“Nothing stops them”: Mayotte overwhelmed by the violence of armed gangs

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The authorities seem powerless to control young offenders, who steal and kill. Elected officials point to the responsibility for illegal immigration.

By Michel Revol, special envoy to Mayotte

VS’is a narrow valley, covered with lush and abundant vegetation, which sinks into the mountain. On either side of the rutted path that splits it in two, rickety houses made of sheet metal and pieces of wood. It is there, fifteen minutes from downtown Mamoudzou, the capital of Mayotte, that a hundred thugs swept in ten days ago.

Masked, dressed in white overalls, armed with machetes and knives, they arrived by the mountain from the other end of the city. The operation had been planned: the band, which came to avenge one of its own killed and almost dismembered two days earlier, was aiming at a few carefully burned sheet metal boxes.

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