Yahoo News Paris police accused of ‘social cleansing’ after migrant camp closed ahead of Olympics
French police evicted around 100 migrants from a makeshift tent camp near the city hall in Paris on Tuesday ahead of the Olympic Games.
The dawn operation, which prompted renewed accusations of “social cleansing”, saw police order the migrants to pack their tents and belongings.
While the group, mostly teenage boys and young men from West Africa, many of whom were children awaiting papers, were offered temporary housing in the Loire-region town of Angers, only three boarded the bus.
Paris police said the operation was conducted for security reasons, notably because the camp was near schools.
But NGOs, including campaign group Revers de la Médaille (The Other Side of the Medal), insist that authorities have launched a concerted campaign to oust the “marginalised” from camps and squats. The group claim authorities want to clean up the city’s image ahead of the July games and make way for athletes, volunteers and spectators.
“It’s a never-ending cycle,” said Antoine de Clerck, the group’s spokesman.
“We call it ‘nettoyage social,’ or social cleansing, as there’s no proper solution(s) that are proposed to the people,” he told AP, alleging that people are being swept aside to make “room for the beautiful Paris postcard”.
Aid groups say clear-outs are intensifying ahead of the Olympics, being held 26 July - 11 Aug, and that people are being sent far from the capital instead of being offered shelter in the Paris region. Many asylum-seekers have upcoming court dates and meetings with officials about their residency requests, say the groups.
Lila Cherief of Secours Catholique said the charity had witnessed an “acceleration in the eviction of informal living quarters located near the Olympic sites or on the Olympic torch route”.
The phenomenon was mainly limited to Paris and the department of Seine-Saint-Denis, home of the Olympic village, but also “other host cities such as Lille and Bordeaux,” she added.
But Paris police told Le Monde: “The emergency accommodation situation is no worse than it was at the beginning of April 2023, and we have no particular concerns for July and August. We never set ourselves the target of zero homelessness for the Games. Nor is there any desire to hide misery.”
Laurent Nunez, the Paris police chief, said the makeshift camp dismantled on Tuesday was made up of more than 80 tents and was blocking pavements and posed a security threat at a time of heightened alert over potential terror threats.
Earlier this month, police cleared France’s largest squat in Vitry-sur-Seine, south of Paris, when around 450 people were evacuated.
Migrant camps are commonly dismantled every spring in France with the end of an annual winter-time “truce” that limits evictions and evacuations when the weather is cold. Paris city hall says the number of people living rough on the streets has swelled to 3,500 – around 500 more than at the same time last year.
Some student housing has also been requisitioned for the Games. According to Le Monde, among the 1,400-odd students offered alternative housing over the summer, only 100 have so far been found a place.
