Activists say thousands of homeless people have been evacuated from Paris and surrounding areas as part of a pre-Olympic “clearance” operation.
Le Revers de la Médaille, a group representing 90 associations, said in a report released on Monday that those transferred include asylum seekers, as well as families and children already in precarious and vulnerable situations.
Police are also targeting sex workers and drug addicts, removing them from the usual networks where they can access vital health care and support, the report added. “The Ile-de-France region has been cleared of persons deemed undesirable by those in power,” the report concluded.
The group said evictions and demolitions of tent camps in and around the city have intensified since April last year, with 12,545 people moved in the past 13 months.
Paul Arauzi, health monitoring coordinator for Doctors of the World, accused authorities of “social cleansing” of the city’s most precarious populations so that Paris could “appear in the most flattering light” at the Olympics. He said people were being sent to temporary regional centers set up last year as a short-term solution to the problem.
“They sweep their pain under the rug,” he said. “If this were truly a dignified solution to the problem, people would be scrambling to get on the bus. They are not. We are making the lives of these people and the people who support them impossible.
The organization says at least 20,000 housing units are needed across France, including 7,000 in the Ile-de-France region, to provide long-term solutions for homeless people. The Paris city government has proposed a plan to provide 1,000 emergency places, but it has not yet been approved by the governor and state representatives.
The report defines social cleansing as “the harassment, expulsion and disappearance of groups of people considered undesirable by public authorities…
“This clearing operation is based on a double evacuation method to avoid the establishment of informal settlements that are too obvious and to move away from the Paris metropolis those people who are in a very precarious situation and who may occupy the public spaces of the Paris metropolis.” Once a day. .
“Although these public policies have been in place for many years, some indicators lead us to believe that the Olympics are acting as an accelerator.”
Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo said city hall had been asking the government responsible for emergency housing to develop a credible plan to house the approximately 3,600 people who have been living on the streets of the capital “for years”. Last year, she insisted that no one would be forced to leave the city.
“I’m angry that this is being pushed to the city [authority] Because it is not our role or responsibility and we have gone above and beyond in finding emergency accommodation for vulnerable people. Every week we move families into new homes,” Hidalgo said.
At a press conference in April, Pierre Labadin, a former French rugby international and current deputy mayor in charge of the Olympics, said the problem was the number of homeless people on the streets of Paris, not the Olympics.
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He said the 300 people facing transfer from the central security zone represented less than 10% of Paris’s rough sleepers.
“I say, don’t be moved by the Olympics, but be outraged by the fact that 3,600 people are sleeping rough. We can find a dignified solution for them.
Léa Filoche, deputy mayor for solidarity, emergency housing and refugee protection, said this was not an Olympic-specific problem and placed the blame on the government.
“Emergency housing is a state responsibility,” she said. “We have been discussing with government representatives for more than a year how to address this issue during the Olympics.
“First they said they would provide 400 places, then 200, and now it’s down to 80. We came up with a plan to create 1,000 emergency places; they came back to us and said they didn’t have the money.
“We’re doing our best, but the system is saturated.”
