Politicians on French Guiana have opposed French plans for a new high-security prison in the overseas French territory.
“French Guiana has no vocation to welcome criminals and terrorists from Metropolitan France“, said French Guiana’s government, the Collectivité Territoriale de Guyane (CTG), assuring that the Minister had not mentioned this ”at any time”.
France’s Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin announced May 18 a plan to create a high-security section in a new prison in Saint-Laurent-du-Maroni, located in the overseas territory.
Darmanin said there would be a section reserved for around 60 people. He said in French Guiana, Guadeloupe and Martinique there were “49 narco bandits” who were “extremely dangerous”.
The minister’s office also confirmed “fifteen places” would additionally be “dedicated to Islamists and radicalised” individuals convicted of jihadist terrorism.
This statement provoked criticism among local elected representatives in French Guiana, as well as left-wing personalities in metropolitan France, who criticised the project as similar to ones in the era of penal colonies.
“We stand in solidarity with the local community of French Guiana in rejecting Gérald Darmanin’s proposed new penal colony for hardened criminals. French Guiana needs many more investments and more resources for its internal security,” said radical Left-wing leader Jean-Luc Mélenchon.
“Unfortunately, this project takes us back to a painful past,” denounced Guyanese Socialist party senator Marie-Laure Phinera-Horth,
“For almost a century, France exiled thousands of men convicted of the most sordid crimes to French Guiana, where they served their sentences far from so-called civilised society,” she added, insisting local elected representatives had not been consulted.
Darmanin’s plan is part of France’s new “war on drugs” launched in early 2024. At the time, the government said it wanted to prevent what it called the “Mexicanisation” of the country.
Darmanin was not the first French politician wanting to use France’s overseas territories as a tool for cracking down on crime.
French presidential hopeful Laurent Wauquiez also caused an outcry in France, including within his own conservative camp, for suggesting sending migrants awaiting deportation to the remote island of Saint Pierre and Miquelon, off Canada’s coast.
