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France deployed troops to New Caledonia’s ports and international airport, banned TikTok and imposed a state of emergency on Thursday following night of clashes that have left four dead and hundreds wounded.
Pro-independence, largely Indigenous protests against a French plan to impose new voting rules on its Pacific archipelago have spiralled into the deadliest violence since the 1980s, with a police officer among several killed by gunfire.
On major thoroughfares, the torched detritus amassed over four days of unrest was scattered amid fist-size hunks of rock and cement that appeared to have been flung during riots.
As part of a sweeping French response, security forces placed five suspected ringleaders under house arrest, according to a statement by the high commission, which represents the French state in New Caledonia.
House searches will be carried out “in the coming hours”, it said.
More than 200 “rioters” have been arrested since the clashes broke out, the high commission said.
Hundreds of people, including 64 police, have been wounded, officials said.
Presently according to reports from the French authorities, the third night of “clashes”, though AFP correspondents in the streets of the capital Noumea said the situation and environment appeared calmer than previous nights.
White residents in some neighbourhoods sat on garden chairs, manned barricades and strung up improvised white flags, a symbol of their intention to keep peaceful watch over the streets looted shelves and discarded packaging.
“We just grabbed what there was in the shops to eat. Soon there will be no more shops,” said one woman in a suburb of the capital, who spoke on condition of anonymity.
“We need milk for the children. I don’t see it as looting,” she told AFP.
In Paris, French President Emmanuel Macron offered to hold talks Thursday with New Caledonian lawmakers and called for a resumption of political dialogue.
– TikTok ban –
French Prime Minister Gabriel Attal told a crisis ministerial meeting that troops had been deployed to secure ports and the international airport, which has been closed to commercial flights.
TikTok had been banned because it was being used by rioters, he said. By Thursday morning, AFP could identify fewer than 20 accounts related to the violence on the platform.
