Chlordecone Scandal: West Indians fear a “denial of justice”

The two Parisian investigating judges in charge of the use of this pesticide in Guadeloupe and Martinique ended their investigations without implicing.

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Sixteen years of judicial battle to achieve a non-place? This is the denouement of the civil parties, in Guadeloupe and Martinique, in the scandal of poisoning chlorcone in these two territories of the French West Indies. The latest developments are not likely to reassure the plaintiffs. On March 25, the investigating judges of the Public Health Center of the Judicial Court of Paris pronounced the end of their investigations in the case of the contamination of thousands of hectares of agricultural land by this high-toxicity insecticide.

Brigitte Jolivet and Fanny Bussac, the two magistrates who instruct the complaint filed in 2006 for “endangering the life of others”, notified to the dozen civil parties their intention to close this file. As no indictment has been pronounced as part of the instruction, it now focuses on a non-place. Revealed Tuesday, April 5th by the France-Presse Agency, the information caused a tolerable to the West Indies, islands including soils, streams, agricultural products and the population are contaminated by this ultra-persistent molecule, used in banana plantations between 1972 and 1993.

“In all this case, there has been a lot of lightness with regard to the population,” deplore Philippe Pierre-Charles, spokesman for the Collective Ecologist Lyannaj Pou Depolyée Morinik, recalling that in February 2021, a Dizan thousands of Martiniquais had parade against possible prescription of the file. The trade union activist ensures that his collective, who brings together several complainant associations, did not receive the mail of March 25 of the Paris judicial tribunal.

A misreadlords

Chance of the calendar, April 4, Lyannaj Pou depolyée Morinik had sent to several candidates from left to the presidential election a letter denouncing “the colonial crime of State which constitutes the poisoning of Martinique and Guadeloupe. chlordecone “. The extent of this catastrophe “Ideally justifies a consequent mobilization in our territories but also in the hexagon,” says this document dated April 2nd.

Some recipients have received the message. During his last great campaign meeting, organized Tuesday night in Lille and retransmitted in 11 other cities, Jean-Luc Mélenchon mentioned the case. “I regret that, to finish, the judicial inquiry is closed and that the decision made on chlordecone is that there would be no prosecution,” said the candidate of France unsuitable. “The Republic can not consider that this file is closed. All the victims of the # chlordecone must be compensated”, answered the ecologist Yannick Jadot on Twitter.

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/Media reports.