Voiceless Exilés introduces to the deadly impact of the militarized border regime between the Union of the Comoros and Maoré/Mayotte to prevent Comorian nationals from traveling to the Maoré/Mayotte island, a Comorian territory that became a French one, against international law, and subsequently a department in 2011. It documents the death and disappearances of thousands of Comorian nationals who crossed the Mozambique Channel to reach Maoré/Mayotte or the Mediterranean Sea to reach Marseille, also called “the fifth island of the Comoros” since with at least 80,000 Comorians living in Marseille, there are more people of Comorian descent living in the second largest city of France than in Moroni, the capital of the Comoros.
Voiceless Exilés includes the video of the “Exilés sans voix: Morts et disparitions dans le canal du Mozambique et la Méditerranée” symposium held in Marseille in 2023 on this very topic, a documentary “Voiceless Exilés : the Documentary” based on interviews with the discussants and members of the symposium’s audience, an introduction to the No Visa operatorio project, a news feed “In the News”, works by artists, writers and activist, and finally travelers sand migrants’ testimonials.
Historical context
In 1974, the political status of the Comoros Archipelago evolved dramatically. Located off the northwestern coast of Madagascar, it still remained a French colony. When asked by referendum whether they wanted to become independent or be included in the French Republic, the population of Mayotte, whose residents in favor of the independence had been deported, chose to remain a French territory while the three other Comoro islands voted in favor of independence. Contrary to international law asserting the inviolability of colonial borders, Mayotte became a French overseas territory. In 1975 Ngazidja, Ndzuani, and Mwali unilaterally proclaimed their independence becoming the Federal and Islamic Republic of Comoros and subsequently the Union of the Comoros (Sellström 2015). Up until 2010, the United Nations passed a yearly resolution criticizing the French government for the non-decolonization of Mayotte while the Union of the Comoros has continuously claimed its sovereignty over the island. Nonetheless, in 2011 Mayotte became the 101st full-fledged French département (French administrative and territorial unit) as well as the 5th French overseas département and the 9th outermost region of the European Union in 2014.
This brief historical overview of the recent political situation in Mayotte testifies to France’s continuing intensification as a neocolonial power. Its motives may include geopolitical interests in the Indian Ocean region, exploitation of maritime and energy resources, security and military interests, and appeasement of a right-wing party to compensate for the anticipated independence of French New Caledonia in the Pacific Ocean.
The addition of new territories into the French Republic, as shown by the case of Caribbean islands and French Guiana in 1946, causes the French parliament to proliferate provisions to laws and ordinances intended to govern its overseas territories despite their full-fledged status as départements. Considered by activists to be “laws of exception”, these provisions prevent foreign nationals from entering a French département and subsequently continental France or the E.U. Thus, all political, cultural, and linguistic relationships of these territories with their neighbors have been severed for the sake of an exclusive relationship with continental France. Mayotte is no exception to this pattern.
Before the process of départementalisation (becoming a département), Mayotte was fully integrated demographically and politically into the Indian Ocean region, itself characterized by intense ancestral, cultural, and commercial circulations. Départementalization turned Mayotte into an isolated place severing its relationships with its regional environment, including the Union of the Comoros and Madagascar. The French parliament has passed ordinances and legal provisions preventing Comorians from accessing the island and facilitating deportation. Since 1995, travel documentation, namely a visa, has been required for Comorians. Since it is almost impossible to obtain this visa – locally called a “visa for death” – Comorians travel using fragile boats called kwasa-kwasa. NGOs claim that between 15,000 and 50,000 people have died while undertaking the increasingly perilous 40-mile trip from Ndzuani to Mayotte. No numbers have ever been produced by either the French or the Union of the Comoros governments. Instead, they have actively prevented any report or investigation regarding shipwrecks. When I was in the Union of the Comoros in July 2021 I learned of some eight shipwrecks causing 200 deaths. None of them were reported in the news or even known by the NGOs or United Nations agencies working on Comorian migrations. Every year about 20,000 Comorians are deported from Mayotte. These 20,000 include those arrested when disembarking from boats on the shore of the island and those arrested inland for being undocumented. This number is only slightly inferior to the total number of deportations taking place from continental France though 264,000 people live in Mayotte versus 67 million people living in France. In violation of E.U. and French laws, Mayotte deports about 5,000 unaccompanied children every year. Nonetheless some Comorians do manage to get to Mayotte where they live as vulnerable undocumented residents and are ostracized by the population. A “deportation regime” (has transformed this French overseas département into a site of demographic engineering. That is to say, the French government displaces, relocates and deports former colonial subjects from their original ancestral territory of Mayotte to independent territories.
Comorians also move to France, risking their lives when crossing the Mediterranean Sea. The Union of the Comoros is made of three islands whose residents have different mobility and migratory trajectories. While all Comorians take short trips to Mayotte, it is mainly residents of Ndzuani who plan long-term trips or migration projects to Mayotte. Residents of Ngazidja who move to continental France do so through the perilous crossing of the Mediterranean Sea, following air travel to North African countries and Senegal.
The Mozambique channel as a maritime cemetery
There is no official census regarding the number of shipwrecks, deaths, or disappearances. Nonetheless, according to the French Senate and several NGOs, at least between 10,000 and 50,000 people have lost their lives in the Mozambique Channel when the United Nation’s estimates for the Mediterranean run about 30,000. In any case, these terrifying numbers are under-estimated as every family, in a total population of about 820,000, has lost at least one member.