Guadeloupe: the police attack the picket line of the CHU, symbol of the mobilization


The police have dismantled the picket line of demonstrators against the vaccine obligation, located for several months in front of the University Hospital Center (CHU) of Pointe-à-Pitre

The police dismantled this Monday, January 10 the picket line of demonstrators against the vaccine obligation, located for several months in front of the University Hospital Center (CHU) of Pointe-à-Pitre and symbol of the crisis shaking the Guadeloupe.

At 3 o’clock in the morning, “the police landed on the CHU picket line and they crushed everything,” said Maïté Hubert M’Toumo, general secretary of the UGTG, a union engaged in the organization collective against the vaccination obligation.

“If you want to enter and strike, you have to send a registered letter to Cotellon (director of the CHU, Editor’s note) … It is an attack on the fundamental right to strike”, protested the trade unionist Gaby Clavier, former secretary general of the health branch of the UGTG.

Guadeloupe was shaken in November by a violent social movement, which started with the contesting of the vaccination obligation of caregivers.

If the fight against the vaccine obligation now only concerns certain demonstrators, the picket line still in place in front of the CHU two months later had become the symbol.

A week ago, the director of the CHU de Guadeloupe Gérard Cotellon and his two assistants had to be exfiltrated by the police from their offices besieged by anti-vax activists.

‘Suspend the vaccination pass’

On Monday, clashes took place between demonstrators and the police in the late morning after the dismantling of the picket line. The police used tear gas canisters.

A protester was arrested for “willful violence against the police”, according to a police source, and 80 people were still in front of the CHU at the end of the morning, according to the same source.

For Widdy, a hooded protester who faced the police on Monday, “what is happening there is the start of clashes, it is preventing a strike and it is serious. Guadeloupe will explode for sure, it will burn unless the prefect takes the necessary steps to suspend the vaccination pass in Guadeloupe, ”he said.

In addition, “three dams” were erected early Monday morning in the town of Basse-Terre. “A police vehicle was burned” and the police wiped “stones”, according to the same source.

A video circulating on social networks shows a motorcyclist falling heavily in front of a flaming dam in Rivière des Pères. The firefighters confirmed that the motorcyclist was “transported in serious condition to the Center hospitalier de Basse Terre”.

Peaks 10 to 20 cm long were thrown on the road and used oil was also spilled on the axes concerned, according to the same police source. The cleaning of the axes was in progress at the end of the morning.

On Saturday, several hundred people took part in a citizens’ rally to say “stop” to the violence against hospital staff on the island. Caregivers came to testify to a climate of “terror” at the CHU and deplored the general climate of disinformation around the health crisis.



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