Comoros “does not intend to welcome” people in an irregular situation in the French department of Mayotte, which Paris plans to expel in the coming days in a vast and controversial anti-migrant operation, the door-keeper told AFP on Friday. word of the Moroni government.
The operation in Mayotte of the French Minister of the Interior, Gérald Darmanin, dubbed “Wambushu” (reprise, in Mahorais), plans to destroy slums in the 101st French department located in the Indian Ocean and dislodge foreigners in an irregular situation. . These undocumented migrants, most of whom are Comorians, would then be deported to Anjouan, 70 km away from Mayotte.
call to quit
“The Comoros do not intend to welcome expellees from the operation planned by the French government in Mayotte”, declared the spokesman for the government of Moroni, Houmed Msaidie, reached by telephone. Some 1,800 police and gendarmes are already present in Mayotte for the operation. More than 2,500 personnel (law enforcement, regional health agency, justice, health reserve) are mobilized, according to a source familiar with the matter.
In recent weeks, the Comoros have repeatedly called on the French government to abandon the operation, saying it does not have the means to accommodate an influx of migrants and accusing Paris of sowing “violence”. This poor archipelago, with nearly 900,000 inhabitants, has no administrative detention centre. When Comorians are sent back, in particular from Mayotte, “we check the identity of the deportees (…) and we let them go since they are at home”, explained a security source to AFP.
Prohibited events
“We do not have the means to absorb this fabricated violence of Mayotte by the French State”, declared at the beginning of the week the governor of Anjouan, Anissi Chamsidine. Comorian President Azali Assoumani, who has held the presidency of the African Union since February, for his part said he hoped “that the operation will be canceled”, acknowledging “not having the means to stop (it) by force “.
Comorian civil society has also expressed its concerns. A call for a march on Friday was thwarted by a prefectural ban. In Grande-Comore as in Anjouan, demonstrations on the public highway are not authorized. Intense negotiations have taken place in recent weeks between Moroni and Paris, raising the possibility of a last-minute agreement. Nearly half of the 350,000 inhabitants of Mayotte do not have French nationality, according to the French National Institute of Statistics, but a third of foreigners were born on the island.
These illegal migrants are settled in unhealthy neighborhoods called “bangas”, plagued by violence and trafficking. Since 2019, the French State has considerably increased the fight against this illegal immigration, with in particular the continuous presence at sea of interceptor boats and aerial surveillance.