His departure is scheduled for Monday 5 December, much to the chagrin of local police. When the government announced the dispatch of the raid on Mayotte to try to stem the hellish spiral of violence that shook the French Indian Ocean department in mid-November, the most violent gangs retreated and dispersed. The population is left stunned by an unprecedented calm.
However, in Vahibé, a small disadvantaged village wedged between two hills on the border of the capital Mamoudzou, police have been busy since Friday when local police went to a tin shack to arrest people suspected of being “motorway robbers ” to be. Motorists violently extorted. Outcomes of the operation: hours of confrontation between youths and the police, two suspects arrested and an entire village caught in the crossfire.
On Monday, another joint operation was carried out in Vahibé by the Territorial Administration of the National Police (DTPN, Association of National Police and Border Police) and the raid. But the surprise effect is impossible: a single road opens up the village of Mamoudzou. Seeing the convoy of SUVs and white vans, locals pull out their phones to warn undocumented migrants that an “LIC (fight against illegal immigration) operation” is underway.
Pebbles vs. Gum
When the convoy parks at the foot of the Vahibé slum, there aren’t many people left to challenge. Thirty police officers spread the field. There’s the Raid, and there’s the GAO, a border police task force similar to the BAC and recognizable by the black cheetah-print T-shirts worn by its members.
While the police arrested three men in an irregular situation – the only ones on duty – under the eyes of the children, the young people prepared the reaction. “Look, they’re there, there and there,” says Omar, perched on a rooftop overlooking the whole valley of bush and tin, with the whole village watching the show. The first stones rain from small groups of young people scattered on the hill. Very mobile, they communicate with each other in Shimaoré but insult the police in French. Who respond by bathing the slums in a dense smoke of tear gas. In this saturated air screams, the sound of stones, weapons.
“You heard? This isn’t normal,” comments Nasri, a high school student, as several shots rang out. The men of the raid, in riot gear, actually drew their shotguns and their rubber bullets against the young torsos and bare feet. She doesn’t appear to “At the same time, I understand them, it’s not good what the police are doing, besides, they often leave the children alone here. On the other hand, we’re fed up with criminals, there’s violence all the time and we can’t do anything, not even to Go to school, they should be arrested,” says the high school student, for whom “that will never change”.
Expected reinforcement
For several weeks and the attack by a stoned school bus driver in the village, Vahibé’s students have not been able to go to college or high school like they can in a large northern part of the island. This can partly explain the relative calm that has prevailed: young people from rival villages in areas of tension hardly ever meet.
The presence of the raid also seems to have a deterrent effect. “We want them to stay, it’s a relief to have them with us, but Paris refuses, so they will leave on Monday,” explains Abdel Aziz Sakhi, CFDT zone secretary. “As I know the young people, it will be a party when they are gone, it will certainly continue,” he believes.
The Minister of the Interior and Overseas, Gérald Darmanin, is expected to monitor the development of the security situation on the island, where 72 mobile gendarmes are expected, at the end of December.