Looted food stores, vandalized pharmacies, burglarized armories, ignited roadblocks, police forces targeted by gunfire … The weekend remained agitated in Guadeloupe where the challenge to the vaccination obligation of caregivers degenerated into blockages and violence. Despite the curfew imposed since Friday evening, 38 people were arrested during the night from Saturday to Sunday. The situation is “absolutely intolerable and unacceptable,” government spokesman Gabriel Attal ruled on Sunday. To restore order in the archipelago, the Minister of the Interior decided to send around fifty members of the elite forces of the GIGN and the Raid.
“It is going crescendo, there is more and more looting, attacks … We hope that order will be restored in the department in the days to come. The reinforcements will help us in this situation. Nevertheless, this social movement started on Monday. We knew it was going to degenerate. But it had to start so that we think of sending additional staff, “regrets Patrice Abdallah, departmental secretary of the SGP-FO unit union. “It is necessary to restore order”, explains to 20 minutes Justine Benin, Modem member of Guadeloupe, who says she is “quite saddened by this violence”. Especially since due to many roadblocks, activity is slowing down. As for the schools, they were still closed on Friday.
“We must prioritize dialogue”
How to explain this outbreak of violence in Guadeloupe? Since Monday, the archipelago has been shaken by an unlimited general strike to protest against the vaccination obligation of caregivers against Covid-19 and the health pass. “I had asked, as of October 19, for accompanying measures, flexibility of management in the vaccination obligation, to avoid chaos”, continues Justine Benin. The MP, who will meet Prime Minister Jean Castex on Monday, pleads “for the establishment of a consultation body, social dialogue”. “We must prioritize dialogue and dialogue must quickly take over. “
But according to the elected, we must “differentiate between people who demonstrate against or for the vaccine, and those people who break every day.” “I make the difference because I think that the thugs are not representative of those who are opposed to the vaccination obligation. A point of view shared by Cédric Boyer, the local representative of the Alliance police nationale union. “For me, those who demonstrate against the vaccine are not those that we find in front of us at night, they are not those who loot and break businesses,” he says. We are dealing with delinquents. “
“A weakened economic and social context”
For Patrice Abdallah, to the demands concerning the vaccination obligation of caregivers and the health pass are added those “which have persisted for some time”. Water cuts, rising gasoline prices, lack of work … “There is a weakened economic and social context. More than 50% of unemployed young people ”, underlines the trade unionist. For its counterpart from the Alliance union, the government must “provide concrete answers, for Guadeloupe but also for the rest of the Overseas Territories because there is a deep unease”.
“It is not so much with reinforcements that we are going to resolve the problem of violence in the Overseas Territories and particularly in the West Indies at the moment,” said Cédric Boyer. We have an unemployment rate higher than the national average, he recalls. We end up with territories a little abandoned by the Republic. “