(Pointe-à-Pitre) Blockades resumed on Saturday in Guadeloupe after a new night of looting and fires during which police and gendarmes were targeted by gunfire, leaving one slightly injured, despite the curfew imposed in front of the degradation of anti-health passport mobilization.
At the end of a crisis meeting at the end of the day in Paris, the Minister of the Interior, Gérald Darmanin, announced the dispatch to the island of about fifty members of the elite forces of the GIGN and of the Raid, while his colleague in charge of Overseas, Sébastien Lecornu, announced that a meeting would be held Monday evening around Prime Minister Jean Castex with parliamentarians and presidents of the assemblies of Guadeloupe, as well as the Minister of Health Olivier Véran.
The president of the Guadeloupe region, Ary Chalus, for his part “called for appeasement”. “We must find calm, we must avoid the fire,” he added on BFMTV.
In the night from Friday to Saturday, while a curfew had been established between 6 p.m. and 5 a.m., pharmacies and telephone shops were notably targeted. According to the Interior Ministry, 31 arrests were made.
“The night was very rough,” a police source told AFP, reporting “live ammunition on a police vehicle” in Gosier and “on mobile gendarmes” in Pointe-à-Pitre. In total, the police deplore, according to the same source, “the use of firearms on the police in four different sectors”.
“A workforce received a stone in the face” and was slightly injured, according to the same source. Several vehicles were damaged.
About a hundred police officers and 80 gendarmes were on the ground last night on the island. The police officers in particular faced an attempted intrusion into the Pointe-à-Pitre university residence, as well as “around twenty looting or attempted thefts” in shops in Pointe-à-Pitre and Gosier: jewelry store, PMU, banks, shopping center …
During the night in Saint-François, “the gendarmes leaving the brigade were threatened by jets of flaming projectiles”, without there being any injuries to deplore.
The firefighters intervened for fires in Petit-Bourg in two telephone shops, also looted. In the same sector, “an armory was broken into”, according to a source within the gendarmerie.
In the south of Basse-Terre, according to another source, the situation has been calmer on the roads despite some roadblocks: “People, especially entrepreneurs, are starting to organize and remove roadblocks, residents have helped gendarmes ”.
However, the main axes remained blocked Saturday morning, and new dams were installed.
“Incomprehensible” situation
The mobilization launched five days ago by a collective of union and citizen organizations against the health passport and the vaccination obligation of caregivers against COVID-19 is now coupled with violence committed by rioters.
After a particularly violent night from Thursday to Friday, schools remained closed on Friday and, due to numerous roadblocks, activity is slowing down.
At the CHU, the only vehicles authorized to enter are ambulances.
At the end of the day, the Regional Union of Doctors of Guadeloupe launched an appeal to the population, recalling “the fragility of the health system”, and condemning “the individuals who would have prevented patients from accessing their care or caregivers to access their places of practice ”.
As of November 16, 46.4% of people over 18 had received at least one injection in Guadeloupe, according to the ARS.
While MM. Darmanin and Lecornu “condemned the violence” and “gave all their support to the police”, the socialist presidential candidate, Anne Hidalgo, judged the violence “unbearable” on Saturday on TF1 and called for “dialogue”.
“Let us restore order, but listen to the anger of our Guadeloupean compatriots”, for her part argued Marine Le Pen, when Jean-Luc Mélenchon accused Emmanuel Macron “of letting the situation degenerate” in a “logic of decay and demonization ”, asking the government to open“ negotiations ”.