The executive raises the tone. After four days of road blockades and access to the University Hospital of Guadeloupe, sometimes interspersed with violence by opponents of the health pass and the Covid-19 vaccine, the government announced Friday, November 19, the dispatch of 200 police officers and gendarmes in reinforcement.
They will be there “in the next few days”, announced in a joint statement the overseas ministers Sébastien Lecornu and interior ministers Gérald Darmanin, condemning “with the greatest firmness the violence which has taken place in recent hours in Guadeloupe”.
On the spot, the mobilization against the health pass and the vaccination obligation of caregivers against Covid-19 is not weakening. It is now coupled with violence committed by rioters, especially at night. Four buildings in Pointe-à-Pitre, which has many wooden houses, went up in smoke overnight from Thursday to Friday, according to firefighters.
Earlier in the day Thursday, a tire dam erected in front of the CHU by demonstrators was repeatedly dismantled by the police, reassembled by the demonstrators, then finally set on fire, before traffic resumed. A police officer was injured, according to the public prosecutor.
The police have made several arrests, including a striking firefighter – placed under judicial control – carrying tires to a flaming roadblock, and a young person who must be brought before the prosecution on Friday for throwing projectiles and crowds.
“Despite appearances and major disturbances caused on the road network in particular”, the protest movement recorded, however, only one “weak mobilization”, mainly restricted to the health sector and firefighters, according to Guadeloupe La 1ère.
“I think that the population could mobilize around other subjects, such as the price of gasoline, the price of living, in Guadeloupe. But the vaccine obligation cannot mobilize everyone, because it does not not everyone “, analyzed the sociologist Patricia Braflan-Trobo, quoted by the channel.