He had notably participated in the signing of the Matignon-Oudinot agreements in 1988. He was 71 years old.
Le Monde with AFP
Louis Kotra Uregei, an emblematic and radical figure of the independence struggle in New Caledonia, died on the night of Thursday October 20 to Friday October 21 at the age of 71, announced the union of Kanaks workers and exploited (USTKE) in a press release.
Nicknamed LKU or “Loulou”, this representative of Caledonian activism died following a long illness. Originally from the small island of Tiga, in the Loyalty archipelago, Louis Kotra Uregei had founded, in 1981, the USTKE, the very first independence union. Three years later, the USTKE participated in the creation of the Kanak and Socialist National Liberation Front (FLNKS).
In 1988, in the aftermath of the hostage taking of Ouvéa, which left 21 dead, Louis Kotra Uregei had been part of the independence delegation sent to Paris to negotiate with the French State and signed, Title, the Matignon-Oudinot agreements.
“A committed activist” and “a man of conviction”
While the USTKE becomes the second union force of New Caledonia, Louis Kotra Uregei, known for his outspokenness and his radical methods, gradually moves away from the FLNKS and approaches alter-globalization environments. In 2007, he founded the Labor Party, in the presence of José Bové, of which he will be the representative at Congress, from 2009 to 2019.
The independence party and member of the Flnks Union Caledonian paid tribute to “an independence leader, who did not chew his words (…) and who knew how to remind the generation of leaders of today where he had he had had his words. had to fight to be heard on the national and international scene “.
The High Commissioner of the Republic in New Caledonia, Patrice Faure, praised the memory “of a committed activist and a man of conviction”.