SAt the request of the prefect, the government announced this Friday, June 10 the emergency deployment of mobile gendarmes on the island of Mayotte, in the grip of violence, in order to “restore the republican order”. Since Monday, rival gangs have been clashing in Majicavo and Koungou, in the northeast of the department, following the stabbing murder of a young man the day before.
The police intervened to “liberate many axes regularly obstructed by burning barricades”, operations during which “four departmental gendarmes as well as three mobile gendarmes were injured by throwing projectiles and blows”, indicated the Ministries of the Interior and Overseas in a joint press release.
Each time, the same scenario is repeated: the clashes at rush hour disrupt traffic already saturated on the island, the gendarmes intervene and in turn become the target of stone throwing. A banal scenario in “the island of perfumes”, where immigration and poverty have accentuated the divisions between villages and neighborhoods whose young people regularly clash with stones and knives.
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Two magistrates attacked
Two magistrates filed a complaint on Friday after being attacked the day before by a group of people armed with machetes, who attacked their vehicles as they left the court to return to their homes, we learned from a source. judicial.
The president of the judicial court, Laurent Ben Kemoun, came out of his reserve on Thursday afternoon by publishing a text on his LinkedIn account: “At this very moment, a hundred thugs are breaking, burning, looting, molesting around the judicial court where several people are blocked. […] I prepare myself for a night of anguish until all my troops have been exfiltrated. »
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Violence on the rise
Sending a squadron of mobile gendarmes to Mayotte, an emergency response already provided during previous unrest, does not address the root problem, according to MP LR Mansour Kamardine, candidate for his succession in the south of island.
“The significant 40% increase in law enforcement that we have achieved in recent years does not allow us to control a worsening situation,” he said in a press release. On May 29, a young man had already died, in Acoua in the northwest, after a stabbing. The author was arrested two days later and imprisoned. Mayotte, an archipelago in the Indian Ocean, is regularly shaken by outbreaks of violence between rival gangs or against the police, when they intervene to put an end to it.
Mayotte, an archipelago in the Indian Ocean, is regularly shaken by outbreaks of violence between rival gangs or against the police when they intervene to put an end to it. In February, exasperated residents had blocked access to their neighborhood for several days and tried to block traffic routes. In 2021, the Mamoudzou public prosecutor’s office recorded a 25% increase in referrals for criminal acts in Mayotte and 21% for misdemeanors.