French President Emmanuel Macron flew to New Caledonia Wednesday in a bid to find a political solution to the riots that have rocked the French archipelago in the southwestern Pacific Ocean, some 16,000 kilometers (10,000 miles) from metropolitan France.
The unrest has raised new questions about Macron’s handling of France’s colonial legacy. There have been decades of tensions between Indigenous Kanaks, who seek independence for the territory of 270,000 people, and descendants of colonists and others who settled on the island and who want to remain part of France.
