Riots, looting, fires, curfew, blank plan at the hospital… Three years after the health crisis which degenerated, at the end of 2021, into a deep social crisis punctuated by urban violence in Martinique, the island is reconnecting with a vocabulary that she thought she had forgotten since the worst moments of the Covid-19 pandemic.
The reflexes dating from this era quickly came back into fashion, too. On “Les routes de Martinique”, a community which brings together 40,000 users – or 11% of the island’s population – on the messaging application Telegram, strangers share in real time information on blocked traffic lanes. by rioters or unblocked by the police. “Filtering dam at the Lorrain bridge! Only healthcare staff and people with a medical appointment can pass”warns a user named “Véro”, Friday October 11 in the morning. Consulting the daily summaries of the state of the main roads and major intersections on the island, established by Bison Futé volunteers, has once again become essential before getting behind the wheel.
But this time, it was not draconian health restrictions that ignited the powder. Thursday, after a night of riots in around ten municipalities on the island, against a backdrop of anger against the high cost of living, the prefect of Martinique, Jean-Christophe Bouvier, imposed the“ban on all travel on public roads and in public places throughout the territory of Martinique between 9 p.m. and 5 a.m.”. This curfew is expected to remain in effect until Monday morning.
“The people defend themselves”
Tension has been rising in Martinique since the launch on 1is September, of a movement to fight against the high cost of living, in this department where the price of food products is 40% higher than in France, according to an INSEE study. On the sidelines of this mobilization, during the month, clashes broke out over several nights in certain sensitive neighborhoods of Fort-de-France and Lamentin, the two most important cities on the island. In response, the prefect of Martinique established an initial curfew, only in these neighborhoods, and brought in a squadron of gendarmerie and the CRS as reinforcements.
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Then, after two weeks of relative calm, the situation suddenly worsened after a “dead island” operation decreed on Wednesday by around thirty political, union and associative organizations. During the night from Wednesday to Thursday, new riots shook a large part of the island. The prefecture reported Thursday a “ten fires in private buildings” in several localities. A building of the territorial gendarmerie brigade was set on fire in Carbet, while the island’s roads bristled with smoking roadblocks erected by the rioters.
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