By: Staff Writer
November 23, 2021
Guadeloupe burns amid protests on COVID-19 restrictions. Cars have been overturned, businesses looted and buildings set on fire over the past weekend.
Guadeloupe, riots and clashes against mandatory vaccinations and vaccine passports and COVID-19 lockdowns.
French President Emmanuel Macron said violence in Guadeloupe over COVID-19 restrictions had created a “very explosive” situation, as a general strike entered a second week on Monday and many stores remained shuttered after night-time looting.
Guadeloupe is an overseas French territory and normally peaceful, but the COVID-19 mandates have proven too much to bear for the many.
French authorities have dispatched police reinforcements to the island after a week of violent protests over coronavirus restrictions.
Islanders are angry after Paris announced that health workers across all French territories must have COVID-19 vaccinations. This sparked demonstrations that degenerated into the torching and looting of shops and pharmacies and clashes with police.
There were reports that rioters had broken into an arms depot in the island’s coastal capital, Pointe-à-Pitre, and stolen rifles. “We just don’t know how far this will still go,” the city’s mayor, Harry Durimel, told FranceInfo radio.
Island authorities have imposed a dusk-to-dawn curfew until Tuesday morning. On Monday police said they had arrested 38 people caught looting and smashing shops, and had begun dismantling road barricades set up by protesters.
Road blockades by protesters made traveling across the island nearly impossible Sunday. Firefighters reported 48 interventions into Sunday morning. The island of 400,000 people has one of the lowest vaccination rates in France at 33 percent, compared with 75 percent across the country.
Col Jean Pierre, of the gendarmerie at Pointe-à-Pitre, said protesters had fired on security forces and firefighters, and blamed the worst incidences on “organised gangs”.
The French president also said the authorities had his full solidarity and urged people not to fall for the “lies and manipulation” of what he described as a “very small minority”.
“You cannot use the health of the French people to drive political battles,” Macron said during a visit to Amiens in northern France. “Public order must be maintained.”
He added: “There’s a situation that is very explosive, which is linked to a very local context and to tensions we know of and that are historic as well as to certain interests that seek to use this context and anxiety. The government is mobilised.”
The Prime Minister, Jean Castex, will hold a meeting with Guadeloupe’s MPs and other elected representatives at 6pm on Monday. The health minister, Olivier Véran, will also attend.