The French Caribbean island of Guadeloupe was on the verge of rebellion, a political leader said on Tuesday after stone-throwing protesters set cars and buildings ablaze, forced the international airport to close and clashed with police.
Nearly four weeks of work stoppages and demonstrations for lower prices and higher pay have caused thousands of tourists to flee or cancel holidays on the normally tranquil island, prompting many hotels to close and cruise ships to head elsewhere.
“It is a political crisis, an institutional crisis and we are on the brink of sedition,” Guadeloupe’s Regional Council President Victorin Lurel told France-Info radio.
From Paris, French Interior Minister Michele Alliot-Marie said the protests had caused “degradation, devastation and confrontations” on Guadeloupe and its sister island, Martinique, where most shops and offices have been closed by the protests.
She urged “calm, responsibility and restraint.”
Police said they arrested 18 people overnight as protesters burned cars, a library and a boat-rental store in Sainte-Anne and Point-a-Pitre.
Guadeloupe’s main airport was closed on Tuesday because workers could not pass through barricaded and debris-clogged roads and several flights were canceled, said Guadeloupe’s top appointed official, Nicolas Desforges.
About 450,000 people live on Guadeloupe, a verdant hilly island boasting white-sand beaches that is an integral part of France.
Behind much of the unrest in Guadeloupe and Martinique is resentment by Afro-Caribbeans, many of whom are descendants of slaves, that the vast majority of wealth and land are in the hands of offspring of colonists.
Paris has refused to budge on strikers’ demands for a US$250 monthly raise for low-paid workers who now make roughly US$1,130 a month. But business leaders in Martinique agreed on Tuesday to a 20 percent price cut on most supermarket products, despite initial refusal.
Stephane Hayot, a spokesman for the National Union of Wholesale Distributors, earlier said the move “would represent our death sentence” by forcing them to sell at prices that don’t cover their costs.
POLITICAL PATRIARCHS: Recent clashes between Thailand and Cambodia are driven by an escalating feud between rival political families, analysts say The dispute over Thailand and Cambodia’s contested border, which dates back more than a century to disagreements over colonial-era maps, has broken into conflict before. However, the most recent clashes, which erupted on Thursday, have been fueled by another factor: a bitter feud between two powerful political patriarchs. Cambodian Senate President and former prime minister Hun Sen, 72, and former Thai prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra, 76, were once such close friends that they reportedly called one another brothers. Hun Sen has, over the years, supported Thaksin’s family during their long-running power struggle with Thailand’s military. Thaksin and his sister Yingluck stayed
Kemal Ozdemir looked up at the bare peaks of Mount Cilo in Turkey’s Kurdish majority southeast. “There were glaciers 10 years ago,” he recalled under a cloudless sky. A mountain guide for 15 years, Ozdemir then turned toward the torrent carrying dozens of blocks of ice below a slope covered with grass and rocks — a sign of glacier loss being exacerbated by global warming. “You can see that there are quite a few pieces of glacier in the water right now ... the reason why the waterfalls flow lushly actually shows us how fast the ice is melting,” he said.
In the sweltering streets of Jakarta, buskers carry towering, hollow puppets and pass around a bucket for donations. Now, they fear becoming outlaws. City authorities said they would crack down on use of the sacred ondel-ondel puppets, which can stand as tall as a truck, and they are drafting legislation to remove what they view as a street nuisance. Performances featuring the puppets — originally used by Jakarta’s Betawi people to ward off evil spirits — would be allowed only at set events. The ban could leave many ondel-ondel buskers in Jakarta jobless. “I am confused and anxious. I fear getting raided or even
‘ARBITRARY’ CASE: Former DR Congo president Joseph Kabila has maintained his innocence and called the country’s courts an instrument of oppression Former Democratic Republic of the Congo (DR Congo) president Joseph Kabila went on trial in absentia on Friday on charges including treason over alleged support for Rwanda-backed militants, an AFP reporter at the court said. Kabila, who has lived outside the DR Congo for two years, stands accused at a military court of plotting to overthrow the government of Congolese President Felix Tshisekedi — a charge that could yield a death sentence. He also faces charges including homicide, torture and rape linked to the anti-government force M23, the charge sheet said. Other charges include “taking part in an insurrection movement,” “crime against the
RSS