Guiana Uprising: France Offers Apology, $1 Billion in Aid

In response to a massive uprising in French Guiana, the French government on Saturday offered its Latin American colony US$1.06 billion in aid.

RELATED:
Guiana, Under French Colonial Rule, Gripped by General Strike

The offer came the day after France's colonial minister, Ericka Bareigts, restarted stalled negotiations by offering a vague apology "for a multitude of things."

For the past week French Guiana — one of France's oldest remaining colonies — has been rocked by a massive uprising over a multitude of issues, including security, education, unemployment and drinking water.

Earlier in the week, a coalition of local politicians, labor leaders, and social movement activists presented Bareigts and French Interior Minister Matthias Fekl with a 400-page list of demands.

Negotiations around the protests — which shut down the launch of a major French government telecommunications satellite earlier in the week — had broken down until Bareigts offered her impromptu apology from the balcony of the colonial government building in the capital of Cayenne.

"After so many years, I am the one who has the honor to apologize to the people of French Guiana," she told a crowd of demonstrators.

"If someone had apologized before, for a multitude of things, maybe we would have advanced in a more peaceful way, and we wouldn't be in the situation we are now," she added.

The day after the apology Bareigts and Fekl presented the offer of US$1.06 billion in aid to the South American colony, with a large portion of that earmarked for additional police officers and a new jail.

"The plan was presented this morning to partners and they must now give their response," said an unnamed official with the French interior minister to Reuters.

There is no timeline on negotiations, which take place in the midst of a hotly contested French presidential election which will likely determine the fate of a 2016 bill which looked to address the longstanding racialized inequalities between France's mainland and its overseas colonies.

While France's overseas colonies account for only 4 percent of the eligible voters in the upcoming elections, this could represent a crucial margin of victory.