Anjouan

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Anjouan
Map of the island of Anjouan
Map of the island of Anjouan
Waters Indian Ocean
Archipelago Comoros archipelago
Geographical location 12 ° 14 ′  S , 44 ° 27 ′  E Coordinates: 12 ° 14 ′  S , 44 ° 27 ′  E
Anjouan (Comoros)
Anjouan
surface 424 km²
Highest elevation Mont Ntringui
1595  m
Residents 240,000
566 inhabitants / km²
main place Mutsamudu
Flag of the island since 2012
old flag of the island until 2012

Anjouan ( comorian Ndzuwani ) is one of the three main islands of the Republic of the Comoros . It is 424 km² and has about 240,000 inhabitants. It forms an autonomous republic. The capital of this island is Mutsamudu . It is noteworthy that coelaceans live on the sea slopes of the island . Ouani Airport offers important transport links .

In old literature one can also find the names for this island: Johanna , Hinzuan or Zuani .

history

The first known inhabitants of the island came to the Comoros from Indonesia and Polynesia . The sultanate of Ndzuwani was founded around 1500 . It was the most powerful sultanate in the Comoros. In 1816 Sultan Alawi bin Husein asked the French for support against the Sultanate of Zanzibar , which threatened its territory.

From the mid-1830s to the 1880s, American whalers went to Anjouan to stock up in Mutsamudu to hunt sperm whales in the surrounding sea areas. Some men from the island found employment on the ships as seasonal workers . The changing sultans sought not only to consolidate their position of power internally through trade with the whalers, but also to build relationships with the United States in order to reduce their dependence on the informal colonial power Great Britain. These efforts suffered a setback in 1851 when the US Navy reacted to the brief imprisonment of an American captain with an attack on Mustamudu, forcing Sultan Salim to pay compensation. The bombardment of the city was the first United States military operation in the Indian Ocean.

Eventually the island became a French reserve in 1866. The formal annexation took place in 1912 .

In the following years Anjouan belonged to the French colony of Madagascar . After the Second World War , the Comoros became a separate overseas territory and in 1975, when the Comoros declared themselves independent from France, Anjouan joined the new state.

In 1997 the islands of Anjouan and Mohéli declared their independence from the Comoros. The government's immediate attempt to regain control of the breakaway islands by force of arms failed, as did Anjouan's attempt to rejoin France.

In 2001 there was a constitutional reform, due to which Anjouan rejoined the Comoros. In 2002 elections, Mohamed Bacar , who had seized power on Anjouan in a coup the year before , was elected president of the autonomous island. His term of office expired in April 2007. Since the elections were not scheduled for June 10, 2007, the Constitutional Court of the Comoros appointed an acting president, who was chased from office by Bacar's followers. The central government postponed the election for a week due to poor conditions for holding it. Bacar had votes on the original election day and received 90% of the votes. His choice was not recognized by the Comorian federal government.

On March 25, 2008, the island was taken by an invasion of the Comorian army with the help of the African Union with the participation of Tanzania , Senegal , Sudan and Libya with logistical support from France . Bacar fled to the French island of Mayotte and asked for political asylum there . He was brought from France to the island of Réunion and charged there with illegally crossing the border. The Comorian government, on the other hand, demands that Bacar be extradited.

With Regulation ( EC ) No. 243/2008 of March 17, 2008, the European Commission introduced restrictive measures against members of the former Bacar government. All funds and economic resources of Mohamed Bacar, Jaffar Salim, Mhamed Abdou madi, Ali mchindra, Houmadi Souf, Rehema Boinali, Dhoihirou Halidi and Abdou Bacar, among others, were frozen. This also includes funds and payments from or to institutions, companies and other legal entities controlled by these persons. All payments or the provision of economic resources require approval. Violations of this ordinance are subject to criminal penalties in the Federal Republic of Germany in accordance with Section 34, Paragraph 4, No. 2 of the Foreign Trade Act .

See also

Famous pepole

Web links

Commons : Anjouan  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. Felix Schürmann: The gray undercurrent: whalers and coastal societies on the deep beaches of Africa, 1770-1920. Frankfurt a. M./New York 2017, pp. 291–338.
  2. France flies rebel out of Comoros (English) . In: BBC News , BBC, March 28, 2008. Retrieved April 2, 2008.  
  3. Federal Gazette No. 57, page 1340 of April 15, 2008