions on the sidelines of the vote on constitutional reform within the Assembly | EUROtoday

Vehicles burned, shops looted, clashes between demonstrators and police: violence punctuated the night time from Monday May 13 to Tuesday May 14 in Nouméa, 17,000 kilometers from Paris, the place deputies are wanting right into a constitutional revision denounced by the separatists of New Caledonia.

At the doorway to the ” capital city “ Caledonian, a serious manufacturing facility specializing in bottling was the sufferer of an arson assault and utterly ravaged by flames round 10 p.m. Monday (1 p.m. in Paris), famous a journalist from Agence France-Presse (AFP ).

Several supermarkets have been looted in Nouméa, but additionally within the neighboring cities of Dumbéa and Mont-Dore. At least two automotive dealerships have been additionally engulfed in flames round 11 p.m., AFP additionally famous.

Since dusk, cell gendarmes and police have been battling younger masked or hooded demonstrators, who’ve taken over a number of roundabouts. Fires have been lit on the street to hinder site visitors whereas pictures from defensive bullet launchers and de-encirclement grenades have been heard all through the city.

The first altercations with the police started through the day, on the sidelines of the independence mobilization towards the constitutional reform examined Monday within the National Assembly, which goals to broaden the voters within the provincial elections, essential in New Caledonia .

Established in 1998 by the Nouméa settlement, the voters is actually frozen, which has the consequence, 25 years later, of depriving almost one in 5 voters of the correct to vote. For the Minister of the Interior and Overseas Territories Gérald Darmanin, who carried out this constitutional reform, this provision “no longer conforms to the principles of democracy”.

But the separatists, quite the opposite, criticize a thaw which dangers “minorize the Kanak indigenous people even further”. The authorities venture shall be submitted to a solemn vote by deputies on Tuesday afternoon. “I have a thought for the police (…) and particularly for the gendarmes, from whom we are currently evacuating families threatened with death by demonstrators who do not go through democracy, but through violence, live ammunition, intimidation and death threats.castigated Gérald Darmanin from the podium of the Assembly on Monday.

Fear of new incidents

According to police sources, twenty arrests took place at 12:25 a.m. in the police zone. The gendarmerie, which is in charge of most of New Caledonia, reported five arrests at the start of the evening; 26 gendarmes were injured by the day's clashes, including one seriously injured in an eye.

In concern of recent incidents, the Raid, 4 squadrons of cell gendarmes and two sections of CRS 8, a unit specializing within the struggle towards city violence, will arrive as reinforcements, AFP realized from a supply near the matter.

Near Nouméa, the street which crosses the tribe of Saint-Louis, an unbiased stronghold, at Mont-Dore and which connects the south of the island to Nouméa was lower by the police, because of the presence of quite a few demonstrators armed with stones and lit fires on the street.

The common district of Montravel, in Nouméa, additionally needed to be lower off to site visitors on a number of events, in addition to the expressway which connects town to the north of the island. In an announcement printed Monday, the High Commissioner of the Republic in New Caledonia Louis Le Franc condemned “the blockades of public roads which have taken place since this morning and the numerous attacks on police officers and soldiers of the national gendarmerie”.

He specified that he had given the order to “gradual unlocking” busy axes through the day and requested “that the offenders implicated in these illegal actions be arrested”. The sale of alcohol and the transport of weapons shall be prohibited all through New Caledonian territory on Tuesday and Wednesday, it’s specified within the press launch.