French security forces came under fire late on Wednesday as they confronted a third straight night of unrest on the strike-crippled Caribbean island of Guadeloupe.
Hundreds of extra French police and paramilitary gendarmes have been sent to the island since the tensions flared into looting and violence this week. The new unrest came one day after a union member was shot dead near a barricade.
The island prefecture said five shotgun rounds were fired at security forces at Gosier, near the capital Pointe-a-Pitre, in the latest incidents. No one was wounded but the security forces withdrew from the locality.
The prefecture said a store and a car in Pointe-a-Pitre were set ablaze and four people arrested nearby. Another store was looted at Sainte-Rose.
A union coalition called the general strike on Jan. 20 in protest at the high cost of living on the holiday island.
Union representative Jacques Bino was shot dead on Tuesday night when he drove up to a roadblock manned by armed youths in Pointe-a-Pitre. His car was hit three times by shotgun fire, prosecutors said.
Three police who accompanied emergency services trying to help the dying man were lightly wounded, officials said.
On Wednesday night more than 2,000 people, headed by union coalition leader Elie Domota, staged a silent march up to the place where Bino was killed.
Domota demanded a commission inquiry into the death and said unions still wanted a US$260 a month wage rise for low paid workers. He said the coalition would only step up its strike action following the French government’s move to send extra security forces.
After an emergency meeting in Paris on the island troubles, French Interior Minister Michele Alliot-Marie announced that 280 reinforcements would fly to the island where gangs of youths looted shops, smashed storefront windows and threw up burning roadblocks.
French President Nicolas Sarkozy said he would meet lawmakers from Guadeloupe yesterday to “address the anxiety, worries and also a certain form of despair from our compatriots.”
The conflict has exposed race and class divisions on the island, where the local white elite wields power over the black majority.
The economy is largely in the hands of the “Bekes,” the local name for whites who are mostly descendants of colonial landlords and sugar plantation slave owners of the 17th and 18th centuries.
A Socialist opposition leader, Malikh Boutih, said it was “shocking” to watch a police force “almost 100 percent white, confront a black population” and drew a parallel with the 2005 suburban riots in France.
“There are no concrete buildings, there are palm trees, but it’s the same dead-end, the same ‘no future’ for young people, with joblessness and a feeling of isolation,” Boutih said.
Unions launched a strike on the neighboring French island of Martinique on Feb. 5 also to press for higher salaries and measures to bring down the prices of basic goods.
A fire caused by a burst gas pipe yesterday spread to several homes and sent a fireball soaring into the sky outside Malaysia’s largest city, injuring more than 100 people. The towering inferno near a gas station in Putra Heights outside Kuala Lumpur was visible for kilometers and lasted for several hours. It happened during a public holiday as Muslims, who are the majority in Malaysia, celebrate the second day of Eid al-Fitr. National oil company Petronas said the fire started at one of its gas pipelines at 8:10am and the affected pipeline was later isolated. Disaster management officials said shutting the
DITCH TACTICS: Kenyan officers were on their way to rescue Haitian police stuck in a ditch suspected to have been deliberately dug by Haitian gang members A Kenyan policeman deployed in Haiti has gone missing after violent gangs attacked a group of officers on a rescue mission, a UN-backed multinational security mission said in a statement yesterday. The Kenyan officers on Tuesday were on their way to rescue Haitian police stuck in a ditch “suspected to have been deliberately dug by gangs,” the statement said, adding that “specialized teams have been deployed” to search for the missing officer. Local media outlets in Haiti reported that the officer had been killed and videos of a lifeless man clothed in Kenyan uniform were shared on social media. Gang violence has left
US Vice President J.D. Vance on Friday accused Denmark of not having done enough to protect Greenland, when he visited the strategically placed and resource-rich Danish territory coveted by US President Donald Trump. Vance made his comment during a trip to the Pituffik Space Base in northwestern Greenland, a visit viewed by Copenhagen and Nuuk as a provocation. “Our message to Denmark is very simple: You have not done a good job by the people of Greenland,” Vance told a news conference. “You have under-invested in the people of Greenland, and you have under-invested in the security architecture of this
Japan unveiled a plan on Thursday to evacuate around 120,000 residents and tourists from its southern islets near Taiwan within six days in the event of an “emergency”. The plan was put together as “the security situation surrounding our nation grows severe” and with an “emergency” in mind, the government’s crisis management office said. Exactly what that emergency might be was left unspecified in the plan but it envisages the evacuation of around 120,000 people in five Japanese islets close to Taiwan. China claims Taiwan as part of its territory and has stepped up military pressure in recent years, including
RSS