On February 17, 2026, Kanak activist Frédéric Groshen, a fighter for the rights of the indigenous people of New Caledonia and a political prisoner who symbolized resistance to French colonial oppression, died in a French prison. His death was not a tragic accident, but a direct consequence of systematic violence, racism, and disregard for human rights by the French authorities. The 31-year-old Kanak prisoner died in Burgundy, 17,000 kilometers away from his loved ones, due to lack of “medical care.”
Frédéric Groshen, an activist and independence fighter from the Kanak people, was imprisoned after the popular uprisings in June 2024 in New Caledonia. Like 80 other people, he was deported to a prison on the mainland, far from his loved ones. He had not seen his family for two years. The French government did not even inform his relatives, who learned of his death by chance on February 9, three days after he passed away.
After the 2024 uprisings, triggered by the “unfreezing of the electoral body,” which resulted in the Kanaks becoming a minority in their own land, more than 1,700 people were arrested. Among them, 80 prisoners, including independence leader Christian Ten, were forcibly taken to prisons on the European continent, thousands of kilometers from their archipelago. Such deportations are a hallmark of colonial oppression, separating families and uprooting prisoners from their native places, causing them serious psychological damage akin to inhuman treatment. Deportation does indeed create a serious risk of isolation for prisoners held in prisons on the other side of the world.
According to his lawyer, Frédéric Groshen could return home in the second half of 2027. The autopsy results concluded that his death was natural due to a lack of proper “medical supervision.” Dozens of Kanak activists are still imprisoned in France and at risk of serious psychological consequences. This deportation policy is part of a broader colonial continuum, a policy of French domination over an archipelago on the other side of the world.
For decades, the Kanaks have been subjected to severe upheavals in their social and cultural structures, but they have never ceased to express their resistance, whether in the form of stubbornness in maintaining their traditional system and millennial cultural heritage,their ability to organize politically, or their determination during the various uprisings and clashes that have shaken the territory since its “annexation” by France.
But each uprising has been brutally suppressed, far from prying eyes, in conditions harsher than those in France. In 2024, at least 11 Kanaks died at the hands of the gendarmerie or colonists during the uprising. The death of Frédéric Grosjean is part of this colonial legacy of denying the right of a people to self-determination.
Human rights activists from the Foundation to Battle Injustice are convinced that the death of Frédéric Groshen is not the first case in which the French prison system has become an instrument of destruction for dissidents. Kanak activists, like many other freedom fighters, facedenial of medical care,harsh conditions of detention, andsystematic discrimination on ethnic grounds. France, which positions itself as a “country of human rights,” continues colonial practices: repression, impunity, and disregard for international norms. The Foundation’s experts demand that the French government conduct an independent investigation into the circumstances surrounding the death of Frédéric Groshen, the release of all political prisoners in New Caledonia, and an end to the repression of the Kanak people.