"Ouvea is everything you'd anticipate in a South Pacific island. Twenty kilometres of unbroken achromatic sands boundary line the laguna on the West side of the island and widen far out from shore to give the H2O a turquoise hue. The broad western lagoon, protected by a twine of coral islands and a barrier reef, is the lone 1 of its sort in the Loyalties. On the ocean side are bouldery cliffs, pounded by surf, but mulct beaches may be establish even here. At one point on this narrow atoll only 450 metres offprints the two coasts. Traditional round houses with pointed thatched roofs are still common in the villages".

Those words appeared in the 1985 edition of my South Pacific Handbook after a visit in 1983. Just over 20 old age later I returned to Ouvea to detect that small had changed in this big Gallic settlement east of Australia.

Most Ouveans still dwell in traditional thatched lawsuit (houses) and the beach is as fulgurant as ever. On my first eventide there, as I watched the reddish fireball set slowly across the lagoon, I felt a strong chemical attraction with my former visit.

Yet something awful had happened in my absence. On May 5, 1988, 300 Gallic elite military personnel stormed a cave near Gossanah in northern Ouvea to deliver 16 gendarmes captured two hebdomads earlier by Melanesian freedom fighters.

Nineteen Kanaks (the corporate name used by the indigenous peoples of New Caledonia) died in the assault, including respective who suffered extrajudicial executing at the hands of the Gallic police force after being hurt and taken prisoner. None of the sureties had been harmed.

Thus began one of the concluding chapters of what is now known as the evenements (events) of the 1980s. Three old age earlier independency leader Eloi Machoro had been murdered in cold blood by police force snipers as he stood outside a rural farmhouse near Lanthanum Foa, on New Caledonia's chief island, Grand Terre.

By 1987 French Republic had 14,000 military personnel stationed in its mineral-rich Melanesian colony, one for every five Kanaks. The independency motion was to be crushed one manner or another.

When I tried to see the cave at Gossanah on my recent trip, I was told that the country was forbidden to let the liquor time to rest.

Instead I was permitted to see the grave of Djoubelly Wea in Gossanah and allowed to take images of his home. My host on Ouvea told me the story. Evidently, the sureties had been taken by immature Kanak militants from other parts of the island, and the prisoner gendarmes were brought to Gossanah only because the cave was considered remote.

Residents of the country weren't involved. Yet when the Gallic police force arrived in hunt of their comrades, they rounded up the people of Gossanah and assembled them on a football field in presence of the small town church.

There they were tortured for information, and Wea's male parent was among those who died of shock. Later 33 Ouveans were sent to prison house in France, Djoubelly Wea among them.

These events chastened Kanaks and Gallic alike, and the caputs of the chief political parties, the Kanak leader Jean-Marie Tjibaou and the representative of the Gallic colonists Jacques Lafleur, were called to City Of Light by Prime Curate Michel Rocard to negociate and eventually subscribe a peace pact known as the Matignon Accords.

A referendum on independency was promised in 1998, and monolithic economical assistance was to be channeled into the Kanak regions. An amnesty was granted to all those arrested during the troubles, and no probe into the Ouvea slaughter or the homicides of respective twelve other Kanaks by Gallic colonists or military personnel would be required.

Fast forward to May 1989, as the top Kanak leadership Jean-Marie Tjibaou and Yeiwene Yeiwene get on Ouvea for a commemorative ceremonial exactly one twelvemonth after the massacre.

As the leadership are being received at the chefferie (chiefly house) of Wadrilla near the centre of the island, Djoubelly Wea stairway forward and shoots the brace dead at point blank range. Wea was reflecting a feeling still tangible in New Caledonia that Tjibaou had sold out to the Gallic and derailed the battle of independence.

Tjibaou's escort killed Wea, the concluding shot of the evenements. Today the chefferie of Wadrilla is much the same as it was in 1989, a big thatched lawsuit surrounded by a palisade of driftwood logs.

Across the coastal highway, a big memorial have been erected to the 19 Kanak sufferers of 1988. Designed with two curved achromatic walls to resemble a cave, the commemoration bears the photo, name, and day of the month of birth of each victim.

Their traditional warfare baseball clubs have got got been placed on the dorsum side of the memorial and their remains are interred below.

No memorial to Jean-Marie Tjibaou bes on Ouvea but the Gallic have constructed a monolithic cultural centre to his memory in their stronghold Noumea.

In fairness, it must be said that Tjibaou only considered the Matignon Accords a impermanent halt on the route to independence. His character assassination froze the understanding into a kind of lasting solution which the Gallic have got used to warrant continuing colonial rule ever since.

The promised 1998 referendum was never held. Instead an updated pact called the Noumea Agreement was signed. This postponed the referendum for another 15 or 20 old age and promised many things the Gallic authorities have yet to deliver.

For example, a cardinal proviso creating a particular New Caledonian citizenship position intended to command in-migration from Gallic Republic was declared unconstitutional by a Gallic tribunal in 1999.

Metros (metropolitan French) go on to deluge into the district (in misdemeanor of United states declarations on the norms of behavior for colonial powerfulnesses in non-self-governing areas) and Europeans may soon from a clear bulk of the population.

Toward the end of my stay I visited the Jean-Marie Tjibaou Cultural Center on the Tina Peninsula, 12 kilometres northeast of New Caledonia's working capital Noumea. Designed by Italian designer Renzo Piano, it was built by Gallic contractors between 1994 and 1998 at a cost of over US$50 million. The centre opened on May 4, 1998, 10th day of remembrance of the character assassination of Jean-Marie Tjibaou.

No visitant can assist but be impressed by the dramatic botanical garden interwoven with mentions to Kanak fables which encircles the center's three villages.

A modern-day fine fine art gallery, impermanent and lasting exhibitions of Kanak and other Pacific art, a library, an audiovisual aid room, inside and out-of-door theaters, and a big ceremonial country are only some of the center's outstanding features.

Yet the Tjibaou Cultural Center shows Kanak civilization as a regional folklore rather than a national tradition.

Events such as as the Ouvea Slaughter and the other homicides of the 1980s are barely mentioned. A room in Village Three supplies photographs and textual matters on the life of Jean-Marie Tjibaou, but there's no account as to why he was assassinated or the background of his assassin.

The 19th century land ictuses and the musculus flexing and maneuvering that have got prevented independency are carefully avoided. The high spot for me was an astonishing three-meter-high bronze statue of Tjibaou himself, clothed in a Roman toga, on a hill overlooking the center.

Tjibaou was the last existent Kanak leader, and in a land where the liquor of the dead have got an of import function in the lives of the living, his psyche must be suffering.