Faced with “unbearable” violence, elected officials from Mayotte to Paris demanding state aid
Mayors and elected officials from Mayotte warned Tuesday in Paris of the “unbearable” and growing violence in this French department in the Indian Ocean, demanding that “the State assume its sovereign mission of security”.
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“Mayotte has become a territory of fear, trauma and mourning”declared to the press Madi Madi Souf, the president of the association of mayors of Mayotte, from the headquarters of the Association of mayors of France.
“We demand that indifference and contempt cease. France must protect its citizens. If terror and chaos are tolerated in Mayotte, if the State considers that its sovereign mission to ensure security does not oblige it not to more and better in our department, it is that we are not equal within the Nation”he continued.
Eleven of the mayors of the territory as well as deputies must represent parliamentarians on Wednesday before a meeting at the Ministry of the Interior, with in particular the Minister Delegate for Overseas Jean-François Carenco. In mid-September, the elected officials of this archipelago of 374 km2 nestled between the Comoros and Madagascar, had decided to close primary schools and local administrations in order to express their exasperation in the face of insecurity, against a backdrop of great poverty and the migration crisis. .
“The violence has reached an unbearable stage” and “if the state does nothing, citizens will take care of it”fears the deputy (LIOT group) Estelle Youssouffa. “We are in a zone of lawlessness and we are really going to fall into anarchy”. Like other elected officials, she evokes the formation of sorts of citizen militias, a sign that the population has “feeling that the state is overwhelmed, that the police are overwhelmed”.
In addition to security, elected officials visiting Paris are asking the state for a firmer response on immigration. As for the judicial component, they say they are waiting for a timetable after the announcement by the Garde des Seaux of the opening of a second penitentiary center in the archipelago as well as that of a closed educational center.
On a visit in August, the Minister of the Interior and Overseas Gérald Darmanin had promised gendarmerie reinforcements, which should be available next summer, and mentioned future proposals to open “places of rehabilitation and recovery” for juvenile delinquents, supervised by soldiers.
The feeling of insecurity is very strong in Mayotte. In an analysis of November 2021, INSEE notes that “nearly half of people feel insecure, often or from time to time, at home or in their neighborhood, i.e. five to six times more than the inhabitants of France”.