Unrest on Guadeloupe claims its first victim

By Calvin Palmer

A union official was shot dead overnight in Guadeloupe when he drove up to  a roadblock in the island’s main city Pointe-a-Pitre.

Jacques Bino’s death is the first in a month-long strike and growing unrest over the rising cost of living in the Caribbean island.

After holding an emergency meeting on the deteriorating situation on the island, Interior Minister Michele Alliot-Marie announced that four squadrons of police reinforcements, 280 men, would fly to the island immediately.

“Acts of pillaging, atrocities and violence against other people … will not be tolerated,” she said.

A few days ago, 150 riot police were sent to the island.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy is due to meet with elected officials from Guadeloupe tomorrow to “address the anxiety, worries and also a certain form of despair from our compatriots.”

Bino’s car was hit three times by 12-gauge shotgun rounds. Two rounds hit the rear of the vehicle and the third was fired through a side passenger window and fatally wounded the activist in the chest.

“These were not stray rounds,” prosecutor Jean-Michel Pretre said, adding that he was looking into the possibility that, given their age, Bino and a passenger had been mistaken for plain-clothes police officers. Bino was in his 50s.

Rioters fired at police and emergency workers, preventing them from reaching the wounded Bino for several hours.  By the time they reached him he was dead.

Six members of the security forces were slightly injured during clashes with armed youths, police said.

The protests in Guadeloupe and neighboring Martinique are hurting scores of businesses, including restaurants, hotels and car rental agencies during the islands’ peak winter tourist season, Martinique Tourism Authority chairwoman Madeleine de Grandmaison said today.

“Tourism is fragile,” she said. “People are not only canceling this week, but also for all the months of February, March and April. We have a huge deficit of tourists ahead of us.”

At least 10,000 tourists have canceled vacations in Martinique and Guadeloupe, according to the National Travel Agencies organization.
Guadeloupe’s strike has persisted for almost a month. Martinique’s is in its third week.

A Paris-based association of tour operators that works with France’s government tourism department has designated Guadeloupe a “red zone,” meaning it is not endorsing it as a destination. The association began redirecting tourists to Martinique — until the strike arrived there.

Guadeloupe’s Tourism Committee said today the main airport reopened after closing briefly because of a lack of workers. But American Airlines canceled a night flight. Much of the violence on the island has occurred after dark.

[Based on results by the AFP news agency and the Associated Press.]