Three days of hearings, four statues, eleven defendants: from November 5 to 7, 2025, Fort-de-France replayed its colonial history in a courtroom. The déchoukaj trial, born of the toppling of statues of Schœlcher, Joséphine and d’Esnambuc in 2020, crystallized tensions between law and memory, between heritage and identity. A verdict is expected on November 17, 2025.
Three days of hearings, four statues, an island in debate
The Fort-de-France criminal court closed, on Friday, November 7, 2025, the three days of the so-called “déchoukaj” trial, devoted to the statues toppled in 2020 in Martinique.
The eleven defendants (six men and five women) appeared on charges of “destruction of property belonging to a public entity” in connection with four monuments brought down: two statues of Victor Schœlcher (on May 22, 2020), and those of Joséphine de Beauharnais and Pierre Belain d’Esnambuc (on July 26, 2020).
On Friday evening, after six hours of pleadings, the prosecution deferred to the court, without formulating quantified requisitions. The verdict is expected on November 17, 2025.
From November 5 onward, the courtroom was full. In the aisles: cultural activists, teachers, artists, residents of Fort-de-France.
Under tired ceiling fans, the benches murmured with the words déchoukaj, memory, justice.
The presiding judge immediately recalled that the court was “neither a historical symposium nor a political platform,” but that it had to state the law on “specific facts.”
Yet no one was mistaken: it was indeed Martinican history itself—its symbols and its wounds—that was being summoned to the bar.
On the way out, a student summed it up:
“They are not just judging statues. They are judging the way Martinique wants to tell its story.”
On May 22, 2020, the day commemorating the abolition of slavery, two statues of Victor Schœlcher were toppled, in Fort-de-France and in the eponymous commune.
Two months later, on July 26, those of Joséphine de Beauharnais and Pierre Belain d’Esnambuc met the same fate.
Videos of the scenes, shared on social networks, went around the world.
The perpetrators claimed an act of “déchoukaj,” a Creole word meaning literally “uprooting,” popularized in Haiti after the fall of Duvalier. Their action, they asserted, aimed to “free public space from colonial symbols.”
The authorities, for their part, saw an offense. The statues belong to the community: the State filed a complaint, and the justice system took up the case.
The public prosecutor acknowledged “the symbolic scope of the gesture,” while recalling that “no one may take the law into their own hands.” But, a sign of a calmer climate, the prosecutor refrained from seeking a sentence and left it to the court to decide.
The defense, led by seven lawyers, pleaded for acquittal.
The pleadings, begun Friday morning, lasted more than six hours. The lawyers recalled that the takedowns had been peaceful, with no injuries, and that no personal gain had been derived from the acts.
Several invoked “the need for a memorial refoundation,” beyond the sole judicial framework.
The four toppled monuments alone encapsulate a century of memorial tensions.
Victor Schœlcher, a French abolitionist, is celebrated in mainland republican memory. But for part of Martinican activists, he embodies the figure of a “white savior” that renders invisible the resistance of the enslaved themselves.
Joséphine de Beauharnais, the daughter of Martinican planters who became empress, is associated with the restoration of slavery by Napoleon in 1802. Her statue stood—beheaded since 1991—on the Savane of Fort-de-France.
Pierre Belain d’Esnambuc, a seventeenth-century navigator and colonizer, founder of the first French colony in the Antilles, symbolizes for some the “birth of Martinique,” for others the founding act of colonization.
Their simultaneous toppling crystallized the opposition between heritage and memory, inheritance and reparation.
At the hearing on November 6, several witnesses were heard, including historian Gilbert Pago, a leading figure in Martinican research. He placed these acts in a global context:
“From Bristol to Guadeloupe, from the Mississippi to Martinique, peoples are reclaiming their history. Destroying a statue also opens a space for debate.”
The prosecutor retorted that “democratic debate presupposes institutions, not hammers.” Exchanges were sharp but courteous. In the audience, reactions alternated between discreet applause and exasperated sighs. The atmosphere remained tense, but dignified.
Over the three days of hearings, Place Bertin, just steps from the courthouse, was transformed into a forum. Artists read poems; associations hung banners:
“Judging the youth is condemning living memory.”
Residents, for their part, called for the restoration of the statues, “so as not to erase the past.”
RCI Martinique noted that, despite a few verbal tensions, no incident was reported around the courthouse. The police maintained a light presence, a sign of gradual easing. As the hearings unfolded, the court’s difficulty became clear: how to legally characterize a symbolic act? The defendants did not deny the facts, but insisted on their meaning:
“This is not vandalism; it is a cry.”
The presiding judge acknowledged “the singular scope” of the case:
“These are not merely acts of damage, but a debate of society.”
The prosecution, in a measured tone, praised “the calm and responsibility of the debates.” The fact that the prosecutor chose not to seek a sentence was perceived as a gesture of appeasement.
Beyond the eleven defendants, it was all of Martinique that found itself on the witness stand. The debates brought back to the surface fractures between generations, between a republican reading and a postcolonial reading. For some, this trial marks the end of a cycle: that of statues imposed by colonial France. For others, it risks opening a breach toward a misunderstood “cancel culture.”
In local editorials, one word recurs often: “recontextualize.” No longer erase, but explain. Move monuments into museums, surround them with critical placards, rather than erecting or knocking them down.
The judgment was taken under advisement until November 17, 2025. Until then, the toppled statues remain stored in municipal warehouses in Fort-de-France. None has been restored or replaced.
Whatever the decision, the déchoukaj trial will leave a deep mark.
It will have allowed, according to a history teacher heard by France-Antilles,
“to move the debate from social networks to the heart of the city.”
The defendants face up to five years’ imprisonment and a €75,000 fine, but the prosecution’s leniency allows hope for a symbolic rather than repressive judgment.
Twenty years after the riots of 2009 and five years after the statues, Martinique is still questioning its place in the history of France. This trial did not reopen the wound; it named it. And, in its own way, it made it visible.
“We do not want to erase, but we want to write,” declared one of the defendants on the way out, a 29-year-old activist. A sentence that, beyond the courtroom, could sum up the stakes of this month of November: making justice a place of shared memory rather than vengeance.
Sources
France-Antilles Martinique, “Procès du déboulonnage : un verdict attendu le 17 novembre,” Nov. 7, 2025.
RCI Martinique, “Destruction des statues : jugement mis en délibéré,” Nov. 7, 2025.
RCI Martinique, “Procès sous tension, témoignages de soutien,” Nov. 6, 2025.
TRT Français, “En Martinique, le procès du déboulonnage des statues a commencé,” Nov. 5, 2025.
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Three days of hearings, four statues, an island in debate
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