Curfew in Martinique after protests over high cost of living while two killed in Pacific island of New Caledonia.France’s territories in the Caribbean and the Pacific are facing a new wave of unrest with security forces killing two men in New Caledonia and a curfew imposed after rioting in Martinique.
The uptick in violence poses a challenge for new centre-right Prime Minister Michel Barnier, who has struggled to form a government following snap parliamentary elections in June, when no party won an absolute majority.
Barnier, the European Union’s former Brexit negotiator, submitted a proposed new cabinet to President Emmanuel Macron late on Thursday, with the list to be officially announced as soon as Friday, the AFP news agency reported.
In the Pacific territory of New Caledonia, police killed two men during an overnight operation, the Noumea prosecutor’s office said on Thursday.
The incident took place in Saint Louis, a stronghold of the independence movement south of Noumea, as police searched for about a dozen people suspected of involvement in armed robbery and attacks on security forces, the prosecutor’s statement said.
The killings raise to 13 the death toll on the Pacific island since the start of a crisis triggered by a controversial voting reform that was suspended in June.
Violence broke out in mid-May over France’s plan for voting reforms that the Indigenous Kanak people fear would dilute their vote and make it harder for any future referendum on independence to pass.
In June, Macron suspended the reform plan but violence has persisted in the territory, a major nickel producer. …