French Guiana crisis: what you need to know

A department? “No, a sick country too dependent upon the mainland and incapable of dealing with the population flux from Surinam and Brasil,” said a civil servant for France’s Outre-Mer (overseas) ministry about the current crisis in Guiana (Guyane in French).

The French territory on South America’s North Atlantic coast has been paralysed since Monday by social unrest and a general strike called by unions and a collective called the “500 Brothers against delinquency”. Dressed in black, anonymous and hooded, members of the non-violent group are standing up against organised crime and social injustice.

Guiana has the highest murder rate of all France’s overseas territories – 42 in 2016 from a population of 252,000 - and the ‘500 Brothers’ say the state is ineffective at controlling lawlessness.

A brief history of Guiana

Guiana is roughly the size of Nouvelle Aquitaine (making it the second largest region of France) and has 300km of coastline, 520km of border with Surinam (former Dutch colony) and 700km with Brazil.

The French first tried to settle there more than 400 years ago and it was fought over by the Dutch, Portuguese and British. A 1763 colonisation attempt failed when tropical disease and its harsh climate (it is 98% rainforest) killed all but 2,000 of the 12,000 settlers.

It briefly became a colony in 1797 and by 1817 it was under full French control. Under Napoleon III in 1851, France began to send its prisoners to the penal colony known as Devil’s Island, 14km off the coast. Some 56,000 were sent there and only 10% survived.

Its most famous prisoner was Captain Alfred Dreyfus, who spent five years there for treason, for which he was later exonerated.

Guiana became a French department in 1946 and today it has a very low population density – just three inhabitants per km2.

In 1964, French Prime Minister Georges Pompidou chose Guiana as the new base for France’s space travel, replacing their Sahara base in Algeria. Its spaceport near Kourou is the home of the European Space Agency and France’s national Centre for Space Studies, and from here Ariane space rocket projects and satellites are launched.

Gold was first discovered in Guiana in 1855, luring prospectors in a gold rush. Today, it is the illegal gold mines – an estimated 302 of them in December 2016 – which contribute to rampant crime and trafficking.

Add to this a permanent social imbalance between an expatriate community, composed mainly of highly paid officials, and a local population where 50% of under-25s are unemployed (22% overall), as well as illegal immigration from neighbouring Surinam and Brasil, (including thousands of Haitians who previously worked on Rio Olympic building projects) and there is a recipe for social tension.

This is not the first time that the country has erupted in the build-up to a French presidential election. In 1996 President Chirac intervened after four weeks of riots and social unrest.

Since then 15,000 families have been placed on housing waiting lists, there are more and more slums, and political corruption more common – this month Léon Bertrand, former mayor of Saint Laurent du Maroni Vis-a-vis Surinam, was jailed for three years for "passive corruption" and favouritism in the award of public contracts.

The collective behind the strikes is demanding new schools and teachers, a new judiciary and a police commissioner, improved public hospitals as well as improved telecom and new roads.

This week a delegation of seven ‘high level’ civil servants arrived in Cayenne, the capital, but unhappy locals want to see either Prime Minister Bernard Cazeneuve or President François Hollande.

“The 500 brothers don’t want to talk to this little group”, said a lorry driver at a road block. “We want the real politicians, the ministers who can take decisions.”