Skip to main content
Macron visits New Caledonia, vowing that extra police will stay until pro-independence unrest ends
People demonstrate as French President Emmanuel Macron's motorcade drives past in Noumea, New Caledonia, May 23, 2024

FRENCH President Emmanuel Macron arrived in New Caledonia today, insisting that police reinforcements sent in to help battle violent unrest would “stay as long as necessary.”

He also demanded the removal of protesters’ barricades in the Pacific archipelago, where the indigenous Kanak people have long sought independence from France.

Kanak leaders, who had declined Mr Macron’s offer of talks by video a week earlier, greeted him in person today, joining a meeting in the capital Noumea with rival loyalist leaders who want New Caledonia, which was seized by French forces in 1853 under Emperor Napoleon III, to remain part of France.

The 95th Anniversary Appeal
Support the Morning Star
You have reached the free limit.
Subscribe to continue reading.
Similar stories
A protester of the
Features / 22 September 2025
22 September 2025

DENNIS BROE gives an update on the last week of anti-austerity protests against the Macron regime, which has seen the supposedly more right-leaning Gilets Jaunes join with the unions and the left

NOT BUDGING AN INCH: A rally of the ‘Block Everything’ movement in Strasbourg, eastern France on Wednesday, the placard that reads: ‘Let's tax the rich,’ and the guillotine adds a telling historic context
Features / 13 September 2025
13 September 2025

The desperate French president keeps running up the same political cul-de-sac. DENNIS BROE offers an explanation

A woman waves a Kanak and Socialist National Liberation Front (FLNKS) flag in Noumea, New Caledonia, May 15, 2024
Colonialism / 13 July 2025
13 July 2025