New Caledonia state of emergency to end as France deploys more troops
Al Jazeera
The Pacific territory has been rocked by unrest over Paris’s plan to allow more Europeans the vote in provincial elections.
The state of emergency in the Pacific island territory of New Caledonia will be lifted on Tuesday morning, after two weeks of violent unrest over French plans to change the rules for provincial elections.
The state of emergency that was imposed on May 16 will end at at 8pm on Monday in Paris (18:00 GMT and 5am on Tuesday in Noumea), the Elysee Palace said in a statement on Sunday evening, adding that some 480 more law enforcement officers would be deployed to the territory as reinforcements for the 3,000 security personnel already on the ground.
Violence erupted in New Caledonia, where about 40 percent of the population are Indigenous Kanaks, as France’s parliament prepared to discuss constitutional changes that would allow those resident in the territory for at least 10 years to vote in provincial elections.
Critics said the amendment would dilute Kanaks’ voting influence and undermine the Noumea Accord, one of two key political agreements agreed to in the wake of the last major outbreak of violence in the 1980s.
At least seven people have been killed in the latest civil unrest, with barricades erected across major roads and commercial sites looted and set on fire.
