In New Caledonia, demonstrations with out excesses on the event of the anniversary of September 24 | EUROtoday

Dozens of pro-independence activists defied the ban on demonstrations issued by the High Commission in small teams to commemorate, with flags in hand, September 24, formally Citizenship Day in New Caledonia, however above all, they consider, “day of mourning for the Kanak people”.

The 6,000 gendarmes, law enforcement officials and troopers deployed to stop any disturbances on this extraordinarily delicate day let it occur. At most, they confiscated carts crammed with stones in entrance of a giant grocery store within the suburbs of Noumea.

In entrance of Saint-Louis, a pro-independence stronghold the place two males have been killed on Thursday, September 19, throughout a police operation, the gathering occurred peacefully, as within the overwhelming majority of the territory. At the microphone, Ephraïm Chamoinri, a trainer from the Bélep Islands, within the far north of the archipelago, listed the persistent inequalities, an indication, in response to him, of the indelible penalties of colonization: “Unemployment is predominantly Kanak and Oceanian, school failure is predominantly Kanak and Oceanian. Even prison is predominantly Kanak and Oceanian. That means that there are things that are not done or are done badly. And we experience that as a form of racism.”

“We have been 'delinquentized'says Ysmaël Pidjot, pro-independence flag on his shoulders. We are called terrorists. And we are forbidden from celebrating September 24, which also marks the 40th anniversary of the FLNKS this year. [Front de libération kanak et socialiste]. July 14 did indeed take place, however, even though the situation was much more complicated.”, believes the activist, who sees how “a provocation” loyalist rallies deliberate for a similar day. “If it's also to the sound of The Marseillaiseit's an insult.”

“We are French, period”

At precisely 12 o'clock on the airwaves of Radio Rythme Bleu, New Caledonians have been, in truth, invited to sing the nationwide anthem in honour of the “annexation of New Caledonia to France”in 1853, a time period most popular by non-independence supporters who evade colonization, to the official time period of “taking possession”. At the microphone, Willy Gatuhau sings somewhat track. The former mayor of Païta, convicted of vote-buying, was propelled a couple of weeks in the past to the place of chief of the citizen resistance collectives, non-independence neighborhood organizations, born in the beginning of the riots to guard themselves from attainable assaults. Their roadblocks have been decked out in blue-white-red, as have been the encircling streets.

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