WORLD WORLDWIDE FRANCE News Journal Update - (en) France, UCL AL #339 - Operation Wuambushu in Mayotte, The extremism of neocolonial inconsistency (ca, de, fr, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

 The ongoing Operation Wuambushu in Mayotte allows the passage of a milestone in

the repression of migrants. The island, where the social and health situation is
explosive and xenophobia exacerbated, is paying the price for forty years of
inference to the Comoros. Demanding reparations for neocolonialism will have to
be part of the solution. ---- Wuambushu, (which means Reconquest, the assumed
wink is terrifying), is the name of the operation initiated by Gérald Darmanin
and organized by Commissioner Laurent Simonon (continued in the Benalla affair),
which started April 23. The French state plans to expel 10,000 people in two
months and to create two temporary detention centers. With this operation the
limits are pushed back by the State: a unit of the RAID, gendarmes, drones,
armored vehicles and the violent company of CRS 8  are mobilized! Near the
village of Tsoundzou, the police fired twelve live ammunition "towards the ground
and to scare people away". 1 The Vice-President of the Departmental Council of
Mayotte described the young Comorian immigrants as "terrorists" and affirms that
it "may have to be killed", a terrifying dehumanization which has even somewhat
outraged the political class. With outbids by the RN evoking their electoral
successes in Mayotte, this military-police operation is a laboratory which
foreshadows the generalization of this type of repression consisting in expelling
thousands of people and razing slums. However, these practices still come up
against a few legal safeguards for the protection of rights, but for how long?

The social situation on the island is indeed particularly serious: 80% of the
population lives below the poverty line, the LDH and a group of 170 health
workers from Mayotte have warned of the risks of human rights violations, health
crisis and rising tensions. Already in 2016, citizen collectives were violently
"decasing" their Comorian neighbours. Residence permits issued in Mayotte are not
valid in other French territories and jus soli is restricted there. There is no
state medical aid and since April 13, the maternal and child centers of the
department have been prohibited for undocumented migrants, who are asked to go to
the overcrowded CHU.

Colonial history in the Comoros
Mayotte was bought by France from the Malagasy Sultan Andriantsoly in 1841,
before seizing all of the Comoros at the end of the 19th century. After
independence in 1974, the loyalist elites of the island initiated a puppet
referendum 2 in 1976, during which the Mahorais chose to remain French. Since
then, the UN considers that France illegally occupies Mayotte and demands its
return to the Comoros. The latter, for their part, suffered several coups during
the twenty years following their independence, fomented by France via the
mercenary Bob Denard, nicknamed "the white sultan".

The political instability caused by France has prevented any economic
development, leading as elsewhere people to immigrate to Mayotte at the risk of
their lives on makeshift boats (the famous kwassa-kwassa). Many Comorians and
Mahorais, beyond sharing the same language, culture and religion, have always had
family ties. The links between the islands have never been cut and explain the
arrivals on Mayotte, which are therefore designated as migrations.

French interests in Mayotte are linked to the sea: France, via all its overseas
territories, has the second largest maritime domain in the world. These are areas
of fishing, hydrocarbons and influence, France having a say in the Indian Ocean
in several international bodies. Geostrategic territory, it is the army which
will push to maintain the presence on the island where the military base allows
France to intervene in the Mozambique Channel where the multinational Total is
present.

neoliberal xenophobia
Mayotte condenses in a tiny territory the problems of a world where Western norms
of the nation-state and its borders have been imposed. Globalized neoliberal
capitalism has statutorily and legally divided workers and spread xenophobia
among formerly colonized peoples who have been arbitrarily separated. Violence
and pogroms in the name of arbitrary borders and petty exacerbated nationalisms
where "the poor kill the poor", to paraphrase Frantz Fanon.

This xenophobia between neo-colonized people has as its material basis the
multi-statutory division of workers in the former colonial metropolises as in the
former colonies: the populations "clandestinized" by law and borders, exploited
in certain sectors (agricultural, building, cleaning, etc.), "nationalized"
populations from colonization or slavery, discriminated against in turn to
optimize precariousness (services, industry, etc.). The ideological-racist and
legal-xenophobic accompaniment perpetuates the colonial division of labor. It is
not a question of anything else in Mayotte: the Mayotte elites who demand
Operation Wuambushu are the same ones who exploit these same Comorian migrants
and are satisfied that popular resentment does not fall on them, and the Republic
to take pleasure in arbitrating in a paternalistic way to the aid of the loyal...

Equal rights and remedies
 From the point of view of Mayotte, the majority choice in 2009 of
departmentalization requires France to have a relationship of equality with
metropolitan France on issues such as access to water, or the alignment of the
minimum wage and social benefits, equality that France is reluctant to offer.
Worse, she suggests, to stop immigration, to reduce it even more. The Mahoran
population thus finds itself faced with a contradiction: in the name of the
"fight against illegal immigration", it could lose its crumbs of equality with
the metropolis! And the French state offers nothing more to the population than
the sterilization of women to stem the population growth of the island 3.

Rallies swarm everywhere in France against the neocolonialism of the state. Here
in Grenoble.
AFA Grenoble
Mayotte must not leave the radars of the French social movement ! Several
demonstrations of opposition to the operation took place at the call of several
unions and associations, in particular in Marseilles where the Comorian community
is strongly present. Although in the minority, Mahorais also oppose the
operation. If we are to demand equal rights and the decolonization of Mayotte in
the medium or long term, another latent demand is essential: reparations. For the
Comoros as for Mayotte. The economic precariousness in these islands are not
accidents, they are the consequence of an imperial policy that continues.
Reparations, which are also a measure of wealth sharing, would offer an offensive
political response for unions that have been bothered and confused when its
Mahoran sections have sometimes taken xenophobic positions. Finally, let us
demand a break with the competition between peoples, the end of the hegemony of
the nation state and its militarized borders !

Nicolas Pasadena (UCL Anti-Racist Commission)

https://www.unioncommunistelibertaire.org/?Le-jusqu-au-boutisme-de-l-inconsequence-neocoloniale
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