The Comoros government requested on Monday that France withdraw plans to carry out an operation involving evictions, the destruction of unauthorized housing, and arrests in Mayotte, a French department in the Indian Ocean where crime is out of control and there is a migratory crisis.
According to a source familiar with the situation, the operation, known as “Wuambushu” (takeover in Moroccan Arabic), was developed by Interior and Overseas Minister Gérald Darmanin and approved by French President Emmanuel Macron in February.
At the conclusion of Ramadan on April 20, it is anticipated to start. All or nearly all of the migrants residing in the targeted slums are from the Comoros.
“The Comorian government has learned with astonishment the news of the continuation of the French government’s project (…) to proceed, in the Comorian island of Mayotte, to the destruction of shanty towns, followed by the expulsion of all their undocumented occupants, to the island of Anjouan,” said a statement from the Comorian presidency published Monday.
The Comorian authorities ask the French authorities “to give up”.
“We are against this operation. We have initiated discussions with our partner France, which is a partner. We think that dialogue could be a better response than actions like this. Until then, we don’t know, but I hope it will be stopped so that we can discuss and see the ways and means for peace and security to reign in our country and in the region,” said Azali Assoumani, the President of Comoros.
Comorian civil society groups organised a press conference on April 5 to announce a “coming bloodbath.
“We intend to seize international organizations to inform them of the massacre that France wants to perpetrate on the Comorian island of Mayotte,” reacted Youssouf Attick Ismael, president of the Maore Committee (Maore means Mayotte in the national language).
Moroni and the French government have been engaged in tense diplomatic discussions on this.
Voices have been raised in Mayotte to emphasize the anxieties brought on by such an operation. So, in a news statement, the island’s medical staff recalled “the tragic effects” of earlier massive initiatives in the struggle against immigration.
In a letter to Mr. Darmanin, the president of the National Consultative Commission on Human Rights, Jean-Marie Burguburu, urged him to “renounce” the project due to the potential for “aggravating social fractures and tensions in an already very fragile context” and “the infringement of foreigners’ fundamental rights in the context of massive expulsions.“
