The French president will travel to the Pacific island of New Caledonia on Tuesday, just over a week after riots erupted in the French overseas territory leaving six dead and hundreds injured.
The unrest over plans for an electoral overhaul has resulted in dozens of shops and businesses being looted and burned, with cars torched and road barricades set up. A state of emergency and curfew remain in place, with army reinforcements.
Speaking after a cabinet meeting, the French government spokesperson Prisca Thevenot said Macron would travel to “set up a mission”, without saying what it could entail.
There have been calls for veteran politicians to be named as mediators, but Thevenot did not confirm plans.
“Our priority is the return to calm and order,” she said, adding that the situation on the ground was improving but more needed to be done. On Tuesday Australia and New Zealand sent planes to evacuate some of the estimated 3,000 tourists thought to be in New Caledonia, where the main airport is closed to commercial flights.
The unrest began last week as politicians in Paris voted on a bill to allow French residents who have lived in New Caledonia for 10 years the right to vote in provincial elections. Some local leaders fear this change would dilute the share of the vote held by Kanaks, the Indigenous group that makes up about 41% of the population and the major force in the pro-independence movement.
France’s highest administrative court, the Conseil d’État, was on Tuesday examining complaints by two rights’ groups and three citizens in New Caledonia over France’s unprecedented decision to shut down the social media platform TikTok on the Pacific island last Wednesday.
Under the state of emergency, people on the island have been unable to access the Chinese-owned social media platform since 15 May, when the French state ordered it to be shut down. The government believed the app was being used by those opposed to French rule to communicate and organise violent protests.
Because New Caledonia has only one telecoms operator, the TikTok shutdown was put in place quickly after a special crisis meeting in Paris.
TikTok called the decision “regrettable” and said it had been taken without “any request from the local authorities or the French government to take down content”.
France’s Ligue des droits de l’Homme (League for Human Rights) and the French NGO La Quadrature du Net, which campaigns on data and privacy issues, have brought a fast-track case to France’s highest administrative court to overturn the ban, warning it is the first time a European democracy has shut down a social media platform. They question the legal basis for the French government shutting down the platform.
La Quadrature du Net said the French government, in shutting down access to TikTok, had “struck an unprecedented and particularly serious blow to freedom of expression online”. The group said “neither the local context nor the toxicity of the platform can justify [the shutdown] by a regime claiming to abide by the rule of law”.
Jacques Toubon, a former French citizens’ rights ombudsman, told French television: “I was very shocked. It’s the first time that France has stopped a social network … There are a whole load of other networks and if you ban one, people will go elsewhere.”
He said there had to be a balance of civil liberties and security. “In terms of social networks, given the importance of the platform here, it’s akin to at the start of the 20th century stopping newspapers being printed.”
Arnaud Lemaire, an expert from the French cybersecurity firm F5, told Agence France-Presse (AFP): “State blocking [of platforms] has been practised in China and the Middle East for decades and it works. But it has limits, it can be circumvented with a VPN, bouncing through another country.”
According to one VPN provider, the number of New Caledonians signing up to use virtual private networks that mask their location has risen 150%.
On Tuesday, Australia and New Zealand sent government planes to New Caledonia to evacuate their nationals from the archipelago.
Australia’s foreign minister, Penny Wong, confirmed the government had received clearance for two flights after the international airport was shut down, and would “continue to work on further flights”.
Hours later, a Royal Australian Air Force C-130 Hercules touched down in Nouméa, the capital. The plane can carry 124 passengers, according to the defence department. “We continue to work on further flights,” Wong wrote on X.
Before the evacuation flights there were believed to be more than 300 Australians and nearly 250 New Zealanders marooned in New Caledonia.
Maxwell Winchester, an Australian tourist who had been barricaded in a resort, told AFP: “We are ecstatic. Every night, we had to sleep with one eye open. Every noise, we were worried that they were coming in to loot us.”
