Throughout Nouméa, the usually peaceful capital of New Caledonia, on the evening of Monday, May 13, the same scene was repeated over and over again. From nightfall onwards, very young pro-independence activists played a dangerous game of cat and mouse with the police. Molotov cocktails and stones on one side; rubber bullet launchers, stingball grenades and armored vehicles on the other. The city was ablaze.

As the night wore on, accounts of the outburst of violence in the Magenta, Montravel and Rivière-Salée neighborhoods began to make the rounds on social media. Several convenience stores were set on fire, as were at least two car dealerships, and the factory of Le Froid, a major drinks distributor, which was completely ravaged by flames at around 10 pm local time.

The insurgency spread to the more upscale districts, which are usually spared. In the early evening, on the Eau-Vive traffic circle, which serves as the southern entrance to the privileged area of Nouméa, dozens of frail, hooded figures took possession of the median strip, before being dislodged by mobile gendarme units, amidst stunned pedestrians and motorists.

The French high commissioner for New Caledonia, Louis Le Franc, had earlier issued a firm warning on the La 1ère television. He addressed the young Kanak people from the Saint-Louis tribe, located very close to Nouméa, who had fired at the gendarmes, yet without hitting them. "You don't play with security (...) with automatic weapons, handguns, large-caliber rifles. I'm going to call in the GIGN [the French national gendarmerie elite unit] to the Saint-Louis area." The unit was authorized to return fire in self-defense.

In the early afternoon, three prison guards had been taken hostage in a quickly suppressed mutiny in the overcrowded Camp-Est prison, while roads across the island of Grande Terre were blocked. The airport was threatened, and had to close.

Before the escalation, the day was originally intended to mark the pro-independence movement's disapproval of a constitutional reform aimed at enlarging the electorate, which the Assemblée Nationale examined on Monday, had nevertheless begun calmly, in line with the organizers' instructions. Participants in the demonstration, which had been announced weeks earlier by the Coordination Cell for Field Action (CCAT), the activist organization of the Kanak and Socialist National Liberation Front (FLNKS), were there in full force. Not since the beginnings of the quasi-civil war that struck the archipelago in the 1980s had the pro-independence movement rallied so many people.

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