Mayotte has seen altercations multiply over the past ten days between inter-district vendettas and violence targeting the police. Immigration ? Political inaction? To what does the island owe this explosion of violence?
Mayotte is awaiting the arrival of a dozen police officers from the Raid unit which is due to land this Tuesday, November 22, 2022. A necessary reinforcement on the island which has been experiencing an unprecedented episode of violence for ten days. Inter-district conflicts are raging in Mamoudzou, the prefecture and largest city on the island, and have even caused the death of a 20-year-old young man, killed with a machete on November 12. On the night of Monday to Tuesday, the situation was still tense for the police who are trying to keep gangs from rival neighborhoods at a distance and must also deal with violence targeting civilians or road users.
Since November 12 and the death of a young man from the Kawéni district, the northern part of Mamoudzou has been set ablaze and the other districts of the prefecture have followed suit. On Saturday, more than 200 young people gathered to fight the gangs of Doujani, on Sunday a motorist was stabbed in another sector of Mamoudzou and during the night from Monday to Tuesday the police had to intervene in different neighborhoods to prevent urban clashes and raise barricades blocking the road to Kawéni, the main employment pool, according to a police source quoted by The Parisian.
“Guerrilla” vendettas in Mayotte?
The recent altercations in Mayotte seem to be the result of vendettas between neighborhoods. After the death of a 20-year-old young man during a clash which also left several injured in Kawéni on November 12, the young people of the sector organized themselves to avenge their friend by maintaining the infernal spiral of violence. According to police sources quoted by the AFP, the Kawéni district sought to do battle with that of Doujani a little further south and that of Majikavo north of Mamoudzou. Urban clashes and fights that can be held with machetes in hand at any time of the day and anywhere in the city have created a climate conducive to violence and led to the multiplication of attacks on motorists, damage to vehicles or fires.
The inhabitants of Mayotte, in particular of Mamoudzou, are the first victims of the explosion of violence. “I am traumatized, I have never seen so much violence and yet I have already been attacked so many times”, confided Mustapha, a fifty-year-old whose back is larded with several machete blows to the Figaro. While a police source from theAFP points out that “residents have armed themselves with iron bars and machetes to defend themselves against the bands”. More recently, gang attacks have been carried out against law enforcement. “There were a hundred young people facing us, rubbing their machetes on the ground to show that they wanted to do battle with us. They attacked, we had to fall back… Then we had no problems. “other choice than to force the roadblock, to rush with our vehicles to disperse them,” said Abdel Aziz Sakhi, a union policeman whose remarks are also taken up in Le Figaro.
Mayotte, victim of political inaction?
If violence is not a new affair in Mayotte, in 2021 a senatorial report already alerted to the violence and the “extremely worrying situation” of the island, the phenomenon takes on greater proportions this time and may be a consequence of years of political inaction. This is in any case the opinion of the deputy of the 1st Mahoran constituency, Estelle Youssouffa. From the National Assembly, the elected without label warns against a “civil war” and insists on “the horror”, “barbarism” and “terror” which weighs on the island. A situation which, according to her, is not foreign to national politics or rather the absence of measures taken to respond to the needs and problems of Mayotte: “The passivity of the government is non-assistance to the population. French in danger.” On behalf of the Mahorais, the MP said she had “the impression of being abandoned[e] by the authorities because Mayotte has been calling for help for years. Are we French like the others? We are killing Mayotte in general indifference”, reports France info.
In Mayotte, violence linked to immigration?
If Mayotte is in the grip of an increase in violence, it also has to deal with significant immigration from the Comoros archipelago, a large part of which is illegal. For some politicians, like once again MP Estelle Youssouffa, the two phenomena are linked: “Illegal immigration is totally linked to violence”. The elected official took care to specify in the hemicycle that on the island “more than 50% of the population is foreign and the vast majority in an irregular situation”. According to the deputy, children and young adults with an immigrant background are the same ones who “sow terror”: “All our public services are saturated. We have thousands of children, unaccompanied foreign minors who cannot be expelled, adults and who are forming gangs that sow terror. They are 12 or 13 years old, walking around with machetes, and killing.”
Mayotte has been undergoing a migration crisis for several years and the influx of many migrants on its soil further complicates the already difficult situation of the island which is also the poorest department in France, as recalled by the senatorial report published on October 27, 2021 .