After the promises, the Mahorais are waiting for action.
The day after the visit of Minister of the Interior Gérald Darmanin to the island, Mayotte is still paralyzed this Monday morning by the roadblocks of citizen groups angry against insecurity and immigration.
“It is out of the question to lift the blockades for the moment,” Safina Soula, president of the Mayotte 2018 citizens’ collective, told AFP. “We have reached an agreement with the minister, we are waiting for written documents “, she clarified.
“We are giving him until Wednesday to receive this letter (…) we will see if the content meets our expectations.
Also read “We remain suspicious”: in Mayotte, residents have mixed feelings about Gérald Darmanin’s announcements
Monday morning, the barges which connect Grande-Terre and Petite-Terre were still stopped and blockades, erected in the four corners of the territory since January 22, were still paralyzing traffic there.
“Gérald Darmanin calls for the lifting of the dams which affect the island economically.
It's NO, we remind you, we expect ACTS, less words”, repeated on X (ex-Twitter) the “Forces vives”, which brings together all the mobilized collectives.
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Traveling to Mayotte, Gérald Darmanin announces the end of soil law
On an express visit to Mayotte with his colleague delegate for Overseas Marie Guévenoux, Gérald Darmanin announced on Sunday a constitutional revision, already criticized by the left, intended to eliminate land rights on the island in an attempt to stop the uncontrolled immigration.
Darmanin received by Macron
This measure should, according to the minister, make it possible to abolish territorialized residence permits, a system preventing holders of a Mahorais residence permit from coming to France, which groups of angry residents are demanding to be abolished.
“We want people who arrive illegally in Mayotte to no longer be regularized, in order to break the smuggler networks and return to an acceptable migratory flow,” insisted Safina Soula on Monday.
Read alsoRemoval of land rights in Mayotte: “A form of division of the application of the law on the territory”
The measure putting an end to land rights in Mayotte must go through “a constitutional revision that the President of the Republic will choose,” Gérald Darmanin said on Sunday when he got off the plane in Mayotte.
“It will be up to the president to decide how he wishes to have reforms to the Constitution adopted,” Marie Guévenoux insisted on franceinfo on Monday.
Emmanuel Macron will receive Gérald Darmanin and Marie Guévenoux this Monday “at the end of the afternoon” to discuss the situation on the archipelago, declared the delegate minister.
Mayotte is a “French department which is experiencing an exceptional situation and which needs exceptional measures to help it get out of the situation in which it is”, she added.