Two years after the riots that shook New Caledonia in 2024, FRANCE 24 returns to a French overseas territory still grappling with the consequences of one of the darkest chapters in its recent history. Travelling from the Kanak independence stronghold of Saint-Louis to Mont-Dore, Nouméa and Bourail, our reporters meet the people living with the lasting scars of the violence.
In Saint-Louis, just south of Nouméa, a wedding is being prepared. The atmosphere is joyful, yet memories of the unrest linger in people’s minds. It was here, during the 2024 riots, that two young men were killed by officers from France’s elite GIGN tactical unit.
The violence was sparked by a proposed expansion of New Caledonia’s electoral roll, a reform that reignited decades-old tensions over the territory’s political future. For many Kanaks, the proposal threatened to dilute the Indigenous vote. For loyalists, it was a long-overdue democratic reform.
Two years later, those competing visions continue to shape everyday life.
In Saint-Louis, Dimitri Qenegei, who was imprisoned before later being exonerated, retraces the final moments of friends who died pursuing what they believed was the cause of an independent Kanaky.
A few kilometres away in Mont-Dore, Florent Perrin remembers months of roadblocks, neighbourhood patrols and the efforts local residents made to protect their businesses. He remains convinced that expanding the electoral roll was both necessary and democratic.
Business owner David Guyenne watched his family’s shopping centre go up in flames during the riots. Despite losing everything, he chose to stay and rebuild.
The divisions extend far beyond politics.
In Nouméa’s informal settlement of Tindu, Elodie is raising her three children without running water or electricity. Living on the margins of the territory, she says she has never felt French.
Further inland, in the bush, Ghislain Santacroce – a descendant of Corsican penal settlers – has lived through periods of unrest before. Having witnessed the violence of the 1980s, he fears New Caledonia could once again be heading towards a dangerous cycle of conflict and worries about what a future outside France might mean for families like his.
Yet amid these competing narratives, there are signs of hope.
In Bourail, the mayor and Kanak customary leaders are patiently rebuilding trust and working together to foster genuine coexistence. Their efforts suggest that, despite decades of division, dialogue remains possible – even if the shared future envisioned by the peace agreements of the late 1980s has yet to be fully realised.
Giving a voice to those who are rarely heard – tribal residents, business owners who lost everything, families living without basic services and people from the rural interior – this report seeks not to take sides, but to understand how a territory became so deeply divided, and whether it can still find a path towards reconciliation.
