“The results are there”: Gérald Darmanin began a two-day visit to Mayotte on Saturday to defend Wuambushu, his disputed operation to fight crime, illegal immigration and unsanitary housing in this French archipelago in the Indian Ocean . Arrived in the morning, the Minister of the Interior began his trip with a “situation update on the action carried out by the State” in the 101st French department, the poorest in the country, with an explosive social and security situation. . “The results are there, in the fight against delinquency, against unsanitary housing, against irregular immigration,” he tweeted.
Visiting a regiment in Combani, in the center of Grande-Terre, he specified that Wuambushu would be “extended for a month” then that a “second type of operation, a new formula” would begin in September, targeting the farming and fishing and slum traders. Necklace of Mayotte flowers around his neck, Gérald Darmanin gave a speech in the center of Mamoudzou in front of collectives of citizens who had installed banners saying “Mayotte says thank you to the police” or “Darmanin the man of the situation “.
“You can count on us”
“We have done a lot of things for several weeks and several months and we will continue,” he said according to images broadcast by Mayotte la 1ère. “Now that we have regained control of security, we have to take care of everything else, and you can count on us,” he continued, calling for the development of tourism and agriculture and to solve the problems. water problems, whose cuts are almost daily.
The visit of the Minister of the Interior was eagerly awaited in Mayotte. “He has the support of the population but he must not let us go (…). There is not a single public service on the island that is not impacted by illegal immigration” , Safina Soula, president of the collective of citizens of Mayotte 2018, told AFP. Officially launched on April 24, Operation Wuambushu had ambitious announced objectives but its results are so far modest, in the eyes of the collectives. “There needs to be a lot more decasing (destruction of slums, editor’s note), sanctions for slum merchants and more border controls,” said Safina Soula.
Extension of the operation
In an interview with Le Figaro posted online on Friday, Gérald Darmanin assured that the government would “continue to inject resources” and would maintain “more than a thousand” security forces on the island. Defending the results of the operation, he said that in two months, “violence against people has been reduced by 22%” and burglaries, thefts and damage to property “by 28%”. “Above all, of the 57 gang leaders identified at the start, 47 were arrested and brought before the courts,” he continued, also claiming to have “divided by three the incoming flow of illegal immigrants”.
Still, the objective set by Gérald Darmanin of the destruction by the end of June of 1,000 bangas, these unsanitary sheet metal huts, has been postponed to the end of the year. Since the beginning of the operation, denounced by associations as “brutal” and “anti-poor”, the state services have only managed to dismantle two informal neighborhoods, Talus 2 and Barakani, corresponding to around 250 homes. The expulsions, with a target of 150 to 400 daily removals against 70 per day on average in 2022, were disrupted by the cessation of maritime links with the Comoros for almost a month, Moroni refusing to dock on the island from Anjouan of boats carrying migrants.
After negotiations, the crossings resumed on May 17, Gérald Darmanin assuring that Moroni now accepts “100% of irregular people”. Wuambushu’s last objective, the fight against crime, causes him problems of prison overcrowding, to the point that the only prison on the island was blocked at the beginning of June by prison guards judging the situation “unsustainable”, the occupancy rate having risen to 230%. Gérald Darmanin is accompanied to Mayotte by the Minister Delegate for Overseas Territories, Jean-François Carenco, who will join the Minister Delegate for Housing, Olivier Klein, on Sunday. At dawn, they will attend a decasing in Dzaoudzi, in Petite-Terre.