Strikes that have nearly frozen everyday life on France’s Caribbean islands burst into clashes on Monday as police battled protesters angry at high prices and resentful of a tiny white elite on lands better known for beachside vacations.
Police detained about 50 people after coming under a barrage of stones as they tried to take down barricades on the island of Guadeloupe, said Nicolas Desforges, the island’s top government official.
Strikers were sprayed with tear gas and several, including union leader Alex Lollia, were injured, France’s leftist NPA party said in a statement.
The leader of the LKP Collective that organized Guadeloupe’s strike warned that deadly escalation is possible.
“If anyone injures a member of the LKP or a striker on Guadeloupe, there will be deaths,” Elie Domota said in a television interview on Saturday.
On the sister island of Martinique, 160km south of Guadeloupe, police said that as many as 10,000 demonstrators marched through the narrow streets of the capital to protest spiraling food prices and denounce the business elite.
Government offices, schools, banks and stores have been shuttered for most of the past 12 days as islanders demand lower prices and higher wages. The stoppage in Guadeloupe began late last month.
Living costs are high on the French islands, which depend heavily on imports and use the euro. The strike also is exposing racial and class tensions on islands where a largely white elite that makes up 1 percent of the population controls most businesses.
France’s minister for overseas departments, Yves Jego, warned the strike could cause job losses and French Prime Minister Francois Fillon told reporters that barricades “are not part of the legal means of expression.”
“Gas stations must be as accessible as possible so the people can get around and the people of Guadeloupe must be able to buy basic goods,” said Fillon, whose government deployed more than 100 riot police to the region last week.
France’s National Travel Agencies organization has reported that 10,000 tourists have canceled planned vacations in Martinique and Guadeloupe. Several hotels in Guadeloupe reported on Monday that they could not accept guests because protesters were congregated outside and staff did not show up to work.
The airport in Point-a-Pitre, Guadeloupe, was closed, American Airlines said, which canceled flights to the island, stranding about 15 people in Puerto Rico.
Lines of cars snaked outside of gas stations in Martinique as islanders tried to fill their tanks.
Strikers allowed 28 of the island’s 85 gas stations to be resupplied, but forced small shop owners, who had opened over the weekend, to re-close and blockaded industrial zones.
‘CROSSING THE LINE’: China’s embassy in Seoul criticized US Forces Korea Commander General Xavier Brunson, asking if his ‘hostile’ remarks were authorized by Washington South Korea and the US are in talks over recent public remarks by the commander of US Forces Korea, Seoul’s presidential office said yesterday, after the comments drew sharp criticism from China. In a recent podcast interview, US Forces Korea Commander General Xavier Brunson described South Korea as “the dagger in the heart of Asia” from China’s east coast, prompting the Chinese embassy in Seoul to say that he had “truly crossed the line.” The interview came amid growing speculation that Washington might seek to expand the role of US Forces Korea in countering the growing regional influence of China, a key
Through the noise of rushing papers and whirring belts at a print factory in Kyoto, two creators watch their photo essay come to life in broadsheet form — part of an effort to win new audiences in the age of artificial intelligence (AI). Despite the decline of the publishing industry, self-publication and handmade “zine” magazines are growing in popularity in Japan, reflecting the nation’s enduring love of paper in the digital era. While speaking to Agence France-Presse at the plant, his hands black with ink, one of the creators, Kazuma Obara, said: “I think [paper] is a medium that engages all five
Australian researchers have trained lab-grown brain cells on a silicon computer chip to play the 1990s shooter game Doom and said they are just scratching the surface of what the neurons could be capable of doing. It is the science-fiction work of biotech boffins at Cortical Labs, who researched and developed the technology that harnesses the workings of the brain’s networking system. Each so-called “biological computer” contains about 200,000 living human brain cells, grown from stem cells that were harvested from blood donations. Having mastered the simple computer game Pong, where a paddle is moved up and down to send a ball
France experienced its hottest spring on record, the French weather service said on Tuesday, after an exceptional early heat wave that also broke highs for the season in England and Wales. Meteo-France said the average nationwide temperature over March to May was 13.8°C — about 1.7°C above the norm, and surpassing records set in 2011 and 2020. “The warmest spring since records began in 1900,” it said in a bulletin. All three months were warmer than average, but the onset of an “unprecedented heatwave” late last month pushed the mercury to highs typically seen at the height of the summer. “Our country had never
RSS