In New Caledonia, Macron Says Priority is a Return to Calm

French President Emmanuel Macron visits the central police station in Noumea, France's Pacific territory of New Caledonia on May 23, 2024. LUDOVIC MARIN/Pool via REUTERS
French President Emmanuel Macron visits the central police station in Noumea, France's Pacific territory of New Caledonia on May 23, 2024. LUDOVIC MARIN/Pool via REUTERS
TT

In New Caledonia, Macron Says Priority is a Return to Calm

French President Emmanuel Macron visits the central police station in Noumea, France's Pacific territory of New Caledonia on May 23, 2024. LUDOVIC MARIN/Pool via REUTERS
French President Emmanuel Macron visits the central police station in Noumea, France's Pacific territory of New Caledonia on May 23, 2024. LUDOVIC MARIN/Pool via REUTERS

French President Emmanuel Macron pushed Thursday for a lifting of protesters' barricades in riot-hit New Caledonia and pledged that reinforced police forces battling deadly unrest on the Pacific archipelago “will stay as long as necessary.”

Pro-independence Kanak leaders, who a week earlier declined Macron's offer of talks by video, turned out Thursday to greet him in person, bringing them together at a meeting in the capital Nouméa, with rival loyalist leaders who want New Caledonia, which became French in 1853 under Emperor Napoleon III, to remain part of France.

Macron opened the meeting by calling for a minute of silence for the six people killed in shootings during the violence, including two gendarmes, and read out their names. He subsequently urged local leaders to use their clout to help restore order. He said a state of emergency imposed by Paris the previous week to boost police powers could be lifted only if local leaders call for a clearing away of barricades that demonstrators and people trying to protect their neighborhoods have erected in Nouméa and beyond.

“It's a simple phrase and it's best to say because it can have an effect,” Macron said.

Barricades have turned some parts of Nouméa into no-go zones and made traveling around perilous, including for the sick requiring medical treatment and for families fretting about where to find food and water after shops were pillaged and torched. Unrest continued to simmer even as Macron jetted in, despite a 6 p.m. to 6 a.m. curfew and more than 1,000 reinforcements for the archipelago's police and gendarmes, now 3,000-strong, the French leader said.

“I will be very clear here. These forces will remain as long as necessary. Even during the Olympic Games and Paralympics," which open in Paris on July 26, Macron said.

At Nouméa's La Tontouta International Airport, used for special evacuation flights for stranded tourists but still closed to commercial services, Macron said on arrival that he wanted "to be alongside the people and see a return to peace, calm and security as soon as possible.”

Macron added that he would discuss the resources needed to repair the damage wrought by days of shootings, arson and other violence that has left at least six dead. The destruction is estimated to be in the hundreds of millions of euros (dollars).

“We will discuss questions of economic reconstruction, support and rapid response, and the most delicate political questions, as we talk about the future of New Caledonia,” he said. “By the end of the day, decisions will be taken and announcements will be made.”

When asked by a reporter whether he thought a 12-hour visit was enough, Macron responded: “We will see. I don’t have a limit.”

Accompanied by his defense and interior security ministers, Macron later met police at Noumea’s central police station.
"Thank you for being here, thank you very much," Macron told a uniformed officer, before going into a closed-door meeting.



Washington Releases 10,000 Pages of Records about Robert F. Kennedy’s 1968 Assassination

FILE - Senator Robert F. Kennedy, D-NY, tells reporters, and the nation, that he is a candidate for his party's presidential nomination on March 16, 1968, in Washington. (AP Photo, File)
FILE - Senator Robert F. Kennedy, D-NY, tells reporters, and the nation, that he is a candidate for his party's presidential nomination on March 16, 1968, in Washington. (AP Photo, File)
TT

Washington Releases 10,000 Pages of Records about Robert F. Kennedy’s 1968 Assassination

FILE - Senator Robert F. Kennedy, D-NY, tells reporters, and the nation, that he is a candidate for his party's presidential nomination on March 16, 1968, in Washington. (AP Photo, File)
FILE - Senator Robert F. Kennedy, D-NY, tells reporters, and the nation, that he is a candidate for his party's presidential nomination on March 16, 1968, in Washington. (AP Photo, File)

About 10,000 pages of records related to the 1968 assassination of Sen. Robert F. Kennedy were released Friday, including handwritten notes by the gunman, who said the Democratic presidential candidate “must be disposed of” and acknowledged an obsession with killing him.
Many of the files had been made public previously, while others had not been digitized and sat for decades in federal government storage facilities. Their release continued the disclosure of historical investigation documents ordered by President Donald Trump.
Kennedy was fatally shot on June 5, 1968, at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles moments after giving a speech celebrating his victory in California’s presidential primary. His assassin, Sirhan Sirhan, was convicted of first-degree murder and is serving life in prison.
The files included pictures of handwritten notes by Sirhan, The Associated Press said.
“RFK must be disposed of like his brother was,” read the writing on the outside of an empty envelope, referring to Kennedy's older brother, President John F. Kennedy, who was assassinated in 1963. The return address was from the district director of the Internal Revenue Service in Los Angeles.
The National Archives and Records Administration posted 229 files containing the pages to its public website.
The release comes a month after unredacted files related to the assassination of President Kennedy were disclosed. Those documents gave curious readers more details about Cold War-era covert US operations in other nations but did not initially lend credence to long-circulating conspiracy theories about who killed JFK.
Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the son of Robert Kennedy, commended the release.
“Lifting the veil on the RFK papers is a necessary step toward restoring trust in American government,” the health secretary said in a statement.
Documents include interviews with assassin's acquaintances
The files surrounding Robert Kennedy's assassination also included notes from interviews with people who knew Sirhan from a wide variety of contexts, such as classmates, neighbors and coworkers. While some described him as “a friendly, kind and generous person” others depicted a brooding and “impressionable” young man who felt strongly about his political convictions and briefly believed in mysticism.
According to the files, Sirhan told his garbage collector that he planned to kill Kennedy shortly after the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated on April 4, 1968. The sanitation worker, a Black man, said he planned to vote for Kennedy because he would help Black people.
“Well, I don’t agree. I am planning on shooting the son of a bitch,” Sirhan replied, the man told investigators.
Larry Sabato, director of the University of Virginia Center for Politics and author of “The Kennedy Half-Century," said there have always been conspiracies surrounding Robert Kennedy's assassination. He believes the rollout of documents Friday would be similar to the JFK documents released earlier this year.
He cautioned that a review needs to be done carefully and slowly, “just in case there is a hint in there or there is an anecdote" that could shed more light on the assassination.
“I hope there’s more information,” Sabato said. “I’m doubtful that there is, just as I said when the JFK documents were released.”
Some redactions remained in the documents posted online Friday, including names and dates of birth. Last month, the Trump administration came under criticism over unredacted personal information, including Social Security numbers, during the release of records surrounding President John F. Kennedy’s assassination.
Trump, a Republican, has championed in the name of transparency the release of documents related to high-profile assassinations and investigations. But he has also been deeply suspicious for years of the government’s intelligence agencies. His administration’s release of once-hidden files opens the door for more public scrutiny of the operations and conclusions of institutions such as the CIA and the FBI.
Trump signed an executive order in January calling for the release of government documents related to the assassinations of Robert F. Kennedy and King, who were killed within two months of each other.
Lawyers for Kennedy's killer have said for decades that he is unlikely to reoffend or pose a danger to society, and in 2021, a parole board deemed Sirhan suitable for release. But Gov. Gavin Newsom rejected the decision in 2022, keeping him in state prison. In 2023 , a different panel denied him release, saying he still lacks insight into what caused him to shoot Kennedy.
RFK still stands as a hero to American liberals Kennedy remains an icon for liberals, who see him as a champion for human rights who also was committed to fighting poverty and racial and economic injustice. They often regard his assassination as the last in a series of major tragedies that put the US and its politics on a darker, more conservative path.
He was a sometimes divisive figure during his lifetime. Some critics thought he came late to opposing the Vietnam War, and he launched his campaign for president in 1968 only after the Democratic primary in New Hampshire exposed President Johnson’s political weakness.
Kennedy's older brother appointed him US attorney general, and he remained a close aide to him until JFK's assassination in Dallas. In 1964, he won a US Senate seat from New York and was seen as the heir to the family’s political legacy.