In Mayotte, while Operation Wuambushu is wreaking havoc on the Comorianpopulations, the Regional Health Agency is targeting women's wombs byannouncing a program of massive sterilizations. ----- Since the end ofApril, the French department of Mayotte has been the scene of therepressive operation known as Wuambushu, aimed at deporting 10,000foreigners in an irregular situation in two months, creating twotemporary detention centers and destroying entire neighborhoods on thepretext that they are "informal dwellings" [1].Simultaneously with this military-police operation, the Regional HealthAgency (ARS) of Mayotte presented an action plan "on the control of thebirth rate in Mayotte".The birth rate of Comorians pointed outThe Mahorais department has the highest birth rate in France: in 2022,it saw the birth of 10,730 babies for a territory of 310,000inhabitants. The fertility rate there is 4.2 children per woman, whileit is 1.8 in mainland France. Three quarters of births there are givenby foreign Comorian women, most of whom have arrived in the departmentillegally, which is not surprising since half of the inhabitants of theisland of Mayotte are of foreign nationality, that is to say from one ofthe other three islands of the Comoros archipelago.Mayotte is also the poorest department in France (77% of the inhabitantslive below the national poverty line) and a department where anexceptional law reigns: in 2018, the "Asylum and immigration" lawintroduced a modification of the double jus soli (which attributesFrench nationality to children born in France of whom at least one ofthe parents was also born in France) by adding a brake specific toMayotte territory. One of the two parents must now be able to prove thathe or she has been residing in France regularly and uninterruptedly formore than three months for the child to be able to claim to be born French.To these discriminatory restrictions of jus soli, the Regional HealthAgency of Mayotte has just proposed adding, to limit "populationgrowth", a measure specifically targeting women: at the end of March, itannounced that sterilization (tubal ligation) would be systematicallyoffered to young mothers, Mahoran and Comorian, coming to give birth atthe Mayotte Hospital Center (CHM), cared for in the Maternal and ChildProtection services (PMI) or by midwives in the liberal sector.The discourses developed after 1945, highlighting the birth rate of thecolonized as a cause of misery, and the "overpopulation of the overseasdepartments" as a brake on their modernization and their development,are still just as lively [2]. This rhetoric designates Comorian andMahoran women as responsible for the social situation of thearchipelago. On this basis, the French colonial state grants itself theright to control their bodies and their birth rate!The Mayotte Regional Health Agency has just announced to limit"demographic growth" that sterilizations would be systematically offeredto young Mayotte and Comorian mothers.Destruction of utilitiesThe ARS even argues that population growth would generate "significantpressure" on Mahoran health services, while it is the lack of means -generated by the systematic destruction of public healthcare services,and neocolonial and racist management - which is at the origin of thissituation. Only one maternity ward is functional in Mayotte, and it ischronically understaffed in caregivers[3].It is the Comorians, and among them the Mahorais and Mahorais, who paythe price: the infant mortality rate in Mayotte is 10.1 per 1,000children, compared to 3.7 in mainland France. Beyond the birth ratefigures, it is death that the French presence produces: in 2016 Cimadeestimated that more than 12,000 people died trying to cross the seabetween Anjouan and Mayotte [4].If the ARS of the department promises to improve "awareness and accessto male and female contraception" and to massively distribute freecondoms in the territory, we can be sure that the flagship proposal andthe central lever of this policy will remain sterilization, lessexpensive, more profitable, definitive...This measure is part of the long history of racialized birth control inthe French (former) colonies, studied by Myriam Paris with regard toReunion (see box). If it cannot be assimilated purely and simply to theabortions and forced sterilizations practiced at the time in Réunion,the ARS project to systematically offer sterilization undoubtedlyconstitutes an updated neoliberal version.In this one, we allow ourselves the luxury of making believe that thewomen's consent would be obtained: let us be reassured, the operationwill be carried out only on "those who wish it". We can hypothesize thatthe reality of the system will be quite different: ("benevolent" or moredirectly binding) pressure, lies or approximations about the operation,its consequences and its irreversibility, false promises or vaguenessleft on the prospect of obtaining administrative regularization...everything will be done to make them give in.But make no mistake: you cannot consent when you are struggling withcolonial power.Camille (UCL Paris North-East)WHEN COLONIAL HISTORY REPEATS ITSELFThe work of Myriam Paris (doctor in political science), published in herbook We who pour life drop by drop, highlights the practices thatprevailed from the 1960s and for more than twenty years: while inso-called metropolitan France, the public authorities promote apro-natalist policy and, to do this, maintain the ban on abortion andthe criminalization of advertising for contraceptive products, thereduction of the birth rate is, on the contrary, encouraged in Réunion. .Devices to control the fertility of poor and racialized Reunion womenare put in place by both public authorities and private actors. Thesedevices take the form of multiple forms of violence inflicted on them,including the injection of products with serious and proven adverseeffects, sterilizations and forced and hidden abortions. These practicestake place at least until the 1980s.Myriam Paris, We who pour life drop by drop. Feminisms and reproductiveeconomy: a sociohistory of power, Dalloz, 2020.To validate[1]"Operation Wuambushu in Mayotte : The extremism of neocolonialinconsistency", Alternative Libertaire, June 4, 2023.[2]Françoise Vergès, The Belly of Women. Capitalism, racialization,feminism, Albin Michel, 2017.[3]"In Mayotte, the only maternity hospital on the island crystallizestensions around immigration", May 2, 2023, on Streetpress.com.[4]Interview with Riwadi Saïdi : "Wuambushu does not defend the Mahoraisbut the interests of the French State", on Survie.orghttps://www.unioncommunistelibertaire.org/?Racisme-d-Etat-a-Mayotte-Obsedes-par-le-ventre-des-femmes_________________________________________A - I N F O S N E W S S E R V I C EBy, For, and About AnarchistsSend news reports to A-infos-en mailing listA-infos-en@ainfos.ca
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