On a Tuesday morning in late Might, at the least three dozen law enforcement officials surrounded an encampment in central Paris. The streets above the banks of the Seine had been nearly empty and the cafes nonetheless closed once they evicted greater than 100 boys and younger males, many from West Africa. It was simply previous 7 a.m.
“It is at all times the identical,” mentioned Tomster Soumah from Guinea, who has been moved on extra occasions than he can depend. The stoic 16-year-old gathered his belongings in a plastic bag and joined his associates in the hunt for a brand new spot on the opposite facet of the town.
As he left, he marvelled on the irony that Paris will host an estimated 10 million spectators for the upcoming Olympic Video games. “They inform everybody, ‘Come!'” he mentioned. “‘France is a land of liberty, solidarity and fraternity!’ However that is not the truth, not for us.”
Some 3,500 folks had been estimated to be homeless this yr in Paris (possible an underestimate), a 16 per cent enhance on final yr.
Human rights teams say that within the method to the Paris Olympics, police have stepped up evictions and deportations of individuals dwelling and dealing on the streets of the capital and surrounding suburbs, in what some describe as social cleaning.
“I’ve law enforcement officials who’ve instructed me their mission is to evict folks shortly,” says Paul Alauzy, Medical doctors of the World co-ordinator.
“The purpose is to have a postcard Paris, and usually, that is not one thing we’d oppose. However this was a missed alternative to search out extra dignified options, the place persons are not merely moved on and lower off from entry to care.”
A rise in encampment evictions
Alauzy can be a spokesperson for Le revers de la médaille, or “the opposite facet of the medal,” a coalition of greater than 100 human rights teams advocating for marginalized folks within the method to the Olympic Video games.
The collective present in a June report that evictions have been steadily rising, from 121 operations in 2021-22 to 137 in 2023, accelerating on the finish of that yr to 16 evacuations in 17 weeks.
Though many evictions are carried out in Paris, a metropolis spokesperson burdened that the French authorities plans them, and that emergency lodging are the federal physique’s jurisdiction.
Paris “is looking for the State to … shelter folks within the many vacant buildings,” the spokesperson mentioned.
Many lodges as soon as renting out rooms to the homeless under government contracts are actually returning to tourism, contributing to the steep decline in obtainable beds.
To alleviate the stress, the Greater Paris prefecture arranges to have homeless migrants bussed to different areas, like Bordeaux and Lyon.
“It is insupportable that they need to stay this manner,” mentioned a prefecture spokesperson. “Within the higher Paris space, there’s shelter for as much as 120,000 folks, and we have reached a saturation level.”
A seamless cycle
That Tuesday, solely three out of greater than 100 folks boarded the bus certain for Lyon, in keeping with rights staff on website. Few ever take them.
After beforehand taking one, Arouna Sidibe, 41, from Côte d’Ivoire, vowed by no means to take action once more. Sidibe fled his nation in 2016, fearing for his life after falling out with a robust member of the family.
He was amongst greater than 150 folks evicted from a Paris gymnasium final fall. Having been homeless for greater than seven years, he and his associate Ramatou Koné, 26, boarded a bus for Normandy within the hopes of getting shelter till his refugee utility was settled. However after simply 5 months, they had been instructed to go away the resort room there, paid for by the federal government.
They returned to Paris, the place Sidibe works as a carpenter.
He now awaits a ruling on his attraction to the rejection of his refugee standing. “It is so tiring,” he mentioned. “We have already been right here for eight years, and we’ll go away the nation? To go the place?”
Along with ready on courtroom selections, many individuals stay in Paris to work or research, or have family and friends right here. So the cycle continues: They sleep someplace till the police dislodge them, then they discover a new place till they’re found once more.
In 2023, underneath stress from the fast-rising far-right Nationwide Rally, French President Emmanuel Macron’s authorities handed immigration laws so robust that NR’s Marine Le Pen referred to as it an “ideological victory.”
“Essentially the most precarious persons are being criminalized, as avenue distributors, intercourse staff and homeless persons are being issued with fines and deportation orders,” mentioned Aurélia Huot, a member of the Paris Solidarity Bar affiliation and of Le revers de la médaille.
“They’re showing in courtroom for misdemeanours that usually would not be penalized.”
Most policed occasion in Paris historical past
Spikes and rocks have been used to push back folks sleeping tough, reminiscent of underneath the bridge close to Gare d’Austerlitz, the place the Olympic Opening Ceremony will happen on July 26.
“I used to be shocked to see these anti-homeless measures,” says Olivier Le Marois, 63, an entrepreneur who lives close by. “I learn concerning the evictions, and it is like we’re within the early Soviet Union, the place they present you a mannequin metropolis and conceal the whole lot that is mistaken!”
Latest surveys point out that half of those polled intend to comply with the Video games this summer season, with views of the occasion — and preparations — decidedly combined.
“It is a large problem, after all, however it may give a fantastic reflection of Paris, of France,” mentioned Jean-Christophe, 43, a restaurant head waiter. He offered solely his first title.
“When it comes to safety and hygiene, [the clearing of camps] is one thing that completely needed to be accomplished,” he mentioned. “In fact, it will be supreme to search out alternate options for these folks.”
Residents close to the Olympic village have additionally been compelled to maneuver. Hundreds of scholars within the north of Paris and neighbouring boroughs had their lease agreements lower brief to make manner primarily for Olympics personnel. That sparked a protest and marketing campaign to withstand eviction.
It will likely be the most-policed sporting occasion within the capital’s historical past, with as much as 45,000 regulation enforcement officers deployed in and round Paris.
“The nearer we get to the Olympics, the extra we are going to saturate public areas with law enforcement officials,” Paris Police Chief Laurent Nuñez told le Parisien newspaper.
None of this has stopped France from billing Paris 2024 as being inclusive and “open to all.”
Not distinctive to Paris Olympics
“This is not new — we see this in all of the Olympics,” says Melora Koepke, a Paris-based Canadian human geographer. “Folks designated as ‘undesirable’ in public house are … managed by police forces and political pressures.”
Earlier this yr, Koepke held workshops in Vancouver and Paris, the place Canadian and French neighborhood organizers, students and people with lived expertise examined the impression of the 2010 Winter Olympics on susceptible folks in Vancouver.
As early as 2008, police had been criticized for finishing up a “ticketing blitz” for things like loitering and panhandling, concentrating on marginalized folks within the Downtown Eastside.
“The patterns are the identical,” mentioned Caitlin Shane, a Vancouver-based lawyer who spoke on the workshop.
“Displacing folks from encampments … however by no means really coping with the systemic points, which is an ever-increasing housing disaster — it is all about optics.”
Le revers de la médaille says the Olympics Organizing Committee and company sponsors rejected its request for a “solidarity fund” of €10 million. It might have helped fund shelter, meals and well being look after folks in want throughout and after the Video games, and would have amounted to simply over 0.1 per cent of the Video games’ estimated €9-billion budget.
Whereas Alauzy says the coalition has managed to “decelerate the machine” of regulation enforcement by monitoring evictions and pressuring officers, he needs future hosts of the Olympic Video games to go additional.
The group is not against the Video games as a complete. However as a warning, Alauzy cited Denver, which cancelled its Video games in 1972 within the wake of protests and public opposition over environmental considerations.
The coalition could not be capable of cease the cycle of evictions in Paris. However its message is already spreading as far afield as Brisbane, which is holding the Olympics in 2032.
“It is a bit dizzying to be interviewed on Australian tv about our little collective,” says Alauzy.
“So we share our activist journey, and inform them, ‘Construct coalitions now, be sure you establish the dangers, make calls for and be sure that the guarantees are saved.'”