2023-04-28 12:00:09
Lhe chaos in which the French department of Mayotte was sinking, even before the “Wuambushu” police operation against delinquency and illegal immigration ordered by the Minister of the Interior, imposed a solid political intervention. The inhabitants of this former French possession, in the middle of the Indian Ocean, chose in 1974 to remain French and obtained the status of department in 2011. Insecurity, the social tensions to which they are exposed, in connection with massive irregular immigration from Anjouan, an island attached to the Union of the Comoros, an independent state since 1975, are realities that no government can allow to worsen.
No territory, especially not an isolated, deprived, under-equipped island, whose population has multiplied by ten in fifty years, where the equivalent of a child class is born every day and where 30% of the inhabitants are undocumented, can withstand the risks of disintegration and violence. Especially in the postcolonial and geopolitical situation without equivalent which is that of Mayotte: a French department, with its social shock absorbers, that a simple arm of the sea of seventy kilometers separates from Anjouan, an island where the population lives under the control of an authoritarian and corrupt regime, in a state of absolute poverty.
But, by acting as if this explosive situation could be dealt with only by police means, Gérald Darmanin and, with him, the executive made a gross error and took on a heavy responsibility. The “decasing” operation, aimed at the destruction of slums and the mass expulsion of undocumented migrants, is supported by the majority of elected officials and by a part of the exasperated population, and it is far from being the first of its kind. .
Blessed bread for the far right
But the massive dispatch of police and the long drumbeats that preceded it reflected the desire of the tenant of Place Beauvau, in search of a presidential profile, to mark public opinion. judging “irregular” the conditions for the eviction of makeshift accommodation and by ordering the stoppage of the operation, Tuesday, April 25, justice shook the show of force wanted by Mr. Darmanin, already compromised by the refusal of the Comoros to open their ports to any vessel carrying their deported nationals.
The French government has overlooked the ambiguity of relations between France and the Comoros – whose president, Azali Assoumani, was elected president of the African Union in February thanks to the support of Paris, while he does not recognize the attachment from Mayotte to France – and the fact that the latter is seeking a new term in 2024 amid rising anti-French sentiment. As if, on Place Bauveau, we did not know that the execution of the expulsions of foreigners depends on the will of the country of origin.
The show of force desired by the state has turned into a dramatization of its impotence and a political trap. This terrible scenario is blessed bread for an extreme right that is quick to denounce the vain gesticulations of the State in terms of immigration and which seeks to accredit the absurd idea that the situation in Mayotte prefigures that of France. Once again, the political instrumentalization of the theme of immigration, its solely security management, instead of coordinated government action including the social and diplomatic dimensions, has transformed a series of heavy and complex problems into an infernal machine. .
#trap #Mayotte