"We implemented what had been asked of us by a large part of the population (...) the sanctuary of the CHU", explained the prefect Alexandre Rochatte on RCI.
The police dismantled on Monday the picket line of demonstrators against the vaccine obligation, located for several months in front of the University Hospital Center (CHU) of Pointe-à-Pitre and symbol of the crisis shaking Guadeloupe.
"We implemented a court decision to clear all access to the CHU so that all nursing staff but also patients can have access and there is no more episode of violence like those we knew last week ”within the establishment, he continued.
According to him, "four arrests for violence" against the police and two wounded gendarmes were identified, after clashes between demonstrators and police at the end of the morning after the dismantling of the picket line.
"They crushed everything"
The first arrest, which would have ignited the powder, is that of "someone who sought to force a roadblock," said the prefect.
It is that of "a comrade who wanted to go back to go to the toilet", according to Elie Domota, leader of the LKP collective opposed to the vaccination obligation.
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At 3 am Monday, “the police landed on the CHU picket line and they crushed everything. When we arrived, we found that they were blocking the two entrances to the CHU and that they prohibited any demonstrator from entering. We have understood the maneuver, it is the deprivation of rights and freedoms ”, told AFP Maïté Hubert M'Toumo, general secretary of the UGTG, a union engaged in the collective organization against the obligation vaccine.
Guadeloupe was shaken in November by a violent social movement, which started with the contesting of the vaccination obligation of caregivers.
If the fight against the vaccine obligation now only concerns certain demonstrators who maintain meetings and sporadic actions, the picket line still in place in front of the CHU two months later had become the symbol.
"Guadeloupe will explode for sure"
A week ago, the director of the CHU of Guadeloupe Gérard Cotellon and his two assistants had to be exfiltrated by the police from their offices besieged by anti-vax activists. For Widdy, a hooded protester who faced the police on Monday, “what is happening there is the start of clashes, it is preventing a strike and it is serious. Guadeloupe will explode for sure, it will burn unless the prefect takes the necessary steps to suspend the vaccination pass in Guadeloupe, ”he told AFP.
In addition, “three roadblocks” were erected early Monday morning in the commune of Basse-Terre, a police source told AFP. "A police vehicle was burned" and the police wiped "stones", according to the same source. A video circulating on social networks shows a motorcyclist falling heavily in front of a flaming dam in Rivière des Pères. The firefighters confirmed that the motorcyclist was "transported in serious condition to the Center hospitalier de Basse Terre".
Spikes 10 to 20 cm long were thrown on the road and used oil was also spilled on the axes concerned, according to the same police source.
On Saturday, several hundred people took part in a citizens' rally to say "stop" to the violence against hospital staff on the island.
Caregivers came to testify to a climate of “terror” at the CHU and deplored the general climate of disinformation around the health crisis.
