Charles Luylier (in Mayotte) with AFP / Photo credits: SOPHIE LAUTIER / AFP 7:02 a.m., February 13, 2024

Mayotte is still paralyzed by roadblocks erected by residents angry at insecurity and uncontrolled immigration this Tuesday morning. The citizen groups which hold them are demanding concrete measures, particularly on the question of the abolition of land rights. 

Mayotte remains largely blocked this Tuesday morning. The barges which connect Grande-Terre and Petite-Terre are still stopped and the blockades still in place since January 22 in the four corners of the territory. Angry residents protest against insecurity and uncontrolled immigration.

Mayotte, the poorest French department in France

The poorest French department in France, Mayotte is populated by 310,000 inhabitants, according to INSEE - probably much more according to the Regional Chamber of Accounts - including 48% Comorian immigrants or other African countries. Most arrive illegally aboard traditional fishing boats from the Comorian island of Anjouan, just 70 km away. Many live in unsanitary “bangas” (huts) organized as shantytowns.

To try to stem this flow, Gérald Darmanin therefore decided to abolish the land law, a measure that he himself described as “extremely strong, clear, radical”. “It will no longer be possible to become French if you are not yourself the child of French parents,” he described. Since this announcement, the end of land rights has been on everyone's lips on the Indian Ocean island.

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“The Mahorese population can’t take it anymore”

Amidou, in his fifties, came here with his wife ten years ago. His children were born in Mayotte and automatically became French. This Comorian therefore defends the rights of the land tooth and nail. “We have the right to have the right to land!”, he says at the microphone of Europe 1.

Except that with 12,000 births per year, the Mayotte maternity ward has become the largest in Europe, where 90% of births are the result of foreign parents. Unmanageable, according to the spokesperson for a citizen group. "The Mahorese population can't take it anymore. As long as we continue to make Mayotte a factory for producing children, everyone will take their responsibilities. If the State manages to remove land rights, that would be a very good thing. If we do nothing on Mayotte, tomorrow, it will be the island of Reunion which will be impacted and then, at the national level,” she says.

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A removal of land rights that everyone is talking about here and which must appear in a timetable of measures from this Tuesday evening, the collectives are asking, otherwise they will continue the blockades.

This desire to remove the right from the ground provokes the anger of the entire left. Gérald Darmanin responded to his detractors among our colleagues from 

Ouest-France

 : “I invite the beautiful minds of Paris to get out of the ring road and go see the situation in Mayotte.”