2023-07-24 04:30:15
Anti-delinquency operation in the Majicavo district of Koungou (Mayotte), May 29, 2023. MORGAN FACHE FOR “THE WORLD”
“It’s my town. » Seated at one of the snack bars bordering the Mamoudzou ferry terminal from where the barges depart to connect the island of Petite-Terre, Martin Kalembu holds out his mobile phone. As an obvious explanation for his suspended life: “I have been in Mayotte for four years, waiting, without being able to work. » The 37-year-old father of two fled his country, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), at the end of 2018, with his pregnant wife and one-year-old daughter.
After two perilous crossings in the Indian Ocean, this manager of a microfinance company took refuge in this French department. On the screen of his cell phone appears an article from Radio France Internationale describing a trial in Mbobero, a locality located in South Kivu. In January 2016, soldiers under the orders of the Congolese president at the time, Joseph Kabila, partly razed the houses of this small town. The dictator had claimed to have bought more than 300 hectares of land from Mbobero with the intention of settling there. Many people were killed there in multiple abuses committed by the military of the president who left power in 2019.
“Activist in an association for the defense of human rights”, Martin Kalembu was wanted. “I had no means to hide myself”, he relates. The couple and their child drove to Burundi and its economic capital, Bujumbura, where they stayed for two months. Martin Kalembu then worked for six months in Tanzania to collect savings to finance a two-stage exile to Mayotte. First between Dar-es-Salam and the Comoros. Then, on the night of July 23 to 24, 2019, in kwassa-kwassa, these flat-bottomed boats used by smugglers to travel at night the 70 kilometers that separate the island of Anjouan from the French department. The first stage cost 150 euros per person, the second 600 euros. “Aboard the kwassa-kwassa, there were ten of us, from Congo, Burundi and Rwandanarrated by Martin Kalembu. There is a corporation of smugglers in Tanzania who have contacts in the Comoros. »
A less risky journey
Since 2015, Mayotte has become a migratory route for the inhabitants of Africa’s great lakes to reach France and Europe. A gateway with a less risky route than “crossing the desert zone in Libya and the Mediterranean”, notes Gilles Foucaud, deputy director of Solidarité Mayotte, an association mandated by the prefecture to support asylum seekers or those who have obtained international protection linked to the status of political refugee. The association manages a total of 535 continuously occupied accommodation places. For lack of solutions, nearly two hundred migrants are installed in the street and sleep on mattresses around the premises of the association which constitutes ” a landmark “.
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