Chlordecone continues to poison relations between the West Indies and Paris. About eight hundred people, according to the police, demonstrated on Saturday December 10 in Fort-de-France to denounce the dismissal of the case requested by the Paris prosecutor’s office in the investigation into the damage caused in the Antilles by chlordecone, a pesticide authorized in the banana plantations from 1972 to 1993. As a symbol of the deaths linked to this substance responsible for unprecedented soil pollution in Martinique and Guadeloupe, the demonstrators stretched out in front of the prefecture.
A 69-year-old former agricultural worker, Christiane Césaire explains that she saw her family taken away by disease: her two brothers and her father, who died of prostate cancer; and her mother, of breast and uterine cancers. She herself suffers from health problems and, if she was able to get out of it, says to keep “many consequences”.
“No protection”
“With my parents, we worked in the banana fields in Basse-Pointe”in the north of Martinique, she told Agence France-Presse (AFP). “The boss gave us no protection, no gloves, no boots, and our nails, fingers, toes were bitten. »
At the end of November, the public prosecutor demanded that the investigation opened after complaints were filed, in 2006, by Guadeloupean associations, then in 2007 by Martinican associations. These denounced a crime of poisoning and endangering the lives of others, but the Paris prosecutor’s office considered that there was no need to prosecute anyone, considering that the facts were prescribed or not characterized.
Protesters chanted songs demanding judgment and condemnation for those responsible, and a ” repair “ for the people of Martinique. “This contempt that we are shown as this file progresses is unbearable”, denounced to AFP Marie-Joseph Sellay-Hardy-Dessources, member of the Lyannaj pou dépolyé Matinik collective. If the activist for the Union of Women of Martinique deplores a weak mobilization, she believes that the population today is “too informed to give up”.
“Go to the end of the road”
“Even if there is a dismissal, there are other elements to fight over”underlines a lawyer for the civil parties, Raphaël Constant. “Let’s admit that we arrive at the criminal level: the main officials are dead. We can prosecute those who used chlordecone until 2004 and ordered it, but that’s not going to solve the fundamental problem of fixing the country.”he said.
During the campaign for his re-election, Emmanuel Macron was questioned on March 23 on the overseas channel La 1ère, about chlordecone. He had judged that“we must go to the end of the road” in Guadeloupe and Martinique, “identifying responsibilities”, “compensate people to the end”especially those that “have had to live in their flesh the consequences of these intoxications”. On April 6, in a video addressed to the inhabitants of Martinique, the Head of State described the chlordecone affair as “scandal” and underlined that the public authorities had “mobilized nearly 100 million euros on this subject”.