By Le Figaro with AFP
Posted yesterday at 9:32pm, updated yesterday at 9:50pm
The city of Fort de France. Drawing. VladFlorin / stock.adobe.com
Six war memorials were demolished on the night of Saturday June 17-Sunday June 18 in Martinique on the eve of the commemoration ceremony for the June 18 appeal and investigations have been launched, consistent sources have told us. The memorial to the Fort-de-France dead was covered in red paint, an AFP journalist noted. Five other pillars were also the target of red paint sprays in several communities in the south of the island, said the state representative on the island in a press release.
Jean-Christophe Bouvier expressed “his indignation” and “strongly condemned this intolerable and deeply shocking behavior”. “These acts are an insult to the memory of the Martiniquaises and Martiniquais, who chose dissidence to defend their freedom and that of their peers,” agrees Jean-Christophe Bouvier. “These fighters defied death for freedom. I don’t know if young people today know that,” said 1st Lucien Ignace, 97, a veteran who attended the commemoration of the June 18, 1940 appeal, in Martinique.
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The ceremony took place in front of the memorial to Savannah’s mangled death in Fort-de-France, local media reported. Investigators from the research department of the gendarmerie were tasked with identifying the perpetrators of the damage in the communes of Ducos, Rivière-Pilote, Rivière-Salée, Trois-Ilets and Sainte-Luce. The investigation into vandalism in Fort-de-France has been transferred to the national police.
In 18 months, around twenty acts of degradation and destruction of war memorials were observed in Martinique.