Police evacuate last migrant camp in northeast Paris

Text by: RFI Follow

More than 400 people were evacuated this Tuesday morning from the last migrant camp in Paris, after an operation which responds, at least temporarily, to the government's promise to empty the northeast of the capital of these unsanitary camps.

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The evacuation of the Porte de la Villette, in the XIXth arrondissement, where hundreds of people had pitched their tents, in particular on the edge of the Saint-Denis canal, started around 6 a.m. and ended shortly before 8 a.m., according to the prefecture of the Ile-de-France region (Prif), which manages the "shelters".

# Paris19 | End of the evacuation operation at the door of the #Villette of the camps that endangered the health of the premises and the safety of people, both occupants and residents. pic.twitter.com/OCNf4vBdus

In total, " 427 people including four women were sheltered this morning during the operation at Porte de la Villette, " said Prif to AFP.

A week after the evacuation, supervised by a large police force from the neighboring camp at Porte d'Aubervilliers, from which more than 1,400 migrants had been displaced from a shantytown on the edge of the ring road, this operation marks the end of this stage. of these informal camps in Paris. “ There are no more camps, that was the idea. And the police will monitor this site to avoid resettlement as it does for the Porte d'Aubervilliers and the Porte de la Chapelle, ”one stresses to Prif.

The 427 evacuees were taken in buses to gymnasiums and reception centers in the Ile-de-France region , where " there was room " after the evacuation of the Porte d'Aubervilliers , said Prif.

Asylum seekers mainly from Eritrea and Somalia

The situation was explosive for these migrants " distributed in 266 tents or wealth shelters " in a " greatly degraded health situation on the sites hosting them, which are strewn with waste and rubbish, covered with rats and give off a pestilential and foul-smelling odor urine and excrement . " For the mayor of the 19th arrondissement, François Dagnaud, interviewed on site by AFP, " it is a relief for the people crammed into this camp and for the residents, because the situation was very difficult to manage [for the latter] " . The migrants were almost all single men, notably from Eritrea and Somalia, he said.

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Interior Minister Christophe Castaner pledged last November to evacuate all the migrant camps in northeast Paris before the end of 2019. The police prefecture has since operated a security screwdriver, by implementing impressive devices 24 hour police as well as a video surveillance system on all evacuated sites to prevent camp reformation, starting with the Porte de la Chapelle since November 7.

" We will not start an endless cycle of evacuations / resettlements ", promised last week the police prefect Didier Lallement, in front of construction equipment ready to demolish the slum of Porte d'Aubervilliers.

" It will be reconstituted "

" I would like it to be the end of the camps, but it will be reconstituted ", predicts Dominique Versini, assistant to the mayor of Paris in charge of refugees, and who saw this Tuesday the 61st major operation of shelter since 2015. It is not the first time, she says, that the end of these camps has been promised, " but these are the municipal [elections], and this is a real subject for the residents ". " I think that the LREM candidates of the 18th and 19th districts demanded the operation " before the election " with body and shout ".

According to François Dagnaud, there are “ unfortunately reasons to be vigilant because the same causes producing the same effects, we can fear that new camps will recur as long as the conditions of first reception in France and the administrative management of the people present on the territory remains the same ”.

Between the evacuation of La Chapelle camp, which had become emblematic of the Kafkaesque situation in which some migrants find themselves , and that of the Porte d'Aubervilliers, more than two months passed. Or the time that the Villette camp is formed.

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(with AFP)

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