Blockades resumed Saturday in Guadeloupe after another night of looting and fires.
The curfew, imposed throughout the island in the face of the deterioration of the mobilization, was violated by anti-health measures activists.
On Saturday, the Pointe-à-Pitre prosecutor's office said sixteen people had been arrested and five of them placed in detention, while police and gendarmes were targeted by gunfire, leaving one slightly injured.
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From the metropolis, the government is on alert.
Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin held a crisis meeting at the end of the day on Saturday, announcing the sending to the island of about fifty members of the elite forces of the GIGN and the Raid.
His counterpart in charge of overseas territories, Sébastien Lecornu, has scheduled a meeting on Monday evening around Prime Minister Jean Castex, with parliamentarians and the presidents of the assemblies of Guadeloupe, as well as the Minister of Health Olivier Véran.
"A frank answer to all contempt"
For its part, the General Union of Workers of Guadeloupe (UGTG), at the forefront of the protest, called in a statement "
to continue the mobilization and strengthen the pickets of popular demands
". At the heart of the revolt, not only the vaccination obligation for caregivers, but also "
the depth of suffering, inequalities, poverty and exclusion suffered by the population, especially the young and the elderly
", she continued. The mobilization "
constitutes a frank response to all the contempt, all the violence that has been opposed to us for years, to us people of Guadeloupe
", wrote the general secretary of the union, Maïté Hubert M'Toumo, welcoming the barricades. erected on the island.
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Among the people placed in detention, one was referred for “
willful violence with a weapon on a person in charge of public order
” and the others for “
aggravated theft
”.
The latter will be tried on Monday by the criminal court, detailed the statement from the Pointe-à-Pitre prosecutor's office, indicating that ten other people were also in police custody.
"
The investigations will be the subject of a particular follow-up to succeed in arresting the perpetrators of the unidentified facts
", adds the prosecution.
Already in the night from Friday to Saturday, pharmacies and telephone shops had been targeted.
Saturday morning, the prefecture of Guadeloupe had evoked "
29 arrests in the archipelago of individuals looting and degrading private and public property
".