Burning barricades, burned or looted stores and “thugs on motorbikes”: the situation remained tense on Friday in Martinique, despite the establishment of a nighttime curfew, against a backdrop of protests against the high cost of living.
All night, the police tried to contain the rioters who erected dozens of roadblocks across the French island of the Antilles.
According to a prefectural source, 32 arrests were made and 12 minor injuries were reported among the police. Some 150 vehicles burned, including those of a rental company, and 14 commercial premises were set on fire, a slightly lower toll than the previous night.
Heart of the clashes, the few kilometers of highway separating Le Lamentin from Fort-de-France, on which “around sixty thugs on motorcycles wiped the windshield”, continues this source.
It was on this road that two people on a motorbike died instantly on Thursday evening who were traveling in the wrong direction without a helmet and who collided with a car.
Since September, Martinique has been gripped by a mobilization against the high cost of living initiated by a movement called the Rally for the Protection of Afro-Caribbean Peoples and Resources (RPPRAC), which degenerated with urban violence.
These seem to have passed a milestone since the night of Wednesday to Thursday, with numerous episodes of looting and acts of vandalism which continued during the night of Thursday to Friday despite a curfew from 9:00 p.m. to 05:00.
In Carbet (north), the only pharmacy in the village burned down. “There’s nothing left. I’ve lost everything,” its owner, Willy Hilaricus, reacted to AFP, lamenting that “this creates a problem of access to care for the population” of this relatively isolated village.
– Airport reopened –
Fort-de-France airport reopened Friday morning with the landing of a first flight from the Dominican Republic shortly after 10:00 a.m. local (4:00 p.m. in Paris), after having had to close the day before, due to the intrusion on the tracks of a hundred demonstrators.
Eight people were arrested following this invasion, AFP learned from a police source. The intrusion, against a backdrop of rumors of police reinforcements denied by the prefecture, caused the diversion to Guadeloupe of three planes and more than 1,000 passengers.
These passengers were due to return to Martinique during the afternoon, the Guadeloupe prefecture said in a press release. Some of them spent the night on camp beds in a gymnasium in the heart of Pointe-à-Pitre transformed into an accommodation center, noted an AFP journalist.
In a press release, the association of mayors of Martinique and that of mayors of France called for “calm and dialogue (…) in the face of the escalation of urban violence”.
The Martinique prefecture also announced a ban on demonstrations and gatherings until Monday. Already closed on Thursday, schools remained closed on Friday “given the uncertainty of the current social context”, according to the rectorate.
The Martinique University Hospital announced on Thursday the triggering of a white plan and the island’s pharmacies declared “no longer able to provide emergency services”.
During the night from Wednesday to Thursday, a 20-year-old man died on the sidelines of the looting of a shopping center, announced the prefecture, and another, aged 30, was “seriously injured by gunshot”, according to a police source.
The movement against the high cost of living, a recurring theme in overseas territories, was launched at the beginning of September by the RPPRAC, which demands an alignment of the prices of food products in France, displayed 40% more expensive in Martinique.
Several round tables bringing together state services, local authorities, economic players and the RPPRAC have been organized, without positive outcomes so far.
The next one is scheduled for Friday at 3:00 p.m. (9:00 p.m. in Paris). The previous one, on Thursday, ended without an agreement but with progress, according to local radio RCI which believes that the negotiations are stumbling on two points: the number of products affected by a price drop and the ceiling to contain the gap with prices in France.
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