More than a thousand people gathered this Saturday to renew their support for the operation carried out by the authorities and to demand a halt to delinquency and illegal immigration.
More than a thousand people gathered this Saturday morning in Mamoudzou to renew their support for the “Wuambushu” security operation carried out by the authorities on the island of Mayotte and to demand a halt to delinquency and crime. ‘illegal immigration.
“Citizen mobilization is important, it supports the action of elected officials who called for this operation to demand our security and our freedom,” said Ambdilwahedou Soumaila, the mayor of the capital of the archipelago.
“Mamoudzou has the largest slum in France (Kawéni, editor’s note) and we are not proud of this record. A slum is first of all health and ecological insecurity, it is the indignity of the nation” , he added.
Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin has launched a series of operations, grouped under the name of Wuambushu (“recovery” in Mahoran), aimed at dislodging irregular migrants, mostly from neighboring Comoros, from insanitary slums from Mayotte.
“Marshall Plan for Mayotte”
Of the estimated 350,000 inhabitants of Mayotte, half do not have French nationality. The operation also aims to fight against the crime that is rampant in the archipelago, largely attributed to the explosive social and economic situation of its slums.
“Wuambushu” is denounced as “brutal”, “anti-poor” and violating the rights of migrants by a number of associations, but supported by elected officials and many inhabitants of the island.
Saturday’s rally, the second of the week, was organized at the call of groups of Mahoran citizens. Many demonstrators, mostly women, wore T-shirts printed with slogans such as “Marshall plan for Mayotte”, “support for law enforcement”, “Azali (Azali Assoumani, President of the Comoros, editor’s note ) take care of your population”.
“We were robbed of our youth”
“We have to go to mainland France to live a normal life, to have our right to go out in safety at night. We were robbed of our youth and yet we are the future of Mayotte which has a lot of assets,” said one of them, Moulaika Antoy, 18, student in BTS tourism.
In the crowd, the activist of the Collective of citizens of Mayotte from which the deputy Estelle Youssouffa (Liot), Chafion Abdou supported the denunciation of illegal migrants.
“We have to stop with the mentality of ‘he’s my brother, I’m not denouncing him'”, he defended. “There is a problem of responsibility in Mayotte with citizens who must stop providing proof of address to these people and help our mayors to take the census”.
The “Wuambushu” operation is taking place in a certain confusion: justice has suspended the demolition of a slum and evictions are hampered by the suspension “until further notice” of the crossings of the SGTM company between Mayotte and the island Comorian from Anjouan, despite the reopening of the ports of the Comoros.
