Authorities evict migrants from Paris squat 100 days before the Olympic Games
An abandoned office building in the south of Paris, occupied by hundreds of migrants, was cleared by French authorities on Wednesday with 100 days to go before Paris 2024. Charity groups have accused authorities of trying to make the city look better in the run-up to the Games.
100 days before the start of the 2024 Olympic Games, hundreds of migrants were evicted from an abandoned office building in the southern Paris suburb of Vitry-sur-Seine on Wednesday, as reported by AFP. French authorities told them to board buses to other parts of France, namely the central city of Orleans or Bordeaux in the south-west.
According to visiting non-governmental organisations, up to 450 migrants were living there. Most were documented but waiting to be housed. The eviction was announced earlier in the week with several opting to leave, but around 300 remained and were escorted away – carrying belongings in bags, suitcases or trolleys – by police in riot gear on Wednesday.
Charities insist these moves are part of a PR offensive to make the city look better before tourists arrive for the Olympic Games.
“There are places in shelters near Paris, but clearly they want to move them out of the capital. Especially before the Olympics,” said Paul Alauzy, representing the medical charity Doctors of the World.
Among those evicted were young men but also women with children. Holding documents in plastic folder, they explained their situation to immigration officials seated behind tables. Some in the French they knew, the others in the broken English they were able to speak.
At one of the tables, a civil servant was trying to persuade a young man to try his luck in Bordeaux. “You know, France isn’t just Paris. Bordeaux is nice, it’s warmer than here,” she said. But he was also attending a training course in the capital region, so he was directed to another table where a colleague was arranging accommodation near Paris, according to AFP.
Many of the migrants said they did not want to leave the Paris area. “I want to stay here,” said Abakar, a 29-year-old Sudanese man. He said he had been promised a job in a supermarket and was in Paris for a logistics course.
Merci Daniel, a mother from Sudan, related more personal dramas concerning the office building squat, saying: “I sent my children to a shelter nearby because there was too much violence.” Having expressed her uncertainty at moving elsewhere and not seeing her children, she was found a hotel room on the outskirts of Paris but only for a few days. No one knows what will happen after that.
As well as the upset for those being transferred, communities in towns outside France have made clear their discontent at having to take migrants from Paris with mayors in rural France and small towns becoming increasingly angry