France faces angry protests by its overseas islanders

Paris: A month-long campaign of strikes and protests on the French Indian Ocean island of Mayotte has shone a light on the simmering resentment in some of France’s tropical outposts over perceived neglect by the state.

Supplies of fuel, drugs and other essentials are running dangerously low on the island of 250,000 people off south-east Africa as protesters dig in for more funding – and empathy – from Paris.

The spice island in the Comoros archipelago, which has been governed by France since the mid1800s, is the fourth overseas territory to be paralysed by strikes over living conditions in the past decade.

An attack by a gang on a school lit the fuse on frustration over mass migration and growing lawlessness in France’s poorest department, which many link to the influx of arrivals by sea from neighbouring non-French Comoran islands.

Visiting minister for overseas territories Annick Girardin failed to convince the demonstrators to abandon the barricades this week, despite a promise of police reinforcements to combat crime and a clampdown on illegal migration.

“They made the same promises to our parents and grandparents,” Toto Amachebane, head of a striking transport company, said dismissively.

France’s collection of overseas territories stretch from the islands of Wallis and Futuna in the South Pacific to Saint Pierre and Miquelon in the north-west Atlantic to Reunion island off Madagascar.

Attachment to the former colonial mothership is generally strong, particularly in the five overseas departments of Martinique, Guadeloupe, French Guiana, Mayotte and Reunion island.

But many in the scattered parts of overseas France complain of being made to feel like an afterthought.

The development gap with the mainland is particularly striking in Mayotte, which broke ranks with the three other Comoros islands in voting against independence in the 1970s but was only fully integrated into France in 2011.

Unemployment of 25.9% is over double that in France as a whole and public services are woefully deficient.