#WORLD #WORLDWIDE #FRANCE #GUADELOUPE #ANARCHISM #News #Journal #Update - (en) France, UCL - press release, Against colonial repression in Guadeloupe (ca, de, it, fr, pt)[machine translation]

 The challenge to the health policy in overseas has been lasting since this summer

and has eased the tensions in recent weeks in Guadeloupe. Indeed, several
territories have experienced curfews maintained when these provisions have not
been applied in mainland France since May. ---- The challenge to the health
policy in overseas has been lasting since this summer and has eased the tensions
in recent weeks in Guadeloupe. Indeed, several territories have experienced
curfews maintained when these provisions have not been applied in mainland France
since May. ---- After shooting live in Guadeloupe on the police, Le Drian
announced to send the RAID and the GIGN in Guadeloupe this Sunday, November 21.

But it would be a mistake to summarize the challenge to health policy. In fact,
if it has grown to such an extent, it is because it has made itself the belt of a
much deeper anger.

The persistent poison of chlordecone
It is not possible to understand the current movement if we do not take into
account the issue of the chlordecone scandal: a pesticide used from 1972 to 1993
in the banana plantations of Martinique and Guadeloupe, polluting the soil and
water for centuries, so even that the toxicity was known since the Sixties, to
the contempt of the populations which today undergo the terrible consequences of
it through very many cancers of the prostate. Indeed, more than 90% of the adult
population would be contaminated by the insecticide, and this for decades to
come. In the islands as in metropolitan France, movements are fighting for the
recognition of the responsibility of the State for this crime: on February 27,
2021 in Martinique, 10,000 to 15,000 people marched to denounce the threat of
impunity due to the crime. of the " prescription". The chlordecone issue is seen
as a time bomb, revealing colonial contempt against an entire population. But in
Guadeloupe it seems that it is on the edge of another health crisis that it
explodes, complicating things.

We cannot understand either if we do not put in parallel the growing number of
other health problems, such as chronic diseases such as diabetes, obesity, high
blood pressure, cardiovascular diseases etc ... far ahead of them. regions of
France, which are not the subject of any particular health campaign. We also
cannot understand the movement without taking into account the other health
problems that Guadeloupe is experiencing, such as drinking water problems, the
lack of medical equipment and nursing staff, while the island is subject to a
large number of serious natural risks: let us recall the deplorable management in
Saint-Martin following Hurricane Irma in 2017.

Colonial management of Guadeloupe
We cannot understand the movement either if we do not question the glaring social
inequalities of the island and the colonial and racist context of these islands.
A counter economy is maintained under an infusion of imports and financing from
the metropolis, deprived of trade with the Caribbean region. The descendants of
slavers, the bekes, maintain their economic domination on the island, and the
population continues to suffer a humiliating colonial symbolism through the names
of streets and statues. Contested in particular by the youth of Guadeloupe, the
statue of Victor Schoelcher was destroyed in May 2020, a few days before the
global anti-racist mobilizations following the death of George Floyd.

If we add all this up, we cannot be surprised for a single moment by the general
mistrust of the populations vis-à-vis vaccination: in the name of which the
French state would suddenly be concerned about the health of a population that ''
he poisoned for 50 years, a population that he usually leaves in precarious
health, a population for whom the virus appears only as one more health problem
alongside others as serious, starting with consequences of chlordecone ? And what
answer does he offer ? Authoritarianism and paternalism !

Such a context can only offer an avenue for anti-vaccine theories. This is not
something new here: Frantz Fanon explained in Year V of the Algerian revolution
that in colonial Algeria, the mistrust and mistrust of the white doctor was such
that even when he was sick he refused to deal with him. Fanon explains that it
was during the long process of entry into the struggle under the leadership of
the FLN that this mistrust began to cease. All comparisons aside, it is not
foolish to observe similarities in the mistrust of vaccination currently in the
overseas territories.

The Union Communiste Libertaire is opposed to the sanitary pass and the
authoritarian imposition of vaccination, since it is through education and
certainly not through repression that adherence to vaccination can be achieved,
it will be even less out of paternalism. We still call for vaccination,
especially given the high rate of the population at risk on the island. Let us
recall that the percentage of unvaccinated caregivers in Guadeloupe is low,
contrary to what was presented, and that faced with a lack of personnel,
suspending caregivers is an aberration. We also strongly condemn the violence
suffered by caregivers within the framework of the movement, and the
conspiratorial and reactionary speeches,

We condemn the ridiculous racist speeches that we have heard here and there,
referring to voodoo the responsibility of the anti-tax campaigns, absurdities
which are matched only by Islamophobic speeches here in metropolitan France to
stigmatize and inferiorize an entire population !

We strongly condemn the colonial repression which is currently being put in place
with the dispatch of the GIGN and the RAID ! We are aware that by this sending,
the metropolis is also sending a message to other territories where the same
dispute exists to prevent the risk of contagion, such as Kanaky where tension is
mounting with the refusal to postpone the self-determination referendum. Since
2009, whether in Guyana, Reunion Island or the West Indies, protests and social
movements have been numerous, among which social and anti-colonial demands are
growing stronger.

There will be no social and health justice in Guadeloupe without a total and
radical break with the colonial and capitalist domination of the metropolis, the
bekés and Guadeloupe employers !

The Libertarian Communist Union, November 30, 2021

https://www.unioncommunistelibertaire.org/?Contre-la-repression-coloniale-en-Guadeloupe
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