By Patrick Decloitre, RNZ Pacific correspondent French Pacific desk
A rift within New Caledonia’s pro-independence movement has further widened after the second component of the “moderates”, the UPM (Progressist Union in Melanesia), has officially announced it has now left the once united Kanak and Socialist National Liberation Front (FLNKS).
The UPM announcement, at a press conference in Nouméa, comes only five days after the PALIKA (Kanak Liberation Party), another moderate pro-independence group, also made official it was splitting from the FLNKS.
It was in line with resolutions taken at the party’s Congress held at the weekend.
Both groups have invoked similar reasons for the move.
UPM leader Victor Tutugoro told local media on Wednesday his party found it increasingly “difficult to exist today within the [FLNKS] pro-independence movement, part of which has now widely radicalised through outrage and threats”.
He said both his party and PALIKA did not recognise themselves anymore in the FLNKS’s increasingly “violent operating mode”.
Tutugoro recalled that since August 2024, UPM had not taken part in the operation of the “new FLNKS” [including its political bureau] because it did not accept its “forceful ways” under the increasing domination of Union Calédonienne, especially the recruitment of new “nationalist” factions and the appointment of CCAT leader and UC political commissar Christian Téin as its new President,.
Téin was arrested in June 2024 for alleged criminal-related charges before and during the May 2024 riots and then flown to mainland France.
After one year in jail in Mulhouse (North-east of France), his pre-trial conditions were released and in October 2025, he was eventually authorised to return to New Caledonia, where he should be back in the next few days.
Christian Téin’s return soon
Téin remains under pre-trial conditions until he is judged, at a yet undetermined date.
Téin and a “Collectif Solidarité Kanaky 18” however announced Téin was to hold a public meeting themed “Which way for the Decolonisation of Kanaky-New Caledonia?” on 22 November 2025 in the small French city of Bourges, local media reported.
“This will be his last public address before he returns to New Caledonia,” said organisers.
Tutugoro says things worsened since the negotiations that led to the signing of a Bougival agreement, in July 2025, from which FLNKS pulled out in August 2025, denouncing what they described as a “lure of independence”.
“This agreement now separates us from the new FLNKS. And this is another reason for us to say we have nothing left to do [with them],” said Tutugoro.
UPM recalls it was a founding member of the FLNKS in 1984.
UPM, PALIKA founding members of FLNKS 41 years ago
On November 14, the PALIKA [Kanak Liberation Party] revealed the outcome of its 50th Congress held six days earlier, which now makes official its withdrawal from the FLNKS (a platform it was part of since the FLNKS was set up in 1984).
It originally comprised PALIKA, UPM (Progressist Union in Melanesia), Union Calédonienne (UC) and Wallisian-based Rassemblement démocratique océanien (RDO).
PALIKA said it had decided to formally split from FLNKS because it disagreed with the FLNKS approach since the May 2024 riots.
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.