The pro-independence party no longer wants to discuss the future of New Caledonia as long as the french State continues to support the sale of the nickel plant to the Swiss trader Trafigura.
The conflict over the sale of the nickel factory in southern New Caledonia is taking it up a notch. Its owner, the Brazilian Vale, has chosen to sell it to the Swiss group Trafigura, which specializes in oil trading. The customary people of the South refuse this sale and want the factory to be sold to a local group, the Sofinor, associated with the Korean metallurgist Korea zinc. Since last week, the customary people have been blocking the factory’s entrances and the entrances to the port of Noumea. They have also blocked roads and organized rallies in various Caledonian communes.
Goa’s letter to New Caledonians
The conflict took an even more political turn on Wednesday, November 18. The Caledonian Union, the largest and oldest pro-independence political party, wrote a “letter to the Caledonians”. Daniel Goa, the president of the Caledonian Union, says that the French state has not listened to his message for “a fair solution to the problem set by the sale of the factory in the South”. For him, the State has taken up “the good old colonial habit of considering the Kanak word for a negligible quantity”. The party then decided not to participate in discussions on the institutional future of New Caledonia.
Macron’s little phrase
The main political parties of Caledonia had to meet to agree on future institutions. The referendum of October 4th rejected independence by 53%. Another referendum could be organized in 2021 or 2022. Independentists believe they can win it since the YES to independence has progressed compared to the first referendum in 2018. Daniel Goa is not talking about colonization by chance. He does not forget that during his presidential election campaign in 2017, Emmanuel Macron had said that colonization was a crime against humanity. An embarrassing little sentence today…
