Protesters from the sanitary antipass collective burst into the hemicycle of the Regional Council of Guadeloupe in Basse-Terre on Thursday, December 22, breaking windows and other objects.
According to the images broadcast by the local channel Guadeloupe the 1st, the demonstrators invaded the hemicycle while singing. “No to compulsory vaccination! No to the health pass, ”one could read on a banner.
“The collective broke the entrance gate and the door to the reception hall, and they entered the hemicycle while a plenary was ending”, according to a regional communications manager. She added that the elected officials had “had time to leave the hemicycle” and that the president of the region, Ary Chalus “locked himself in his office”.
In Guadeloupe, resistance to vaccination is strong. The archipelago was affected in November by a protest movement, sometimes violent, born of the opposition to the obligation for nursing staff and firefighters to be vaccinated against Covid-19. Wider social demands subsequently emerged.
This protest is led by a group of organizations, particularly trade unions and citizens, who are very demanding.
Weeks of negotiations
The negotiations which were to start in mid-December to resolve this crisis aborted in mid-December and did not resume after the elected officials left the negotiating table on the grounds that the main demand of the collective, to return to the vaccine obligation , was a state competence, not theirs.
To satisfy the other points of demand, they formulated their proposals on social and family issues on a website.
This weekend, demonstrations took place in several places on the island. On Saturday, protesters blocked access to the island’s largest shopping mall, crowded for several hours, days before Christmas, blocking people inside.
Violence is also regularly committed inside the Pointe-à-Pitre University Hospital, against the management but also non-suspended caregivers.