MAYOTTE. Operation Wuambushu is slowed down in Mayotte after the court decision to suspend the destruction of a slum on Tuesday, April 25. The State will appeal to continue its policy against illegal immigration and delinquency.
Barely started, the Wuambushu operation in Mayotte is already experiencing difficulties. And it is none other than justice that hinders the policy dictated by Paris. The evacuation and destruction of the slum called Talus 2, located in Koungou and close to the Mamoudzou prefecture, which was to begin at dawn on Tuesday, April 25, 2023, was suspended by the judges, who pointed out the irregularity of the conditions. of deportation. The executive does not intend to stop there and intends to appeal the decision according to the prefect of Mayotte, Thierry Suquet, who declared on the local channel Kwezi TV that “the operation will take place in the coming days”.
The expulsions of irregular migrants and the destruction of several slums planned by the Wuambushu operation have given rise to numerous criticisms from associations, trade unions and even part of the population. Despite this opposition and the arguments put forward, local elected officials continue to support the project presented as a means of combating illegal immigration and delinquency, two related phenomena in the eyes of the government. “The Wuambushu operation has not been stopped” assured the UDI deputy for Mayotte Estelle Youssouffa at the microphone of Franceinfo in response to a justice that she considers “lenient with regard to minors who sow terror in Mayotte”. If it is indeed the destruction of the shantytown which has been suspended because it “endangers the safety” of the inhabitants according to justice, the problem is larger according to the elected official. These spaces where hundreds and sometimes thousands of people gather are “unhealthy areas” and “dangerous” in several respects, judge Estelle Youssouffa: “These are epidemic hotbeds and they are refuges for the gang leaders who sow the seeds of terror in Mayotte”. Operation Wuambushu is also an “operation to maintain order, arrest gang leaders and deport foreigners in an irregular situation”, explains the MP, who maintains that it is necessary to “take back the ground lost by the Republic in these lawless areas” and to “recover these public and private lands illegally occupied”.
Operation Wuambushu (named after the Mayotte word for “recovery”) carried out in Mayotte since April 24, 2023 aims to massively deport illegal immigrants with the quantified ambition of carrying out 300 deportations per day against 70 usually according to information from Le Monde. Originally from the Comoros for the most part, the immigrants must be deported to Anjouan, the Comorian island closest to Mayotte, only 70 km from the coast. These evictions must be accompanied by the destruction of 1,000 slums “by court order” to deter the return of strange people from illegal immigration, added Gérald Darmanin at the microphone of franceinfo on April 21. While Mayotte is home to “the largest slum in Europe” according to local MP Estelle Youssouffa and is one of the poorest departments in France, the inhabitants of the slums doomed to be razed are not only immigrants. However, the government has promised to rehouse the Mahorais “in real accommodation”.
1,800 police officers from the CRS 8 specialists in the fight against urban violence and mobile gendarmes are deployed in Mayotte in Operation Wuambushu. Identity checks and seizures of weapons are part of their main missions “in order to restore lasting public and republican peace” on the island according to the justification of Gérald Darmanin.
No date has been specifically set by the government to enact the implementation of the anti-immigration operation in Mayotte, at least not publicly. The Minister of the Interior was content to refer to a “long-term” intervention while public order operations take place “every day” in Mayotte. In fact, things accelerated with a significant increase in checks carried out by the police and the gendarmes at the end of April for a possible launch on Monday April 24, 2023. According to franceinfo, the first destruction of slums would be expected for the 25 or April 26.
Once launched, Operation Wuambushu would last two months according to RTL sources. Evictions could therefore be daily until the end of June. At a rate of 300 expulsions per day, more than 18,000 people could leave the territory by force.
Operation Wuambushu wanted and set up at Eta from April 24 is far from unanimous in Mayotte. Several associative organizations or trade unions but also inhabitants of the island denounce this policy, its biases or its effects and call on the government to interrupt it.
If several critics are heard, the Wuambushu operation also finds support among the Mayotte population. Franceinfo has fifteen mayors in favor of pursuing the policy of combating illegal immigration and crime among the seventeen mayors of Mayotte. Other elected officials are of the same opinion, in particular the UDI deputy for the island Estelle Youssouffa who deemed an intervention necessary and urgent in the slums with RTL on April 21: “Tens of thousands of people live in slums, dwellings dangerous, unhealthy, criminogenic. It is imperative to destroy them”.
Some Mahoran citizens who suffer from the crime rate consider, like the government, that delinquency is intimately linked to immigration and consider Operation Wuambushu as a possible answer to the problem. A large part of the population of Mayotte nevertheless believes that other policies must be implemented to deal with the situation, particularly in terms of housing, because if the sector is already experiencing difficulties on the island, the destruction of slums could aggravate these.
If Operation Wuambushu is at work in Mayotte, its success is far from guaranteed. Firstly because the criticisms leveled at this policy (read above) are all points that raise biases and can call into question the success of the operation. But it is also on the reaction of the Comoros that the outcome of Operation Wuambushu depends. While the overwhelming majority of people in an irregular situation living in Mayotte are from the Comorian archipelago, it is this territory that will receive the convoys of people expelled from the 101st French department. Problem: the Comoros do not intend to play the score of the French executive and refused, on Monday April 24, the docking of a French boat conveying illegal migrants from Mayotte to the archipelago. Comoros Interior Minister Fakridine Mahamoud denounced French policy to AFP: “As long as the French side decides to do things unilaterally, we will take our responsibilities. in a port under Comorian sovereignty”.
The Comoros archipelago had warned France of its opposition to Operation Wuambushu on April 10 in a press release, as Le Monde recalls: “While it was established, between the Comoros and France […] ] a peaceful dialogue […], this operation goes against respect for human rights and risks undermining the good relations that unite the two countries” and risks harming “stability in the region”. The authorities had also insisted on Mayotte’s belonging to the Comorian archipelago despite its special status: “Mayotte is a Comorian island maintained under French administration since the country’s independence in 1975”.
Mayotte is experiencing a particular situation where poverty and delinquency are reaching record levels in France. With the arrival of thousands of migrants, mainly from the Comoros, but also from Madagascar and a few African countries, the island has been in the grip of a migration crisis since 2011. INSEE estimates that half of the population of Mayotte n is not of French nationality but also that a third of foreigners were born in Mayotte.
In a context of great poverty faced by people of immigrant origin but also part of the Mayotte population – 77% of the population lives below the poverty line and the unemployment rate reaches 30%, according to MP Estelle Youssouffa interviewed on RTL – this cohabitation is not always peaceful. Some Mahorais support the expulsion of illegal immigrants who are often the majority in the slums, such as a childcare worker who told AFP: “We are forced to lock ourselves in all the time. We cannot walk around with valuables. If we take the car out of the yard, you never know what condition we’re going to bring it back in.” But more than appeasing, Operation Wuambushu could rekindle tensions. Some of the illegal inhabitants of the island have fled the slums to escape eviction and these say they are ready to welcome the police with “Molotov cocktails” and promise revenge and violence after the destruction of the slum according to AFP: a response to “the civil war of the Mahorais against us”.
