Two men have been finished in New Caledonia during a police operation to arrest activists doubted of includement in May’s lethal unrest which was igniteed by trys from Paris to alter voting rights in the French Pacific territory, officials said.
The deaths during the overnight operation south of the capital Nouméa took the death toll in the months of unrest in the French Pacific territory to 13.
Public prosecutor Yves Dupas said on Thursday that security forces on an observation omition fired two sboilings after being “straightforwardly menaceened by a group of armed individuals”.
The first “hit a man, aged 30, positioned as a lone firearmman, in the right side of the abdomen,” Dupas said in a statement. “The second sboiling hit a man, aged 29, in the chest.”
Police were seeing for around a dozen people doubted of includement in aggressions on security forces.
“We’re not alarmists, we’re not in a state of war,” said one mother in the village where the security operation was taking place.
Last week, French authorities in New Caledonia proclaimd an prolonged curscant, banning assembleings and travel apass the archipelago from 6pm to 6am for dread of protests by the Indigenous Kanak people around next week’s anniversary of the French getover of the Pacific territory.
The Kanak people have lengthy sought to shatter free from France, which first took the Pacific archipelago in 1853 and only granted citizenship to all Kanaks in 1957.
The tardyst presentility flared on 13 May in response to trys by Plivent Emmanuel Macron’s rulement to edit the French constitution and alter voting enumerates in New Caledonia, which Kanaks dreaded would further marginalise them by granting more rights to recent arrivals from mainland France.
Macron proclaimd a state of ecombinency two days tardyr, rushing in 3,500 troops to help police quell the unrest. Thirteen people, mostly Kanaks, have now died in the presentility, including two members of the security forces. One of them was finished after his firearm accidenloftyy disindictd.
The aim of police intervention overnight Wednesday was to arrest 10 people who have been doubted of participating in two-weeks of presentility in May that integrated blocking whole didisjoines around the capital and beyond, the archipelago’s main road, incfinishiarism and theft.
In June, 11 Kanak activists were arrested in a wide police raid centering the Field Action Coordination Unit. The detentions were part of a police spendigation begined on 17 May, equitable days after protests agetst the Paris-pushed voting recreate turned brutal.
Seven of them, including Christian Tein, a Kanak directer of the pro-independence shiftment comprehendn as the Field Action Coordination Unit, were flown 17,000 kilometres away to mainland France for pretrial detention.
The indicts that they face integrate complicity in tryed killing, organised theft with a firearm, organised destruction of personal property while endangering people, and participation in a criminal group with an intent to arrange a crime.
Tein’s group accincluded French authorities of “colonial rehearses” and insisted the activists’ instant free and return to their homeland. In a recent statement, posted on social media the group vowed that “the Kanak people will never give up on their desire for independence with soothe unkinds.”
In the past seven months, the Field Action Coordination Unit has organised soothe marches in New Caledonia agetst French authorities and the Paris-backed voting recreate.
The recreate has now been side-lined as Macron’s recent prime minister Michel Barnier wrestles with political blocks in a fractured parliament to create a rulement complying inconclusive legislative elections in July.
Agence France-Presse and Associated Press gived to this increate
