‘Last night was a horror’ – Technologist

Riots, looting, fires, curfews, emergency plans at the hospital… Three years after the Covid-19 pandemic which, in late 2021, degenerated into a profound social crisis punctuated by urban violence in Martinique, the French island in the Caribbean is reverting to a vocabulary it thought it had put behind it.

Habits from those days are coming back into fashion, too. On “Les routes de Martinique,” a Telegram community that brings together 40,000 users (11 % of the island’s population), strangers share real-time information on traffic lanes, obstructed by rioters or unblocked by law enforcement. “Checkpoint at the Lorrain bridge! Only nursing staff and people with medical appointments may pass,” warned a user named Véro on the morning of Friday, October 11. Consulting the daily summaries of the state of the island’s main roads and intersections, drawn up by volunteer drivers, has once again become essential before getting behind the wheel.

But this time, it isn’t draconian health restrictions that set off the firestorm. On Thursday, after a night of rioting in a dozen of the island’s towns, against a backdrop of anger at the high cost of living, the prefect of Martinique, Jean-Christophe Bouvier, imposed a “ban on all travel on public roads and in public places throughout the territory of Martinique between 9 pm and 5 am.” The curfew is set to remain in force until Monday morning.

‘The people defend themselves’

Tensions have been rising in Martinique since the launch, on September 1, of a social movement to protest the high cost of living, in a territory where food prices are 40% higher than in mainland France, according to a study by the national statistics institute. On the sidelines of this mobilization, over the past month, scuffles have broken out on several nights, in certain sensitive neighborhoods of Fort-de-France and Le Lamentin, the island’s two largest cities. In response, the prefect introduced an initial curfew in these neighborhoods only, and brought in reinforcements from a gendarmerie squadron and riot police.

Then, after two weeks of relative calm, the situation took a sharp turn for the worse following a “dead island” operation declared by some 30 political, trade union and community organizations on Wednesday. On Wednesday night, new riots shook a large part of the island. On Thursday, the prefecture reported “around 10 fires in private buildings” in several towns. A gendarmerie building was set on fire in Le Carbet, while the island’s roads bristled with smoldering roadblocks erected by rioters.

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