While Guadeloupe has been shaken for several days by a crisis triggered by the compulsory vaccination for nursing staff, government spokesman Gabriel Attal denounced Wednesday a "recalcitrant minority" and "violent" which takes "an entire island in hostage ”.
The department has been placed under curfew since Friday evening, a measure that was extended until Saturday, November 27.
"Public health cannot be instrumentalised for political ends", insisted Gabriel Attal at the end of the Council of Ministers, estimating that the government had "created the conditions for dialogue with the announcements of the Prime Minister on Monday evening".
To calm the situation on the West Indian island, Jean Castex had notably announced the creation of a "forum for dialogue" in order to "convince and support individually, humanly", the professionals concerned by the vaccination obligation.
Read also Guadeloupe: restoring order, an impossible mission?
The spokesperson recalled that the government had also decided on Saturday to send "additional security means" - about fifty agents of the GIGN and the Raid - to deal with the blockades and looting.
He specified that President Emmanuel Macron had "intervened at the opening of the Council of Ministers" to "recall that our objective, our course, is to protect the Guadeloupeans, as we have been doing since the first day of this crisis".
The Minister of Overseas Territories will visit the island
"We must continue to protect the Guadeloupeans, including against any form of delinquency that we can observe", repeated Gabriel Attal.
"We are going to continue this mobilization", he insisted in front of the press, assuring that the Minister of Overseas Overseas Sébastien Lecornu would go to the island "as soon as the conditions are met", while the anger has also the Martinique
If the obligation to vaccinate caregivers has triggered a protest movement, other demands have resurfaced with a call for a general strike by a collective of trade union and citizen organizations who are also demanding an increase in wages and social minimums and lower fuel and gas prices.
The creation of the forum for dialogue did not convince.
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Tensions in Guadeloupe: "We live in fear and permanent stress"
In Guadeloupe, the unemployment rate as defined by the International Labor Office (ILO) stands at 17% of the working population aged 15 or over on average for the year 2020, more than twice that of the Metropolitan France (8%), according to INSEE. One in three young workers is unemployed: the unemployment rate for 15-29 year olds is 35%. Another indicator of the difficulties encountered by residents: water cuts, due to the dilapidated network, have been frequent for years.
“Of course we continue to mobilize.
We did not expect much from Castex and the Macron government, so we are not disappointed, ”said Hilaire Luce, member of the collective who called for a general strike, on Tuesday, on a dam made of trees and tires. burned near Le Gosier.
"They show a marked contempt: they create a listening authority, that means that they take us for illiterates?
», He indignantly.