The government deployed this Friday in emergency a squadron of mobile gendarmes on the island of Mayotte, in the grip of violence, in order to “restore the republican order” there at the request of the prefect. Rival gangs have been clashing since Monday in Majicavo and Koungou, in the northeast of the department, following the stabbing murder of a young man the day before.
The police intervened to “liberate many axes regularly obstructed by burning barricades”, operations during which “four departmental gendarmes as well as three mobile gendarmes were injured by throwing projectiles and blows”, indicated the Ministries of the Interior and Overseas in a joint press release.
Two magistrates filed a complaint on Friday after being attacked the day before by a group of people armed with machetes, who attacked their vehicles as they left the court to return to their homes, we learned from judicial source.
At the origin of this new episode of violence in the 101st French department, the death of a young person from the commune, which gave rise to reprisals in cascade. Each time, the same scenario is repeated: the clashes at rush hour disrupt traffic already saturated on the island, the gendarmes intervene and in turn become the target of stone throwing.
“Usual Vendetta”
A banal scenario in the island of perfumes, where immigration and poverty have accentuated the divisions between villages and neighborhoods whose young people regularly clash with stones and knives.
This climate causes a general fed up, to the point that the president of the judicial court, Laurent Ben Kemoun, came out of his reserve on Thursday afternoon by publishing a text on his Linkedin account: “At this very moment, a hundred thugs break, burn, loot, molest around the courthouse where several people are stuck… A usual vendetta following the violent death of a young man from Koungou in which a guy from Kaweni is allegedly involved… I am preparing for a night of anguish until all my troops have been exfiltrated”.
Situation getting worse
The dispatch by the Ministry of the Interior of a squadron of mobile gendarmes to Mayotte is an emergency response already provided during previous unrest, but which does not deal with the problem at the root, estimates the deputy LR Mansour Kamardine, candidate for his succession in the south of the island. “The significant 40% increase in law enforcement that we have achieved in recent years does not allow us to control a worsening situation,” he said in a press release.
On May 29, another young man had already died in Acoua in the northwest, after a stabbing. The author was arrested two days later and imprisoned. Mayotte, an archipelago in the Indian Ocean, is regularly shaken by outbreaks of violence between rival gangs or against the police, when they intervene to put an end to it.
In February, exasperated residents had blocked access to their neighborhood for several days and tried to block traffic routes. In 2021, the Mamoudzou public prosecutor’s office recorded a 25% increase in referrals for criminal acts in Mayotte and 21% for misdemeanors.