{"id":43429,"date":"2022-04-11T09:28:22","date_gmt":"2022-04-11T00:28:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/2022\/apr\/11\/new-caledonia-leader-calls-for-france-to-grant-independence-vote-to-counter-chinas-omnipresence-in-pacific"},"modified":"2022-04-11T09:28:22","modified_gmt":"2022-04-11T00:28:22","slug":"new-caledonia-leader-calls-for-france-to-grant-independence-vote-to-counter-chinas-omnipresence-in-pacific","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/?p=43429","title":{"rendered":"New Caledonia leader calls for France to grant independence vote to counter China\u2019s \u2018omnipresence\u2019 in Pacific"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Pro-independence parties boycotted last year\u2019s referendum on a split from France, arguing Covid made campaigning too difficult<\/p>\n<p>A prominent New Caledonian indigenous party has said that if France wants to have an economic and political stake in the Pacific \u2013 as China\u2019s influence in the region rises to \u201comnipresence\u201d \u2013 it needs to grant New Caledonia a fourth referendum on independence and treat the Pacific island as a partner, rather than a colony.<\/p>\n<p>The calls come after a contentious referendum on independence last year which was boycotted by pro-independence parties, after they said holding a referendum during a severe Covid outbreak that disproportionately hit indigenous Kanak and Pasifika populations would not return a fair result.<\/p>\n<p> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/2022\/apr\/11\/new-caledonia-leader-calls-for-france-to-grant-independence-vote-to-counter-chinas-omnipresence-in-pacific\">Continue reading&#8230;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Pro-independence parties boycotted last year\u2019s referendum on a split from France, arguing Covid made campaigning too difficultA prominent New Caledonian indigenous party has said that if France wants to have an economic and political stake in the Pacif&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3009,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"sns_share_botton_hide":"","vkExUnit_sns_title":"","_vk_print_noindex":"","sitemap_hide":"","_veu_custom_css":"","veu_display_promotion_alert":"","vkexunit_cta_each_option":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[41,526,1102,874,42],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-43429","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-asia-pacific","category-france","category-new-caledonia","category-pacific-islands","category-world-news"],"veu_head_title_object":{"title":"","add_site_title":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43429","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3009"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=43429"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43429\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":43430,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43429\/revisions\/43430"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=43429"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=43429"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=43429"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}