French police evict migrants from block ahead of Olympics

FRENCH police evicted hundreds of migrants from an abandoned building in a Paris suburb, in a move aid groups described as “social cleansing” before the Olympics.

Over the past three years, 450 people, including 50 women and 20 children, had moved into the empty three-storey office building in Vitrysur-seine, described as the largest migrant settlement in France.

After days of warnings, 250 police officers carried out the evacuation early yesterday, breaking open doors and sending people to board waiting buses that took them to other parts of France, far from the capital, including Pays de la Loire, Orléans and Bordeaux.

Aid groups condemned the eviction, pointing out that up to 80 per cent of the building’s occupants were legal migrants who had permanent jobs, but lived there because they were either having difficulty finding an apartment or waiting for social housing.

Mohammed, an Eritrean with refugee status, works in electrical maintenance and holds a permanent contract, but said he could not find housing.

Amid an accommodation shortage, a property index report from Deloitte last year found that Paris is the second most expensive rental city in Europe, after Dublin.

“Where am I supposed to go?” the 40-year-old asked French news site France Bleu.

Paul Alauzy, spokesman for the NGO group Médecins du Monde (Doctors of the World) also criticised the evacuation, saying it was nothing more than an attempt to make the city more photogenic for the Olympic Games, which take place in 100 days.

“We have been seeing a wave of expulsions for a year, which is accelerating,” he said.

“There are people on the streets who are being removed from Paris and the Ile-de-france region before the arrival of the cameras of the whole world to hide poverty.”

Images of the evacuations showed migrants boarding buses with their life belongings packed into suitcases and rucksacks, mothers juggling strollers and suitcases, and a heavy police presence of officers in full riot gear.

Most of the migrants were men from Chad, Sudan, Eritrea, Guinea and the Ivory Coast.

A year ago, 500 migrants were evicted from a disused building in Seine-saint-denis, near the Olympic athletes’ village, and last July 150 were people kicked out of an abandoned retirement building in the department of Val-de-marne.

The city has said that unauthorised, makeshift camps must be dismantled for hygiene and security reasons.

‘There are people on the streets being removed before the arrival of the cameras of the whole world’