2024-01-29 20:16:04
A French municipal police officer patrolling the Mavadzani shantytown, northeast of Grande Terre on the heights of Koungou, in Mayotte, on December 8, 2023. MIGUEL MEDINA / AFP
Prefect Thierry Suquet perhaps announced a little prematurely, Saturday January 27, the “restoration of freedom to come and go” in Mayotte, after the lifting by the police of the blockades which hampered traffic on the island during the week. This has seen an increase in blockages of groups of citizens exasperated by insecurity and immigration, while neighborhood gangs block other roads during inter-village clashes, a practice that has become common.
Monday January 29, once again, roads were blocked in several localities. While the water crisis is just beginning to subside thanks to the rainy season, the Indian Ocean department is experiencing yet another bout of fever.
Several colleges remained closed at the end of the weekend, for various reasons. Particularly that of Koungou, attacked last Wednesday by gangs who came to settle their differences there with machetes and stones. Clashes again took place around the establishment this Monday, and the rector, who went there, was the target of stones on his way, reported the La 1ère channel.
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On Sunday evening, it was the Sada gendarmerie brigade which was attacked by around fifty young men. “They threw stones and Molotov cocktails at the barracks without causing major damage. With the arrival of reinforcements, calm returned around 11 p.m., indicated the gendarmerie command. The National Gendarmerie Intervention Group was deployed to Mramadoudou. A sort of routine, even if the gendarmerie says they now have to manage “offender profiles” classics targeting law enforcement.
The short respite of Operation Wuambushu
In addition to these regular clashes, new tensions erupted when groups of citizens, a minority but very visible on the island, attacked the migrant camp set up around the Cavani stadium in Mamoudzou. Some 500 Africans from the Democratic Republic of Congo, Burundi, Rwanda and Somalia have settled there in precarious shelters since May, some of them have the status of asylum seekers. Their growing number would have acted as a trigger for them.
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“The authorities explain to us that they are protected by the right of asylum but we cannot understand this in our current living conditions,” alerts Haoussi Boinahedja, a trade unionist present on a roadblock made of branches and car wrecks, on the RN3, in Chirongui. “Illegal immigration destabilizes and suffocates this small territory which is the poorest in France. I hear people’s anger. I fear the worst. » According to him, the State must put an end to “territorialized residence permit” which forces immigration holders to stay in Mayotte.
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