In Nouméa, an evening of violent riots awakens the specter of the “events” of 1984 | EUROtoday

Everywhere, Monday May 13 within the night, the identical scene is repeated tirelessly in Nouméa, the normally peaceable capital of New Caledonia. Since dusk, very younger independence activists have been engaged in a harmful recreation of cat and mouse with the police. Molotov cocktails and stones on one aspect, Flash-Ball, de-encirclement grenades and armored autos on the opposite. The metropolis is on fireplace.

As the evening progresses, testimonies of the outbreak of violence which hits the districts of Magenta, Montravel and Rivière-Salée are making the rounds on social networks. Several comfort shops have been set on fireplace, in addition to not less than two automobile dealerships, and the manufacturing facility of the corporate Le Froid, a big drinks distributor, was utterly ravaged by flames round 10 p.m. native time.

The rebel is spreading to upscale neighborhoods, that are usually spared. At the beginning of the night, on the Eau-Vive roundabout which marks the southern entrance to privileged Nouméa, dozens of frail hooded figures take possession of the central reservation, earlier than being dislodged by cellular gendarmes at center of astounded walkers and motorists.

Thirty-six gendarmes injured

The High Commissioner of the Republic, Louis Le Franc, however issued a agency warning to the tv information of the channel La 1^time, earlier. He significantly addressed the younger Kanaks from the Saint-Louis tribe, very near Nouméa, who shot on the gendarmes with out hitting them. “We don’t play with security (…) with automatic weapons, handguns, large caliber rifles. I will hire the GIGN [groupe d’intervention de la gendarmerie nationale] in the Saint-Louis sector. » He was authorized to retaliate in self-defense.

At the beginning of the afternoon, three guards were taken hostage during a quickly put down mutiny in the overcrowded “Camp Est” jail, whereas roads to Grande Terre have been minimize off. The airport, threatened, ended up closing.

Before it degenerated, at the present time, which was to mark the disapproval of the independence camp in the direction of the constitutional reform on the opening of the citizens, examined Monday by the National Assembly, had however began calmly, in accordance with the directions of the organizers . The mobilization, introduced weeks in the past by the sector actions coordination cell (CCAT), the devoted group of the Kanak and Socialist National Liberation Front (FLNKS), was there. Not because the beginnings of the quasi-civil warfare which struck the archipelago within the Eighties have the separatists gathered a lot.

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