The first plane to evacuate French tourists stranded in the Pacific nation due to violence there left on Saturday, the New Caledonia High Commission said in a statement.
Publication date: 2024/05/25 – 07:21
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The international airport in the capital, Noumea, has remained closed for more than a week due to the unrest, and all commercial flights have been cancelled.
“The measures to repatriate foreign nationals and French tourists will continue,” the high commission representing the French state said in a statement.
The tourists departed on Saturday from Noumea’s Magenta Airfield on a military plane bound for Australia and New Zealand, an AFP journalist said.
They will then have to catch a commercial flight to mainland France.
“I was on holiday visiting my best friend but then the conflict broke out and I was stranded,” Audrey, who did not want to give her surname, told AFP in Noumea.
Australia and New Zealand already began repatriating their citizens on Tuesday.
For many people trapped in a region that has been rocked by violence over voting reform since May 13, things are gradually easing.
Seven people have been killed in the violence, with the latest death being a man shot dead by police after being attacked by protesters on Friday.
President Emmanuel Macron visited the islands on Thursday in an effort to urgently resolve the political crisis.
During a surprise visit, he vowed that planned voting reforms “will not be forced through”.
Indigenous Kanak people have opposed the proposed changes, saying they would expand voting rights to newcomers to the Pacific islands, some 17,000 kilometers (10,600 miles) from mainland France, diminishing their influence.
“We must never allow violence to take root,” Macron said in a television interview with local reporters at the end of his visit on Friday.
“What I want is a message of order and peace being restored. This is not a lawless place,” he said.
“A path must be paved for de-escalation so that we can build on what happens next.”
The pro-independence FLNKS party reiterated its demand for the voting reforms to be rescinded after meeting with Macron on Saturday.
“The FLNKS has called on the President of the French Republic to make a strong announcement indicating the withdrawal of the draft constitution,” it said in a statement, calling it a “prerequisite for ending the crisis.”
In Paris, French Prime Minister Gabriel Attal said “the situation in New Caledonia currently remains extremely precarious.”
France declared a state of emergency and sent in hundreds of police and military forces to restore order.
New Caledonia has been under Parisian rule since the 1800s, but many indigenous Kanak people still resent French power over the islands and want fuller autonomy or independence.
(AFP)
