What's behind violent protests in France's Martinique?
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00:00We can now bring in our International Affairs Editor, Angela Diffley. Angela,
00:03good afternoon. Give us a little bit of background about Martinique.
00:07Yeah, so it's a French overseas territory in the Caribbean. I think we should say right away because
00:14we often talk about New Caledonia on this programme. That is one of France's overseas
00:19territories over near Australia. That has a very different status and a very
00:26very vociferous independence movement and is working, you know, there have been
00:33referendums on whether or not to have independence. Martinique does not have a significant
00:39independence movement. I think it's fair to say that the population broadly see that there are
00:46more benefits to being part of France than disadvantages. It is highly subsidised by
00:53mainland France for various reasons which we'll perhaps have time to go into. So it's about,
01:00you know, 350,000 people living there, an island of about, you know, 30 by 60 kilometres.
01:08It has a better standard of living than many of the neighbouring Caribbean islands and it has
01:16nevertheless had a drop in population recently. More and more of the people of the island are
01:22heading to live in mainland France. There are now about 260,000 from the island of Martinique
01:29living in mainland France. The economy was broadly agriculture, rum, sugar, bananas, tourism
01:41and there was a major scandal because until about 1993, between the 70s and 1993,
01:49a lot of a pesticide which was banned in 1993 was used to grow, help grow the bananas and that
01:57has left much of the land unusable and so it cannot be used to grow product and that means
02:06that it needs, the island needs to be subsidised, that a lot of farmers have had to be compensated
02:12and that its production of some agricultural goods and fishering has diminished and it imports
02:20a lot of food. So why are we seeing the problems now out on the streets? What happened? Yeah,
02:26well as we heard there from Shirley, about 40% of the island's food is imported and the prices
02:36are considerably higher than in mainland France. Now the producers and the distributors say it
02:42costs a lot of money to get food from France to this relatively small island,
02:49that it is not about having fat profit margins, that it's an expensive business. There are a
02:54number of ideas which are going through the works. One is the idea of axing this sea toll which has
03:01been there for centuries, which was originally put there to compensate or to protect local producers
03:09against imports. There's an idea that that should be axed. Another idea is that maybe a basket of
03:182,500 is the number that's being put out, basic necessities should have their prices cut by 20%
03:26and capped. Those are some of the ideas. It must be said that probably as France is undergoing
03:34significant political change at the moment and instability and a lack of movement,
03:43then there isn't going to be much decision on this at the moment and so it's very much about
03:48trying to assure the security of the people living on the island amidst this outbreak of violence.