Ghosts of Algeria Haunt French Colony of New Caledonia

On this South Seas island that is as French as France itself, there are troubling whispers of another time on the soft breeze. They are an echo from Algeria, where colonial France hung on for too long and paid a price that scarred both France and Algeria.

Having been bypassed by the wave of decolonization that swept Africa in the 1960s and the South Pacific in the 1970s and early 1980s, many Melanesians of New Caledonia, an overseas French territory, say the time has come for independence here.

But like almost everyone else in the region, they do not want to see a French exodus that could create a vacuum and open the door for unwelcome outside meddlers.

The French colons , whose roots here go back 134 years to when Napoleon III annexed New Caledonia as a penal colony, respond that this is their land, too, and some of them--at least the extremist fringe supported by right-wing whites in Brisbane, Australia--talk of fighting to keep it, of perhaps making a Rhodesian-style declaration of unilateral independence.

France Criticized

Tension resulting from this racial standoff led to violence in 1984 and 1985, and to 25 fatalities. It has put France on the defensive regionally, brought criticism of Premier Jacques Chirac’s government in Paris from allies in Australia and New Zealand, and created what Papua New Guinea’s Prime Minister Paias Wingti calls “the gravest threat to stability in the South Pacific.”

In an attempt to defuse the issue and establish France’s legitimacy here, Chirac is pushing ahead with a referendum, scheduled for Sept. 13, in which New Caledonia’s 145,000 people--43% are Melanesian, 38% French--will be asked to decide whether they want independence or continued association with France. On June 13, a group of 39 French magistrates arrived to organize the election process.

France says it will abide by the outcome. But if the voters choose independence, the Chirac government intends to do what France did in 1958, when the West African nation of Guinea rejected Charles de Gaulle’s offer of association with France in favor of full independence: It will pull out overnight, ending its annual subsidy of $320 million and taking home its 4,800 civil servants and 6,800 soldiers and policemen.

In Guinea, this led to economic collapse and the radicalization of Sekou Toure’s government, which turned to the Soviet Union for help.

“If this becomes an independent country,” said Philippe Berges, the senior political adviser to the French high commissioner in Noumea, “the teachers will go and there will be no one to teach; the army will go, and there will be no one to provide security; the civil servants will go, and there will be no one to run the government.”

But this does not appear to be imminent. Because the 19% of the population that are Polynesian, Vietnamese and Asian usually side with the French politically, the dark-skinned Melanesians are a minority in their own country.

The five Melanesian independence parties, united under the banner of the Kanak Socialist National Liberation Front (FLNKS), intend to boycott the referendum, making rejection of independence a virtual certainty. They plan to protest the vote with a nonviolent march to Noumea that the independence leader, Jean-Marie Tjibaou, an Anglican priest educated at the Sorbonne in Paris, hopes will attract as many as 10,000 people.

Australia and the other South Pacific nations believe France’s take-it-or-leave-it attitude precludes the possibility of any lasting solution in New Caledonia. Relations between France and Australia have become so frayed over France’s South Pacific policies that France expelled the Australian consul general here earlier this year. The Australian government does not plan to replace him on a permanent basis until it sees what it considers to be a more constructive French policy in the Pacific.

Even French President Francois Mitterrand has joined the dissenting voices, calling the referendum “a historical mistake” because the pro-independence parties are playing no role.

Australia’s minister of foreign affairs, Bill Hayden, said in a recent speech in Sydney: “We support the continued presence of France as an influential factor in maintaining the region as part of the Western community. But we maintain that it should be the kind of presence that the people of the region consider acceptable and constructive.

“My abiding concern--and I don’t say this lightly--is that a major factor in the force for unification in the region will be opposition to France brought on by its policies on nuclear testing and New Caledonia. This would be inimical to Australian and Western interests.”

France contends that it has created a multiracial society with equal rights for everyone here--indeed, two of New Caledonia’s three representatives in the French National Assembly are Melanesian, 26 of the territory’s 32 mayors are Melanesian and all New Caledonians have full French citizenship. FLNKS, the government says, is boycotting the vote simply because it does not have the numbers to win.

Referendum Can’t Lose

“It will be impossible to lose the referendum,” said Pierre Maresca, a leading local politician and an advocate of keeping New Caledonia French. “Everyone wants to be French, whether they’re white, brown, yellow or whatever.”

Maresca, who moved here from Algeria in 1962 after the civil war there ended 132 years of French colonial rule, sees the referendum as a public-relations exercise designed to mollify international opinion, not as a remedy for the divisions between two peoples. Like most whites, he agrees with the assessment of France’s minister for the South Pacific, Gaston Flosse, that a vote for independence is a vote for chaos.

To France, the loss of New Caledonia could be the first step in the surrender of the 120 islands of French Polynesia, the most important of which are Tahiti, where France maintains a naval presence and where about 15,000 French citizens live, and Mururoa, which is used for nuclear testing. New Caledonia also has economic significance as the world’s third-largest producer of nickel.

Tjibaou, the independence leader, has set up a provisional Kanak government that France simply ignores. He said France fears that his organization is Marxist and would expel French residents of an independent New Caledonia. These fears are unjustified, he says, because his movement is nationalistic, not ideological; the French would be welcome to stay.

His goal, he said in an interview, is to reopen the dialogue with France for a new constitution that would lead to independence.

“After independence,” he said, “the French would have the choice of taking out Kanak citizenship or remaining French. Either way, they would be allowed to stay. We are not naive. We need their money.”

France has been reluctant to withdraw from the Pacific, and the Republic of Kanak (a Tahitian word meaning “man”) does not seem likely to be born, at least not as a result of the September referendum.

If there is a lesson from colonial Africa, it is that the longer agitation for independence drags on, the more likely a new country will be to have a radical orientation toward the East Bloc.

But according to Jean Deteix, who has lived in New Caledonia for 19 years and is married to a Melanesian, “If independence can come quietly, then there is little chance of a Communist government here; it’s not too late.”

Asked what effect his pro-independence stance has had on his standing in the French community, Deteix replied, “I am hated.”