Asia-Pacific Network: 4 January 1999
KANAKY: FIRE DESTROYS ENVIRONMENTAL ACTIVIST'S HOME
Fire has destroyed the home of a prominent environmental activist in New Caledonia, prompting speculation over a controversial real estate court case Bruno van Peteghem had filed against powerful personalities.
By JACQUES BOENGKIH in Canala
FIRE DESTROYED the Noumea home of the president of New Caledonia's Environment and Liberty Association on New Year's Eve.
The president, Bruno van Peteghem, a steward with Air France, flew to Tokyo on the afternoon of December 31 and will not return until next week.
His wife, Junko, and their three children left home at 7.45 pm to see the fireworks display in the centre of Noumea. But when they returned at 9 pm, they were blocked by firefighters.
The family could not see from the road, but quickly understood that, for the second time in barely a month, their home was on fire.
The first fire burnt out their garage, their car, motorcycle and children's bicycles, but the police have not yet determined its cause.
From a neighbour's house, Mme van Peteghem saw that this fire would soon completely destroy her home. Flames leapt from every room, and part of the roof had melted.
For 10 minutes, for some unknown reason, the firemen had insufficient water, but eventually managed to extinguish the blaze.
Mme van Peteghem and her friends tried to find if anything was left. The family had lost everything from furniture to computer disks.
A heap of cinders had been the children's big comic book collection. Computers in the parents' office were a mass of melted plastic.
Thick glass had miraculously protected archival files, but these could not withstand the firemen's hoses. Nothing useable remains.
For Bruno van Peteghem and the environment association, the garage fire had already raised questions: was it the price that they would pay for having spoken out against influential people? For having taken Henri Lafleur to court?
On New Year's Eve, those who rallied around were convinced that New Caledonia is slipping back into the days when the Kanak cause's European supporters had their cars dynamited and their boats burnt - the days when plastic bombs exploded in the Land Reform and Development offices, and in the courthouse itself.
As the New Year begins in the Territorial Assembly, some of our representatives are thinking about whether they may soon need bulletproof clothes and bodyguards.
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The Environment and Liberty Association, and its president, Bruno van Peteghem, are thorns in the side of some influential people in New Caledonia. The association is an umbrella for several smaller groups, with a total membership of about 3000 people whose aim is to make the City of Noumea improve its public services especially in such matters as clean water supply, and the enforcement of building standards and provision of green spaces and better public transport in low cost housing areas.
One of the smaller groups is the association of the residents of the Bay de la Moselle, of which Bruno van Peteghem is also president. The Bay de la Moselle is opposite the Port of Noumea, and is the site of much urban development, including the Southern Province headquarters complex and a large marina. The Noumea City Council and the Southern Province headquarters have been trying for two years to get rid of the householders and businesses on the Route des Artifices, the road on which the Southern Province headquarters are situated.
In the Route des Artifices, a real estate firm undertook a project which, Bruno van Petgehem claimed, usurped parts of the legal maritime zone. His association took the claim to court, which found that Henri Lafleur, principal shareholder and member of New Caledonia's most influential settler family, did have a case to answer.
The court gave reason to Bruno Van Peteghem and his association and ordered that the buildings built on legal maritime zone to be demolished.
The case is not yet over as the real estate firm has made an appeal to a higher court in Paris, but perhaps the fires are meant to serve as an advance warning to those who may try to prevent indiscriminate concreting of the country's natural resources.
Unofficial police sources in Noumea have revealed that the New Year's Eve fire started in three separate areas in the house, and that the heat of the fire was so intense that it could have been generated only by products like hydrocarbons.
In 1994, large stocks of arms and explosives were discovered in Noumea and in some white settler properties in the bush. There was an enquiry into the origin of the stocks, and how their importation could have been managed without the complicity of the authorities, but the enquiry got conveniently buried.