A new statue of Victor Schœlcher vandalized in Martinique

A statue of Victor Schœlcher (1804-1893) was beheaded on the night of March 5 to 6 in Diamant, on the south coast of Martinique, announced the Martinique chain.

The base of the statue built in 1998 for the 150 of the abolition of slavery, has been scratched in red and black, in reference to the independence flag of Martinique.

Located near the town hall of Diamant, as well as the cemetery where the Martinican poet Édouard Glissant rests, the statue of Victor Schœlcher - who had worked under the Second Republic for the abolition of slavery in France in 1848 - was covered of two tags, “

Proud to be colonized?

"And"

JM Sayé!

".

Read also:

The statues of discord

: the new iconoclasts

This last mention refers to the JM rum ​​distillery in Macouba.

Ransacked on February 12 by anti-chlordecone protesters, the factory was targeted because of the slave iconography of the labels of the spirits produced there.

The act of vandalism did not surprise the mayor of the commune Hugues Toussay.

"

If I deplore the act as such, I understand the reactions,

" he explained to La 1ère on Saturday, after having filed a handrail.

"

I can understand the action, because at one point, they do not have an answer to their questions, we feel that there is a certain lethargy of justice,

" said the mayor, with reference to the turmoil that is currently shaking part of the island.

The town hall has let it be known that it will not replace the monument to Victor Schœlcher.

Tensions linked to the issue of chlordecone

Taken over by the Bernard Hayot group, the JM Macouba distillery was at the center of demonstrations by anti-chlordecone activists, named after the highly toxic phytosanitary pesticide used between 1972 and 1993 in banana plantations.

Chlordecone is slowly poisoning Martinique and its inhabitants, 90% of the adult population of which has been contaminated, according to Public Health France.

The question is at the heart of an investigation opened 13 years ago and whose demonstrators fear the conclusions.

At the end of February, several thousand people protested against the possible prescription of chlordecone poisonings in Guadelpoupe and Martinique, which are the subject of a complaint filed in 2006. Faced with the significant mobilization, anger and the feeling of abandonment, the mayor of Saint-Joseph and vice-president of the Territorial Assembly of Martinique, Yan Monplaisir, expressed to AFP his fears of seeing a "

multiplication of demands

" and a "

recovery by activists who have, on several occasions, demonstrated acts of violence.

»More recently, the imprisonment of two demonstrators who ransacked the JM rum ​​distillery in Macoub had aroused the anger of part of the associations of the island including the Komité of January 13, 2020, which declared on March 5 that "

The French judges, equaling their predecessors applying the black code, have taken a new step today by imprisoning two activists whose only crime was to refuse to justify slavery, a crime of humanity

".

Read also: The France of slavery told through archaeological excavations in France and overseas

Beyond the recent mobilization in connection with the health scandal of chlordecone, this new degradation also occurs several months after the wave of unboltings that had shaken the overseas territories echoing the American Black Lives Matter movement, in the summer latest.

Two statues of the abolitionist Victor Schœlcher were destroyed on May 22, 2020, the day of the commemoration of the abolition of slavery.

The act of vandalism had sparked a wave of indignation, but also incomprehension at the roots of this rejection.

"

Schœlcher is not our savior

", proclaimed the demonstrators in a press release.

Omnipresent in the West Indies, the image and name of Victor Schœlcher eclipses, according to his opponents, other figures in the fight against slavery, such as the Guadeloupe “mulatto” Solitude.

Emmanuel Macron, for his part, firmly condemned the degradation of the two statues of Victor Schœlcher in May, acts which “

soil his memory and that of the Republic

”.