With the ongoing violence, New Caledonia will not be able to receive one of the symbols of the Paris 2024 Olympic Games. The passage of the flame planned for June 11 was canceled because “priority must be given to a return to calm” in the territory. where riots left several dead, explained Sports Minister Amélie Oudéa-Castéra on Saturday.
“I think everyone understands, given the context, priority really to consolidate the return to public order, and then to appeasement,” she declared to the press during the Cup stage. of the sword world in Saint-Maur-des-Fossés, near Paris.
The situation “far from a return to appeasement”
“Priority to the safety of residents, priority to a return to calm, and priority to the political improvement of the situation”, also affirmed the minister while the violence linked to the riots in New Caledonia continued on Saturday with a sixth death in six days, according to the authorities, and a situation “far from a return to appeasement” according to the mayor of Nouméa.
Friday, Prime Minister Gabriel Attal announced the cancellation of the passage of the flame through the archipelago during a meeting with parliamentarians in Matignon, according to consistent sources.
Difficulties linked to logistics and security
“Everyone understands, we would have liked to be able to share this moment” even if “by June 11, there may be favorable developments,” said the minister responsible for the 2024 Olympics in Paris, referring to the difficulties linked logistics and security. “To be ready on June 11, it’s a whole countdown and operations of prospecting, verification, shadowing that must be carried out. And the police, the military, today are busy restoring calm, restoring order,” she added.
Arriving with great fanfare on May 8 in Marseille aboard the three-masted Belem, the Olympic flame must cross all of France, with passages in the overseas territories, to finish its route on the banks of the Seine, on July 26, and set ablaze. the cauldron during the opening ceremony of the 2024 Olympic Games in Paris, the third Parisian Games after 1900 and 1924.