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00:00Staying with the situation in New Caledonia, a political blame game has now begun over who's
00:05behind the surge in violence. And Solange Mougin is with me on set to discuss this with us. Now,
00:11Solange, the French Interior Minister, Gérald Darmanin, has placed much of the blame on one
00:17specific group that's called the CCAT. First of all, just tell us who they are.
00:21Well, the CCAT is the Cellule de Coordination des Actions sur le Terrain, or the Field Action
00:28Coordination Cell. And it is a New Caledonian group of pro-independence members who want to
00:33see the French territory in the Pacific become a state that's independent from France. Now,
00:37it was launched in the end of 2023 as a means to regroup a number of independence groups.
00:44They frequently hold pro-independence rallies, and they organized the protests on Monday that
00:49ballooned into this bout of violence. For France's Interior Minister, it is, and this is a direct
00:54quote, it is the CCAT that is the problem. He explained his stance on French television this
01:00morning, adding that this is not the work of the alliance of the pro-independence political parties
01:06or the FLNKS. I've assigned a house arrest order to 10 of the leaders. They're not pro-independence
01:15politicians. Those under house arrest are mafia leaders. This is different from the FLNKS
01:21political party. The CCAT is a small group that calls themselves pro-independence, but they're
01:27actually looters and apparently commit murder. They should not be confused with other political
01:32activists. So this stance raises the question of how much violence is the CCAT responsible for?
01:40Have they really stoked the flames of the long-simmering tensions in New Caledonia,
01:45or is it being positioned as a scapegoat of sorts by the government which passed
01:51the suffrage law that the Canuck people find unfair? Now, according to a number of members of
01:56the CCAT group who spoke to the investigative site Mediapart, they say they're being unjustly
02:03blamed. They've repeatedly called for calm on social media and for an end to the violence.
02:08The group says this. They say that instead what's creating this violence is not them,
02:16but one, a sense of inequality and poverty among young people who have this feeling that they have
02:21been left behind compared to people in mainland France. And this is actually a sentiment that
02:26other territories and other overseas departments like Guadeloupe, for example, also have. And then
02:31number two, there's deep-rooted colonial anger by the Canuck population, which makes up about 40%
02:38of those that live in New Caledonia. Many fear that they will lose any say over what happens in
02:43their homeland if there are these changes to the voting rules. Right, Solange. And there is one
02:48really interesting, I think, unexpected angle to this story you're going to tell us about now,
02:52and that's the interior minister also has said there's been interference in New Caledonia by
02:58Azerbaijan. That's a country that is, of course, tens of thousands of kilometers away. So how does
03:03Azerbaijan fit into this story? Well, this is where the France problem that touches on its colonial
03:08past and on societal injustices overseas and the territories in general, this suddenly expands
03:13to also involve the current geopolitical landscape with powers like Russia and its allies looking for
03:20sympathetic ears. Concretely, the French interior minister has accused Azerbaijan of, quote-unquote,
03:25interference in the unrest in New Caledonia. Baku has said in turn to this that these are baseless
03:31accusations, but separatists were invited to Baku last year, and Baku has resented previous support
03:39by France of its rival Armenia. Now, this geopolitical knot aside, the issue in New
03:45Caledonia remains a difficult one to sort out. Not only is there the challenge of quelling the
03:50violence at times with force, which can also lead to further resentment, but there's also this
03:55suffrage question. How do you ensure that the Kanak population feels that they are justly represented
04:00by their votes, but also allow those that have arrived in the past decades to be able to vote as
04:05well? And on top of that, there's the government's ultimatum of sorts of, okay, we'll revoke this law
04:10if you find another deal. And to make it even more of a headache, there's this growing debate of who
04:16should be the ones to negotiate such a deal, be it the interior minister, the prime minister, now
04:22the president, and then with whom will they be meeting, the political parties, MPs, or groups
04:27like the CCAT. All right, such an interesting aspect of that story. Thank you very much indeed,
04:31Solange Mougin, for coming in to shed a little light on it for us.