PARIS (AP) — French police cleared a makeshift migrant camp near Paris City Hall early Tuesday, a new expulsion of homeless people in what aid groups describe as a campaign to beautify the French capital before the Olympic Games.
In the predawn operation, police woke up about 100 teenage boys and young men from West Africa and told them to pack their tents and belongings.
Paris police said the operation was for security reasons, especially because the camp was near schools.
Officials in the Paris region told those affected — many of them minors and in the process of applying for legal residency — that they could stay temporarily for three weeks in Angers, in the Loire region, if they wished. A bus was waiting on a nearby street to take them first to a station in the Paris region.
Only two or three men got on the bus. Most of the others left on foot with their belongings in tow. Some said they feared they would be isolated and abandoned in Angers, 250 kilometers (150 miles) southwest of the French capital, once temporary accommodation ran out.
Evicted people may form makeshift settlements in another part of the capital before being expelled again, said an activist group that has denounced the impact of the Olympics on marginalized people.
“It’s an infinite cycle,” said Antoine de Clerck, spokesman for the Revers de la Médaille (“Reverse of the Medal”) group.
“We call it social cleansing, since no real solution is proposed to these people,” he added. People, she said, are pushed aside to make “room for the beautiful postcard of Paris.”
In a written order announcing Saturday’s eviction in advance, the city’s police chief, Laurent Nunez, said the makeshift camp consisted of more than 80 tents and blocked sidewalks. The order added that the settlement was close to public spaces, including a church and City Hall, where security has been increased because France has raised its alert level against possible terrorism threats.
French authorities usually dismantle migrant camps each spring, at the end of a winter “truce” in which evictions and evacuations are limited while the cold lasts.
However, aid groups working with migrants and other vulnerable people say evictions have intensified ahead of the Olympic Games, scheduled between July 26 and August 11. They say people are being sent away from the capital instead of offered shelter in the Paris region, where many asylum seekers have upcoming court dates and scheduled meetings with authorities about their residency applications.
