Chlordecone in West Indies: two complaints of associations judged inadmissible

The complaints were the former ministers of health or agriculture Xavier Bertrand, Marisol Touraine, Dominique Bussereau, Louis Mermaz, Jean-Pierre Sisson, Agnès Buzyn and Didier Guillaume.

Le Monde with AFP

The Court of Justice of the Republic (CJR) declared the complaints filed by two associations against former ministers in the record of the use of chlordecone in the Caribbean, announced the general prosecutor’s office near the Court of Cassation, Tuesday, February 8 at the France-Presse agency.

The jurisdiction concluded at the end of the month of January that the medical association of safeguarding the environment and health (AMSe) and the Guadeloupean Association of Action against Chlordecone (AGAC), affiliated with the Union UGTG (General Union of Guadeloupe workers), did not meet the criteria to file a complaint and had no interest in acting.

The bottom of the file not examined

The CJR, only jurisdiction empowered to judge the acts of the members of the Government in the performance of their duties, therefore did not examine the substance of the file and did not comment on the facts denounced in the spring of 2021 by Complainants.

The AMS – which has 25 doctors practicing in Martinique or retirees – aimed at the former ministers of health or agriculture Xavier Bertrand, Marisol Touraine, Dominique Bussereau, Louis Mermaz and Jean-Pierre Soisson. As well as the UGTG, Agnès Buzyn and Didier Guillaume.

 A banana planter in Capesterre-Belle-Water, Guadeloupe, April 10, 2018.
A banana planter in Capesterre-Belle-Water, Guadeloupe, April 10, 2018. Helene Valenzuela / AFP

AMSE lawyers reproached former members of the government for “prolonged the authorization of use of chlordecone” and signed orders, in particular in 2005, which allowed chlorcoone residues in the diet with tolerable thresholds, according to them, far too high.

Since 2008, the Public Health Pole of the Paris Court of Justice is responsible for judicial information, but the investigating judges have taken part in 2021 with several civil parties of their analysis, according to which the facts would be, in their The large majority, prescribed. As part of this investigation, the ex-Ministers of Agriculture Jean-Pierre Sisson (1992-1993) and Louis Mermaz (1990-1992) were heard as witnesses on June 24 and July 22.

In 2006, several Martiniques and Guadeloupean associations had filed three stocony complaints, endangering the life of others and administering pests.

Chlordecone, a pesticide prohibited in France in 1990, but continued to be authorized in the banana fields of Martinique and Guadeloupe by ministerial derogation until 1993, provoked a significant and sustainable pollution of the two departments.

More than 90% of the adult population in Guadeloupe and Martinique is contaminated by Chlordecone, according to Public Health France, and the Caribbean populations have an incidence rate of the highest prostate cancer.

/Media reports.