New Caledonia is a colony. The UN Special Committee on Decolonization considers it to be one of 17 territories "whose populations are not yet completely self-governing." The French government prides itself on being European, open and liberal, but with New Caledonia it is acting like Napoleon III, asserting its power. "No violence is acceptable," said the president, except colonial violence, which seems more acceptable than resistance to oppression.

For several days now, our leaders have expressed outrage at the uprising of young Kanak people, spouting rhetoric, declaring a state of emergency and sending in reinforcements. Public buildings are burning, businesses are burning, cars are burning, and we have to ask ourselves whether the flagrant inequality in terms of schooling, health, income and life itself has anything to do with this anger. If the government's appalling arrogance, 30 years after the Matignon Accords, has just reawakened a feeling of inequality that has very real foundations, and if, deep down – and this is a terrible sadness – all this destruction is the eruptive, chaotic manifestation of a conscience. Young Kanak people in the outskirts of Nouméa also have a conscience.

Of course, all independentists, like all reasonable people, would prefer New Caledonia not to burn down. But for that to happen, this senseless reform must first be withdrawn. The electorate cannot be changed without the agreement of the Kanak people, nor can this issue be separated from a global agreement. Then, to end the appalling asymmetry between the Kanak and Caldo populations, which is rooted in colonial violence and conquest, access to education, jobs, wealth and power must be shared. No separate society can live peacefully, no colonial society can last forever.

You can't celebrate Audin and Manouchian in metropolitan France and repress the Kanaks; it's all very well to celebrate past resistance, but words must be followed by deeds. Otherwise, all homage to the past becomes suspect, and society ends up profoundly disoriented, honoring what it represses, pretending to admire in the past what it oppresses in the present, celebrating dialogue and practicing brutal politics, enshrining principles while trampling them underfoot.

The president has just made a brief stopover in Nouméa, spending 18 hours there. Despite a seemingly more open attitude, he began firmly: "The first thing is order." The president spoke of appeasement but immediately contradicted himself by hammering home at length everything that appeasement cannot be. Of course, the exercise of state cannot really do without rhetoric, and yet not a single eloquent phrase in such tense, tragic circumstances, not a strong, sincere expression, no real show of compassion. And what was striking about this brief visit, what was striking about these long speeches, was the absence of the word "Kanak," the absence of the Kanak people.

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