Rival bands fought by throwing stones at each other on Monday. Classrooms were ransacked.
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Mothers of Kahani, in the center of Mayotte, demonstrated, Thursday, November 18, in front of the Gustave Eiffel high school against the recurring violence which rages within the establishment and around it. In 2018, it was following violence at the Lycée Eiffel that the Mahorais had carried out a three-month general strike against insecurity.
On Monday, violent clashes took place in the school. Rival bands fought by throwing stones. Classrooms were ransacked. About sixty gendarmes intervened and two arrests were made. Violence which led the rector of Mayotte to close the establishment on Tuesday and Wednesday.
By prohibiting access to buses carrying students, the action of Kahani’s mothers prevented high school students from returning to class on Thursday. “The promises have always been given, but the problems only get worse in this establishment depriving their children of education”, affirms Haïdar Attoumani, co-president of the FCPE, in a letter addressed to the rector of Mayotte.
The mothers of Kahani want to bring students from problem villages at different times and ask for a round table with the prefect, the public prosecutor, the commander of the gendarmerie and the mayor of the commune of Ouangani, to which belongs Kahani. Otherwise, they will continue to block the entrance to the school.
For 4 years, fences, barbed wire and surveillance cameras have been installed at the school. The gendarmes are now permanently stationed and the rectorate has mobile security teams. But violence still takes place at the Lycée Eiffel almost every day. The FCPE calls for schools on a human scale. In Mayotte, all middle and high schools have more than 1,200 students.