A picture is sometimes worth an entire political program. On July 17 and 18, 2024, Abbas Abbasov, former Deputy Prime Minister of Azerbaijan (from 1992 to 2006), chaired the “first congress of French colonies”. On his left, Jean-Jacob Bicep, former MEP and member of the Popular Union for the Liberation of Guadeloupe. On his right, Mickaël Forrest, member of the government of New Caledonia, responsible for external relations, belonging to the Kanak and Socialist Liberation Front (FLNKS). The cream of the French Overseas independence movement – from the Antilles to Corsica, via New Caledonia – met in Baku, the Azeri capital. The event was organized by the Baku Initiative Group (BIG), an NGO established in July 2023, which has dedicated its existence to the “struggle against colonialism.”
Since its creation, the GIB has woven its web with all the separatists in France. Very attentive to the mobilizations against the high cost of living in Martinique, it has tried to exploit the unrest that has been shaking New Caledonia for four months. To the point of worrying the French executive. As early as May, the Minister of the Interior at the time warned against Azerbaijani interference in Noumea. Gérald Darmanin thus regretted “that some of the separatists had made a deal with Azerbaijan”. The investigation file of the investigation led by the Noumea prosecutor’s office into the riots that began on May 13th lifts the veil a little more on the relations between certain prominent separatists and the power of the former Soviet satellite.
Destabilizing France
Searches uncovered several plane tickets to Azerbaijan. Some of them, investigators noted, were paid for in manats, the country’s currency, by an Azerbaijani travel agency. The shadow of Moscow, a close ally of Baku, also hangs over the activities of the separatists – Russia is mentioned several times in the file. Not surprising: “The decolonial question is the common denominator of the argument against France used by foreign powers,” a diplomat from the Quai d’Orsay explained to us in March.
Initially, Baku’s activism came as a surprise to the French authorities. “It wasn’t on our radar at all,” admits a diplomat specializing in the Asia-Pacific region. And for good reason: the actions of this Caucasian country against France have a recent origin. Baku cannot digest the support displayed by Paris for Armenia, engaged in a conflict with Azerbaijan in Nagorno-Karabakh since September 27, 2020.
“Putin, welcome to Kanaky”
On May 17, a note published by Viginum, the Matignon service responsible for identifying online disinformation, warned against “several informational maneuvers of Azerbaijani origin” that targeted “France in the context of the riots in New Caledonia.” Shared on the GIB’s social networks, these messages are often accompanied by several articles from Azertac or TrendAz, the Azerbaijani press agencies affiliated with the government. In July, the announcement of “scholarships” offered by Abbasov to French overseas nationals who came to study in the country’s universities was thus taken up by the Azerbaijani information ecosystem.
In recent months, Azerbaijani flags have flourished at protests in New Caledonia. Several disturbing banners – including one wishing Putin “Welcome to Kanaky” – were also deployed in the streets of Le Caillou. In December 2023, during a visit by Minister of the Armed Forces Sébastien Lecornu to Noumea, two women presenting themselves as Azerbaijani journalists mingled with the crowd. Identified as close to their country’s intelligence services, they were expelled. On May 16, three days after the start of the riots in Noumea, the Baku Initiative Group also organized a video conference joined by separatists from French Guiana, Martinique, Guadeloupe, and Corsica “in solidarity with the indigenous peoples of New Caledonia.”
A detour to Baku
To lead this offensive, Azerbaijan is relying on the Non-Aligned Movement. A legacy of the Cold War, this organization brings together more than a hundred states that, at the time, did not recognize themselves in either the Eastern or Western bloc lines. It regularly holds summits, organized by a rotating presidency. Baku occupied it from 2019 to 2023, and took advantage of the opportunity to become the champion of the fight against colonialism. It is in this context, in particular, that the country has managed to forge links with pro-independence figures, going so far as to conclude agreements with them. In April, a Caledonian elected official, Omayra Naisseline, signed a memorandum of parliamentary cooperation with the president of the Azerbaijani Parliament. A document seen in Paris as an attempt at foreign interference by Baku in France. “At no time were the elected officials or the Congress office informed of the approach. We have no idea of the content of this agreement,” fumes Virginie Ruffenach, president (LR) of the L’Avenir en confiance group in the Congress of New Caledonia.
The loyalist elected officials – in favour of a French New Caledonia – are all the more furious because they have long been wondering about the multiple trips back and forth of the pro-independence representatives to Azerbaijan. Ruffenach, who shares with Roch Wamytan, former pro-independence president of the Congress of New Caledonia, a commitment to the Parliamentary Assembly of the Francophonie (APF), remembers seeing him go there during a trip. “We were travelling to Georgia as part of a general assembly of the APF. The rest of the delegation went back to Noumea. Roch Wamytan made a detour to Baku,” she explains. A trip that the person concerned explains to us he made “on his own money”.
Contacts “absolutely not disputed”
While in Tbilisi, Wamytan took an hour-long flight to attend the ministerial summit of the Non-Aligned Movement on July 6, 2023. On the sidelines of the event – shared on the FLNKS’s social networks – the independence leader joined a round table entitled “Towards a complete elimination of colonialism” with other French independence movements. Alongside him was Magalie Tingal, FLNKS’s UN representative. Nothing more normal for François Roux, a historic lawyer for the FLNKS: “The contacts with Azerbaijan are absolutely not disputed and can be explained because the country had the presidency of the non-aligned summit.”
Curious about the multiple trips made by pro-independence elected officials between Noumea and Baku, the loyalists therefore asked questions. “We questioned them about their travels and at first got no answer,” says Virginie Ruffenach. “Until they replied: ‘It’s Baku that regulates everything’.”
“Ticket paid in manats”
The file of the judicial investigation opened on May 17 against Christian Tein, spokesperson for the Cellule de coordination des actions de terrain (CCAT) – an organization close to the FLNKS – sheds new light on these trips. In a report retracing the trips and exits from the territory targeted in the investigation, the New Caledonia customs service sent investigators several booking files to Baku. On one of them, made from April 16 to 20, 2024 – in the days when the memorandum between Paris and Baku was signed –, it is mentioned that “tickets were paid for by an Azeri agency in manats [monnaie azérie]” for six people. Among them, Magalie Tingal, the provincial councilor representing the FLNKS at the UN. In another extract from the investigation file, it is indicated that a “reservation” was made “by an Azeri agency” on April 6, 2024 for a trip 10 days later. The “ticket paid in manats” was intended for Roch Wamytan – who ultimately did not board. In another report, it is further reported that a reservation was “made on December 13, 2023” by another travel agency located in Baku, Azerbaijan. Paid in manats, the ticket was reserved in the name of Brenda Wanabo, wife of Ipeze, the communications manager of the CCAT, an organization at the forefront of preparing for the spring riots.
“When we are invited to summits by Azerbaijan, Baku pays the travel expenses,” Roch Wamytan confirmed to L’Express. The independence leader is used to this practice. “When we go to countries on our own initiative, we pay for our plane tickets. When they invite us, they are the ones who offer them,” he explains, citing the example of Vanuatu, a neighboring country of New Caledonia. Wamytan puts things into perspective, assuring that the plane tickets of the independence supporters are also paid for “by the United Nations” when they are invited to participate in New York at the C-24, the UN Special Committee on Decolonization. “It’s the same thing,” he assures.
Moscow Presence
Azerbaijan is not the only foreign country mentioned in the court file. The same report states that a certain David Nicolas (known as Davy) Bolo made a reservation “on February 20, 2024, through a Russian agency” to travel to Moscow for four days that same month. The ticket “paid for in Pacific francs and rubles” was ultimately not used, as the pro-independence activist appeared to change his mind during a stopover in Brisbane, Australia, on February 23. Two days later, the Forum on Multipolarity began in Moscow, an event to which activists from Asia, Africa, Europe and America were invited. Alexander Dugin, a Russian ultranationalist ideologue, spoke there.
This aborted trip does not surprise Roch Wamytan. “Moscow has already invited us to summits,” he explains. The former president of the Caledonian Congress even remembers an invitation “last year, to a meeting on decolonization in Russia” to which the Caledonian separatists were invited. In July 2023, an “Africa-Russia” summit was indeed organized in Saint Petersburg by Vladimir Putin. The pan-Africanist activist Kémi Séba, stripped of his French nationality a few months later, was also there. “But the person who had been designated to go to this event could not go, he was blocked at the airport in Australia because of the war in Ukraine,” explains Wamytan.
This presence of Moscow in the investigation file is not isolated. In the document of requisitions for the purposes of placement in pretrial detention, it is indicated that Dimitri Tein Qenegei, member of the CCAT, sent on June 1st to a mobile phone belonging to “Tein” – the name of the spokesperson and leader of the organization – a text message mentioning a “message from Russia”. Its content has apparently not been found.
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