“And why not Cayenne prison?”: the left criticizes Darmanin, who wants “rehabilitation places” for minors in Mayotte

Has the omnipresent Gérald Darmanin gone too far? After having proposed to toughen the attribution of French nationality to children born in Mayotte, a measure criticized by Cimade and the LDH, the Minister of the Interior made new controversial statements on Monday.

On a trip to this French department in the Indian Ocean, Gérald Darmanin announced that he was going to make proposals to open “places of re-education and recovery” for minor offenders, supervised by the military.

“The President of the Republic in his campaign has proposed something that has not been discussed much: places guarded by the military, which are places of reeducation, recovery for some of the children, very young adolescents, who do not have parents, or very few. . We saw it a little in Réunion, we see it a lot here in Mayotte”, the minister told the press at the end of the visit to the hospital on this island in the Indian Ocean.

“Flight forward in far-right demagoguery”

Very quickly, various left-wing politicians denounced these comments, with the rebel Bastien Lachaud believing that Darmanin “and his teacher Macron continue their headlong career towards far-right demagoguery.” Because a few hours earlier, it was Éric Dupond-Moretti who was accused of caving in to the extreme right by reversing his own administration’s decision on organizing “Koh Lantess” in Fresnes prison.

“And why not the Cayenne prison too? (…) This insane proposal is an ignominy and an insult to Mayotte, to the military, to reinsertion. Atrocious and disgusting,” launches the LFI deputy on Twitter.

“All this stinks of Petainism, colonialism and xenophobia”

“Fantasy nostalgia for the imagination of the prison”, criticizes the EELV European deputy David Cormand. “Disdain for youth. Disdain for the army. Disdain for overseas. The retrogressive temptation of this government, and particularly of Gérald Darmanin, is dizzying”, he writes.

“All this stinks of Petainism, colonialism and xenophobia. (…) Darmanin and Macron are bringing together the extreme right”, finally he criticizes the LFI deputy for Hauts-de-Seine Aurélien Saintoul.