En banlieue parisienne, des Maliens manifestent en soutien aux militaires de leur pays
Several hundred men and women from the Malian diaspora demonstrated on Monday evening in Montreuil, a suburb of Paris, in their support for the Malian military, chanting "down with the terrorists" or shouting the name of the assassinated General Sadio Camara.
The Malian government finds itself in an unprecedented situation since the 2020 coup: Defense Minister Sadio Camara has been killed and General Assimi Goïta, head of the junta, has not been seen or spoken since the start, on Saturday, of fierce fighting between the army and jihadists allied with Tuareg separatists.
The High Council of Malians in France had urgently organized this gathering in Montreuil, in the eastern suburbs of the capital. Its president, Dalla Dramé, sang the Malian national anthem, hand on her heart, on the steps of the town hall before leading chants of the minister's name, "cowardly assassinated by terrorists."
"The major danger has always been there: it's the jihadists, they are in the country and we support the security forces who are doing everything they can to push them back," she later explained to AFP.
"We do not consider the authorities to be a junta: they have been there and governing the country for several years, the population is with them, the diaspora is with them," said Ms. Dramé, who was born in France 47 years ago.
Montreuil has an estimated 10,000 Malian community - some of whom live in the dozen or so migrant worker hostels in the city.
Yacouba, a 57-year-old truck driver from Mali who arrived in France in 1990 and lives in Aubervilliers, another city in the Parisian suburbs, said he "shed tears" when he heard the news: "The Malians who are there, they are suffering. Even those of us who are outside are suffering."
"What is at stake is the very existence of Mali," Dejneba Keïta, deputy mayor of Montreuil, born in Mali in 1970, told AFP.
"We are telling the French people, the French government, the French elites and the international community to come to Mali's aid," added Ms. Keïta.
She also pointed out that military interventions "do not solve everything", noting that otherwise the operation carried out in Mali by the French army from January 2013 would have fixed everything.
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