Migrant deaths plunge Paris into crisis
Fears over new ‘jungle’ as tensions rise in crowded refugee camps along the canals of the French capital
‘Chaos now sums up the capital’s camps. Only an operation to take care of the people will solve it’
A MIGRANT crisis in Paris risks spiralling out of control, charities including the Red Cross warned yesterday, after two refugees were found drowned in canals and a third was stabbed.
Their plea came as Anne Hidalgo, the socialist mayor of Paris, clashed with Emmanuel Macron’s government, each claiming the other had failed to deal with the plight of migrants in the capital ahead of municipal elections in 2020. Nearly 3,000 refugees, many from Ethiopia, Eritrea, Sudan and Nigeria, are crammed into three camps in Paris, with charities estimating that 80 people arrive there daily.
More than half are based around the Millénaire supermarket on the banks of the Saint-denis canal on the outskirts of the 19th arrondissement. French media have already dubbed the growing shanty town “new Calais”, after the notorious “jungle” camp in the north, which was dismantled in 2016.
The bulk of the remainder, mainly Afghans, have set up camp closer to the city centre, near the trendy canal Saintmartin area. Yesterday, migrant aid charities, medical and homeless help groups and unions warned that tragedies would be inevitable without state intervention, because of escalating tensions and “a climate of extreme precariousness”.
On Sunday, a Sudanese migrant was stabbed at the Millénaire camp at the Porte de la Villette. Last week, an Afghan migrant drowned after falling into a canal, weeks after an unidentified body was found in the same canal.
Aid workers visiting the camps have requested police assistance as tensions flared in cramped and dirty conditions. Millénaire has only a handful of sanitary cabins and taps.
And a group of 60 Moroccan migrants, some as young as 10, have become the bane of the Goutte d’or district, where social workers say they are violent and uncontrollable.
Last week, Ms Hidalgo sent an angry letter to Edouard Philippe, the prime minister, accusing the government of “abandoning the City of Paris”. She wrote: “Chaos now sums up the capital’s camps. Only a simultaneous operation to take care of all of the people will solve it.” Days earlier, Gérard Collomb, the interior minister, said the ball was firmly in her court and that “Paris remains the guarantor of the salubrity and cleanliness of its public spaces”.
He said the municipal authority should evict illegal immigrants, many of whom should request asylum in the EU country where they were first registered, under the Dublin convention.
But the mayor said it was not simply a case of evicting migrants. She demanded the state house them while she attempted to avoid yet more chaos on the streets. “What are we waiting for? A huge fight? More deaths?” she added.
Pierre Henry, head of the France Terre d’asile (Land of Asylum) charity, criticised the government for making migrants “the object of a power struggle between the state and Paris”. Ms Hidalgo is expected to run for re-election in 2020 against a yet-to-be-announced rival from the Macron camp. The government, Mr Henry told Le Figaro, “is banking on the situation going rotten” to weaken the embattled mayor’s hand.
The Right has also waded in, with Eric Ciotti, an MP with the conservative Republican Party, saying: “The Parisian situation highlights the fact that the migration dossier is out of control. The government moves people around but it doesn’t solve the problem.”
♦a two-year-old girl of Kurdish origin died in unclear circumstances yesterday after police opened fire on a van carrying 30 illegal migrants in southern Belgium. Frederic Bariseau, a prosecutor, said: “the girl did not die as a result of the police shooting.”