Coronavirus Vaccine Protesters Stone Prime Minister of St. Vincent and the Grenadines

Prime Minister Ralph Gonsalves of St. Vincent and the Grenadines, 74, suffered a gory head wound Thursday when protesters struck him with a rock during a protest against mandatory coronavirus vaccinations for government employees.

“The protest was organized by unions representing nurses, police and other workers who claimed that the government planned to mandate vaccines for certain employees,” the Associated Press (AP) reported Friday.

Gonsalves was walking through a group of about 200 protesters, on his way to a session of parliament where the mandatory vaccination proposal was being debated, when the projectile struck his head just above his temple. The AP noted the protesters had blocked the entrance to parliament and set several roadblocks on fire.

Gonsalves’ office said he was “bleeding profusely” after the injury and was taken to the hospital. Photos from the protest showed aides pressing a wad of paper towels to the wound while blood stained the prime minister’s white shirt.

Prime Minister of St. Vincent and the Grenadines, Ralph Gonsalves, was injured today during a protest in Kingstown. The demonstration was reportedly against a proposed change in the Health Act, which would make coronavirus vaccination mandatory for certain classes of workers. 🇻 pic.twitter.com/nig9RFqc05

— 🅴 🅵🅸🅽🅸🅴🅴 (@terryfinisterre) August 5, 2021

Reuters quoted an eyewitness who said the protesters were throwing rocks and bottles when Gonsalves sustained his injury. One of them shouted, “Somebody’s busted the prime minster’s head.”

Gonsalves will reportedly be flown to Barbados for an MRI after receiving treatment at the Milton Cato Memorial Hospital in the national capital of Kingstown.

The prime minister’s office said the attack on him should be “unequivocally condemned,” while his country’s ambassador to the Organization of American States (OAS), Ronald Sanders, said “this development in Caribbean politics is reprehensible.”

“I want to say clearly that it is not a scratch, it was an attempt on the life of the prime minister,” said Finance Minister Camilo Gonsalves, who is the prime minister’s son.

The AP quoted local media reports that an unidentified woman has been arrested in connection with the assault.

St. Vincent and the Grenadines consists of some 32 islands in the southern Caribbean with a total population of about 11,000. It has reported 2,298 coronavirus cases so far, with 12 deaths. Only about nine percent of the population has been fully vaccinated.

The national economy is heavily based on tourism, which was devastated by both the pandemic and the eruption of the La Soufriere volcano on the island of St. Vincent in April. The eruption dislocated about 15 percent of St. Vincent’s population and destroyed a third of the national agriculture industry, upping estimates of total GDP loss for the past year to nearly 50 percent.

Prime Minister Gonsalves said on Monday that the proposed changes to the Vincentian Public Health Act have been distorted by “misrepresentations” and “misinformation.” He insisted the revised law will not “involve any legal penalty or punishment on anyone who fails and/or refuses to take the vaccine or test for COVID-19 [Chinese coronavirus].”

“The choice of working or not working in a particular job which requires vaccination in the interest of public health will be that of the employee. Individual rights are always required in the appropriate circumstances to be balanced by public interest considerations, in this case, the requisites of public health,” he said.

Gonsalves added that he does have the power to impose mandatory vaccination under the Public Health Act even without the proposed amendment, should he choose to exercise it. He muddied the waters further by saying in the same interview that the government would make vaccination compulsory for front-line public employees, with only two exemptions: religious objections and certified medical advice against taking the shot.

The opposition New Democratic Party (NDP) said it would help to organize street protest because the Gonsalves administration “does not offer any hope out of this pandemic.”

“We are in favor of vaccination, but this is something people must do their own research and come to their own conclusion as to what is good and right after they have done their research. This is not something that can be mandated and forced upon people. Nowhere in the world they are doing that,” said NDP leader Goodwin Friday.