While New Caledonia is experiencing renewed tension since pro-independence figures were transferred over the weekend to mainland France to be incarcerated, the courts decided this Tuesday, June 25, to imprison two other pro-independence activists. on site, in Nouméa, in what appears to be a gesture of appeasement, their lawyers believe.
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Since the transfer to France of seven independence activists during the night from Saturday to Sunday, violence has resumed: this Tuesday, a school was burned, a police station ransacked in the suburbs of Nouméa; further north, in Bourail, two docks were set on fire according to the mayor who also reported exchanges of fire.
During a press point bringing together most of the independence movements, the secretary general of the Caledonian Union, Dominique Fochi, castigated the “ colonial practices ” of Parisdenouncing the “ deportations » of those he considers to be “ political prisoners “.
These seven activists were transferred, including Christian Téin, the spokesperson for the Field Action Coordination Cell, accused of having fomented the riots, which this movement refutes. In total, 11 separatists were arrested on Wednesday, then indicted for “complicity in attempted murder” and “theft and destruction by organized gangs in particular“.
Read alsoNew Caledonia: an independence leader placed in preventive detention in mainland France
“Justice has returned to greater serenity”
Two of them, who appeared before a judge this Tuesday, were finally placed in pre-trial detention in Nouméa, including Joël Tjibaou, son of Kanak leader Jean-Marie Tjibaou, assassinated in 1989. A decision which “ can be seen as a desire to calm things down », His lawyer Claire Ghiani told AFP. “ The fact that he didn’t leave France is a relief », added the lawyer.
Joël Tjibaou and Gilles Jorédié, had requested a deferred debate before the judge of freedoms and detention, which took place on Tuesday June 25. At the end, the judge decided to detain them provisionally at the Nouméa penitentiary center (East Camp), Me Ghiani and Me Stéphane Bonomo, lawyer for Gilles Jorédié, told AFP. “ Justice has returned to greater serenity “, estimated Me Bonomo, even if his client “ is not safe “, according to him, to see the prison administration ” decide unilaterally and on the sly » to put it in “ a military plane » for the metropolis.
On the loyalist side, the outgoing Renaissance MP is worried about a situation “ more tense than ever. »
Read alsoNew Caledonia plunges back into violence after the transfers of activists to the mainland