The controversy swells.
Several leaders of New Caledonia demanded Thursday the departure of the commander of the gendarmerie after the revelation of the news site Mediapart of his conviction in 2020 for domestic violence.
"I pointed out last night to the highest authorities of the State that this function was incompatible with this type of offense and that the decision had to be taken as quickly as possible to send this colonel back to France", writes Sonia Backès, president of the southern province where Nouméa is located, on its Facebook page.
The elected non-independence activist adds that “in a country where 22% of women are victims of violence, (…) the decision to change the head of the gendarmerie in New Caledonia should not suffer from hesitation”.
The Minister of the Interior arrested
In a press release, deputies Philippe Gomes and Philippe Dunoyer, and Senator Gérard Poadja, all members of the center-right Calédonie Ensemble party, considered that this conviction “disqualified Colonel Eric Steiger” and requested his “replacement”. They quoted the Minister of the Interior, Gérald Darmanin, who declared at the beginning of August in Le Parisien that the police officers and the convicted gendarmes “must no longer be in contact with the public” pending a decision of the disciplinary council of the police, and that the treatment of this violence would henceforth be a priority for the police and gendarmes everywhere in France.
The president of the Rassemblement-LR and former president of the government, Thierry Santa, for his part considered "that no depositary of public authority can continue to exercise his functions when he is guilty of such acts".
Alluding to the third referendum on independence, which will be held on December 12, the separatists of the FLNKS have, for their part, "demanded the immediate replacement of the number one of the gendarmerie who could not embody the righteousness and the commitment of the exercise sovereign powers on the spot, which to this day is still in the hands of the State ”.
His wife locked against a cupboard, her head violently twisted
These reactions follow revelations Wednesday from Mediapart according to which Eric Steiger, appointed commander of the gendarmerie in New Caledonia on July 8, was sentenced last May for physical and psychological violence against his wife.
This 48-year-old colonel was sentenced at first instance in February 2020 to a six-month suspended prison sentence for violence committed between November 2017 and June 2018, before seeing his sentence reduced on appeal to a fine of 6,000 euros by the court of call from Paris, the investigation site reported.
Read also Feminicides in 2020: nearly one in five victims had already lodged a complaint
The site specifies that the wife of Eric Steiger had, in her complaint filed in early June 2018, explained to have been blocked against a cupboard with her head violently twisted and to have been insulted "of illiterate, dirt or big bitch".
The couple's eldest daughter is said to have intervened several times to help her mother.
Eric Steiger arrived in New Caledonia in August 2020 as second in command of the gendarmerie before being promoted.
Contacted, the gendarmerie in New Caledonia told AFP that there would be "no reaction or comment".
While new feminicides are regularly reported, this summer was marked by revelations concerning the filing of a complaint against Chahinez, killed by her husband in May. The police officer who took her complaint in March after another assault on the part of her husband had been convicted of domestic violence.