French president Emmanuel Macron has come under fire for making a joke about makeshift craft that have been dubbed the "boats of death" because so many have sunk while transporting migrants to the French Indian Ocean island of Mayotte, reports RFI.
While discussing different kinds of boats with an official at a sea rescue centre in Brittany on Thursday, Macron was caught on camera saying, "the kwassa-kwassa doesn't do much fishing, it carries Comorian".
Kwassa-kwassa are small fishing boats that are often used by migrants to sail from the independent Comoros islands to the French territory of Mayotte.
Mayotte Senator Thani Mohamed Soilihi called them the "boats of death" in a recent parliamentary debate because of the huge number of people who have died trying to make the crossing.
In 2015, 19,000 of France's 20,000 deportations of people attempting to enter its territory illegally were from Mayotte.
Macron's wisecrack sparked outrage in some quarters.
The Council of French Citizens of Comorian Origin demanded a public apology for the "racist and dehumanising declarations".
Putting the death toll from sunken craft at 12,000, Green politician and former housing minister Cécile Duflot tweeted that if right-wing former president Nicolas Sarkozy had made such a remark "the outcry would have been gigantic".
Other left-wingers also slammed the new president.