Mayotte: a thousand demonstrators in support of the “Wuambushu” operation

It was a show of force held by the supporters of Operation “Wuambushu” this Saturday in Mayotte. They were thus more than a thousand Mahorais with their blue white red flag in the wind to support the operation wanted by the Minister of the Interior, Gérald Darmanin, in Mamoudzou.

“Citizen mobilization is important, it supports the action of the elected officials who called for this operation to demand our security and our freedom”, declared Ambdilwahedou Soumaila, the mayor of the capital of the archipelago. The deputy of the archipelago, Estelle Youssoupha, also welcomed this republican rally.

“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 unsanitary slums from 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, widely 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 ***ociations, but supported by elected officials and many inhabitants of the island.

VIDEO. Anti-migrant operation in Mayotte: CRS and RAID police intervene in the slums

“Support for Law Enforcement”

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 ***oumani, President of the Comoros, editor’s note ) take care of your people.

“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 ***ets,” said one of them, Moulaika Antoy, 18, a BTS tourism student.

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”.

Operation “Wuambushu” takes place in some confusion: justice suspended slum demolition and deportations are hampered by the suspension “until further notice” of the crossings of the company SGTM between Mayotte and the Comorian island of Anjouan, despite the reopening of the ports of the Comoros.