David Montoute
November 23rd
An insurrectional situation has emerged in Guadeloupe. Roads are closed, buildings set on fire, and clashes between demonstrators and security forces are raging. Many Guadeloupeans have decided that, against dictatorship, violence is a legitimate option. It is a violence directed against the so-called 'health pass' and against the mandatory vaccination of careworkers imposed upon this overseas territory by Metropolitan France.
In September, France had made it compulsory for all health workers, home carers, transport staff, medical students, firefighters, and all related personnel to have the Covid vaccine. This was accompanied with the requisitioning of all Ivermectin stocks in order to force the deeply unpopular vaccine upon the people of Guadeloupe (as well as neighbouring Martinique). According to French government figures, only 33% of Guadeloupeans are vaccinated (versus 75% in Metropolitan France), with a simiar figure in Martinique.
Tensions rose in October with the arrest of two demonstrators, one of them being Claudine Maraton, the general secretary of the UTS-UGTG (the trade union section of the General Workers Union of Guadeloupe). The UGTG had taken a leading position in the political opposition to the vaccine mandate, a position that the president of the Guadeloupe region also came to echo. As the conflict sharpened, the governing En Marche party's MP for Guadeloupe began to describe the situation on the island as “quasi-insurrectional”, with opposition to the Covid regulations showing a “weakening state authority” on the island.
The Minister of Health, Olivier Véran seemed to recognise the fragility of France's position, and decided to push back the deadline for the vaccination mandate to November 15th. But if November 15th marked the end of the 'health emergency' measures in most of the overseas territories, in Guadeloupe, it marked the start of an indefinite general strike, launched by a collective of trade union and citizen organisations against the mandatory injection of careworkers and the pass sanitaire. At a press conference at the Palais de la Mutualité in Pointe-à-Pitre, Maïté Hubert M’Toumo, the new General Secretary of the UGTG had already sounded the battle-cry: “From Monday, war is declared!”
“From September, the French state decided to renew hostilities […] all doctors and nurses can receive a notice prohibiting them from working. This means that from Monday, the French state which spoke of war has just declared war on us. The situation is catastrophic. Thousands of workers are affected, whom they want to shamelessly fire, without delay or challenge. We can't accept that. It's not possible. The Guadeloupeans are in danger and from the moment war is declared, we are obliged to respond. From Monday, war is declared, there will be nothing that will work, we must organise ourselves so that nothing functions: Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday… every day! We have no choice, we must come together, all social and professional classes, all Guadeloupeans. From Monday there will be two camps: the camp of the French state which has decided to defile us and defile all who oppose their plans; and the other side that wants to protect the country in order to live in freedom. The French president said that vaccines are freedom, so freedom is conditioned on a vaccine, a vaccine that is not under control, a vaccine that generates more and more serious side effects. Is this freedom? It's not possible. So from Monday, war is declared!”
The Departmental Fire and Rescue Service (SDIS), also affected by the mandatory vaccination order, had come to assume a leading role in the protests. As the strike began on the 15th, fights broke out between firefighters and the elite gendarmes, When the gendarmes charged one group, the firefighters responded with jets of water. Other incidents between strikers and police triggered a wave of arrests as the Pointe-à-Pitre prosecutor's office complained of “repeated threats to a law enforcement officer.” Maïté Hubert M’Toumo denounced the arrests in a public statement, calling them “a serious attack on a fundamental freedom which is the right to strike" and rallying “all members and activists to strengthen the picket lines”. Even as the government sent in hundreds of police and gendarme reinforcements, the strike hardened on the following weekend, with rioting breaking out in Pointe-à-Pitre and across the Island. Several gas stations were closed by protesters, and many motorists raided those that remained open, fearing the strike would impact fuel supplies. As the demonstrations and clashes escalated, shops and pharmacies were torched and looted, while schools, post offices and courts were shut down. Reports surfaced that protestors had broken into an arms depot in the island’s capital, Pointe-à-Pitre, and stolen rifles. Col Jean Pierre, of the gendarmerie at Pointe-à-Pitre, said some of the protesters had fired upon security forces. “We just don’t know how far this will still go,” the city’s mayor, Harry Durimel, told FranceInfo radio.
This weekend, Paris authorities began sending elite police and counterterrorism officers with armoured vehicles to Guadeloupe in a bid to stamp out the uprising. The police reinforcements set about dismantling protesters’ road barricades while the island's authorities imposed a dusk-to-dawn curfew until Tuesday morning. By Monday the police had arrested at least 38 people charged with looting and smashing shops.
Over the weekend, the main UGTG trade union called for continued protests. Meanwhile, Martinique has followed its neighbour's example and gone on general strike against the measures dictated by Paris.
The cultural rejection
Guadeloupe - like Martinique - has a deep-rooted history of anti-vaccine sentiment linked to distrust of the Paris government. Political scientist Pamela Obertan, who is helping to organise anti-mandate protests explains that Guadeloupeans “are descendants of slaves, and for us, control over our bodies is really important...The government wants to impose on us a medical experiment. We are still medical experiments.”
For decades, agriculture workers in Guadeloupe and Martinique were exposed to an endocrine-disrupting, carcinogenic pesticide called chlordecone. Around 95% of the population in these two islands is known to register chlordecone in their blood. Studies have linked the pesticide to prostate cancer, and, significantly, Guadeloupe and Martinique have the highest prostate cancer rates in the world. Yet nothing has been done about real health emergencies such as this one. And this goes a long way to explain the distrust towards the metropolis that is felt in the French Antilles. It is this context that has empowered vaccination-refusal, which is now turning into a nationalist and patriotic cause.
Accompanying this development, there is a longstanding usage and trust in folk medicine. As Guadeloupe’s University Hospital director lamented, the vaccine refusniks are “pushing Guadeloupian pharmacology.” From the start of the aggressive push for ”Covid” vaccination, sales of Virapic, a syrup based on the local jackass bitters herb, skyrocketed. This tropical shrub (Neurolaena lobata) is traditionally used for treatment of fever and flu symptoms, wounds and infections, and a variety of parasitic ailments such as malaria, ringworm, and amoebiasis. The plant has found a local champion in pharmacist Henry Joseph, co-founder of the laboratory Phytobokaz. Joseph, claims to have proven the plant's efficacy against emerging RNA viruses and thus its relevance to 'Covid-19'.
Whatever comes of such research, the island's distrust in vaccines is unlikely to abate any time soon. The metropolitan government's refusal to negotiate, together with the local suppression of data on vaccine deaths will continue to antagonise an already rebellious populace. According to lawyer Maître Ellen Bessis, the University Hospital Center (CHU) of Guadeloupe never declares vaccination status amongst any hospitalisations. This, she says allows them to register vaccinated deaths in Guadeloupe's hospitals as unvaccinated, which is what she says is happening. Bessis' claim is based on the extensive testimony of firefighters who, in Guadeloupe, share the job of transporting emergency cases to hospital. As the civil liberties organisation Rester Libre ! says, “If this information were verified, it would be an absolute scandal: a statistical lie designed to hide the dangerousness of the vaccine. It would create a crisis of absolute confidence with the public authorities, and, therefore, all the figures, all the data, could be called into question.”
It is difficult to imagine how the execrable Macron government could possibly backtrack in this conflict, or provide any concessions for Guadeloupe. For to do so would undermine the mandate policy in metropolitan France. Yet the rebellion of the island population can only deepen, as Ellen Bessis affirms.
“We wonder what is going on in the mind of the government!" says Jocelyn Zou, of the fire department's union. “We Guadeloupeans have a notion of freedom. But they impose compulsory vaccination on us when alternative solutions exist. We have every motivation to fight to the end!”
France to send special forces to Guadeloupe after looting, arson:
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