10,397 Miles from Paris

October 4: New Caledonia Independence Referendum

Mainland France is geographically small, but its overseas territories are found around the world—in more time zones than any other country.

One of these territories, New Caledonia, will hold an independence referendum next month. New Caledonia is located about two thousand miles west of Australia and has a population of about 280,000 people. New Caledonia was first colonized by France in 1853 and after that became a penal colony for French prisoners, including a number of exiled revolutionaries who had taken part in the failed Paris Commune of 1871. The country’s indigenous Kanak people were forced into reservations. This year’s referendum—the second held since 2018—is the result of a long independence movement.

In this conversation, freelance journalist Coralie Cochin, who has been living and working in New Caledonia for 15 years, breaks down what’s at stake and who’s in charge as the October 4 referendum approaches.

Why the referendum? Why now?

The referendum stems back to agreements in 1988 called the Matignon Agreements between Jean-Marie Tjibaou and Jacques Lafleur, along with Michel Rocard, then French Prime Minister. Tjibaou was a proponent of independence and Lafleur was a so-called loyalist leader who wanted New Caledonia to stay part of France. The Agreements followed a four-year period of violence in New Caledonia, which saw something close to a civil war between the Kanak independence fighters and those who wished to keep New Caledonia in France.

The Matignon Agreements and the Nouméa Accord that came afterward were designed to put New Caledonia on a path toward possible self-determination, which would be achieved through a referendum that the Accord said would take place sometime between 2014 and 2018. According to the agreement, the referendum could be followed by two others in the case of a “no” vote. The first referendum was held in 2018. About 57% of the population voted against independence.

What is the status of New Caledonia in relation to France?

France has a number of overseas territories and regions, such as Réunion, off the coast of Africa, and Guadeloupe, in the Caribbean. Unlike those, New Caledonia is “a special collectivity.”  This means that it has greater autonomy compared to other territories. While all New Caledonians are French citizens and can vote in French elections, certain elements of the state are determined by New Caledonia rather than by France, such as the elementary school, high school and health systems. Then there are other areas that are still completely determined by the French state, for example currency [New Caledonia uses the currency called the Pacific franc, once called the Pacific colonial franc] and university education, the police, the army, and justice system. Certain areas of sovereignty are shared between the French and New Caledonia, like aviation regulation.

New Caledonia’s school curriculum has been amended [in recent years] to include more about Kanak history and culture, but that is still a very minor part of it. I had a discussion with a young Caledonian woman recently who told me that only at 25 did she start to learn about her own country. For a long time, the history taught in school was the history of Gaul, like one might learn in Paris, some 16,000 kilometers away.

The history of New Caledonia is also quite different from many other overseas territories. It was colonized by France in 1853 and became a penal colony for both criminals and political prisoners. (Many members of the Paris Commune, for example, were sent to New Caledonia.) When nickel was discovered in the middle of the 19th century, the indigenous people of New Caledonia, the Kanak, were excluded from working in mines and confined to reservations.

I should mention that New Caledonia is an extremely unequal country and that this inequality tracks along ethnic lines. Daily food and goods are expensive, and the minimum wage is low. You only have to walk to some of the poorer areas north of Nouméa, the capital, to see the links between inequality and ethnic divides in the country.  

What are the arguments for independence and what are the arguments against it? 

For many Kanak people the Matignon Agreements and the later accords which put New Caledonia on a path towards independence have not been truly fulfilled, and only with real independence will the country belong to its original people.

The majority who voted YES for independence in 2018 came from regions mainly inhabited by Kanak people. [For many voters,] the question of is less one of independence than decolonization.

This campaign feels very different from the campaign in 2018, even though that was only two years ago. Over the course of the campaign into 2018, a poll was released that showed some 70% voting against independence. So many loyalists felt very comfortable and approached the referendum in a rather complacent manner. On the other hand, the independence movement mobilized very quickly and ended up having a much stronger showing than expected. Many people had been waiting 30 years for this moment – 30 years since the Accord.

What is striking in the second round is that you can really see positions begin to harden. On social media, the conversations can be really virulent. The loyalists have tried to scare voters about what might happen if New Caledonia is no longer to be part of France, saying, for example that people will have to pay for school, or that the health system will fall apart.

The loyalists often talk about the example of Vanuatu, which became independent in 1980, exactly 40 years ago. They say, “look at Vanuatu — China is now taking over the entire country.” Vanuatu is politically independent but is becoming dependent on Chinese economically.  But New Caledonia is not at all like Vanuatu. New Caledonia does not have the same history, or the same relationship with France. It has many more resources, such as its nickel mines, which account for about 25% of the world’s nickel.

Many loyalists [who have, on average, higher salaries than those who voted for independence] fear they will lose their current standard of living in the case of a yes vote. (The GDP in New Caledonia is equivalent to that of the French region of Alsace, and similar to that of New Zealand.)

What feels different from the 2018 referendum?

During the previous campaign there were still discussions between the state, and representatives of both the loyalist and independence movements – a sort of tripartite discussion. These discussions held the longer view that no matter the result of the referendum we will need to figure out the future of the country. This time, the discussions are no longer happening. As a result, one does have the impression that polarization has gotten much more intense.

Who can vote?

The list of people who can vote in the referendum is quite different from those who can vote in general elections. For example, I, as someone who lives in New Caledonia but was not born here, can vote in the municipal elections and in the presidential elections, but I cannot vote in the referendum or in the provincial elections for the Congress of New Caledonia. To vote in the referendum, you need to satisfy a number of criteria. [These criteria have changed between the two referenda and are themselves the subject of dispute. They include, for example, having a “customary civil status” accorded by the French law to people of Kanak descent.] Some 34,000 people who can vote in municipal elections cannot vote in the referendum.

Many French territories reproached the government for its response to the coronavirus. How has this virus been experienced in New Caledonia? 

Both the pro-independence movement and loyalists have used the coronavirus in their campaigns. On the one hand, the loyalists have said, “Look how lucky we are to have the French state, who can help us from a health and economic point of view.” New Caledonia took a $270 million loan from the French government to mitigate the economic downturn. 

But on the other hand, at the very beginning of the crisis, Kanak tribal leaders, who have their own jurisdiction, took things into their own hands well before the state started to talk about a quarantine. Tribal leaders, for example, authorized closing an airport on the islands and stopped the arrival of cruise ships, well before the executive Caledonian branch put through those decisions. It is worth saying that Kanak tribes had been very affected by previous epidemics, especially by the Spanish flu epidemic of 1918.

And now there are new questions about the loan and how New Caledonia will be able to pay it back—whether it ties the islands to France no matter the result of the referendum.

Where has the French state been in all of this?

­­­The French government has been rather neutral. Many had waited for the government to give more indication about what might happen when it comes to an independence referendum and what future relationships with New Caledonia might look like. But when asked about its future relationship with New Caledonia, the government simply produced the same document it had compiled in 2018.

There had been an expectation that the French state would serve as a mediator between loyalist and pro-independence parties. But for the most part they have stayed out of it. There is the added difficulty that our borders have been closed since March, and so it is not clear to what extent representatives from the French state can come, or under what circumstances.