Several hundred exiles who lived under the Paris aerial metro were the subject of a sheltering operation on Thursday morning and their camp in the north of Paris was evacuated, we learned from associations their coming to help. This camp, mainly made up of Afghan nationals, reformed after a previous evacuation at the end of October by the police, who want to avoid at all costs the reconstitution of large migrant camps on the outskirts of Paris, responding to the policy known as the “zero fixation point”.
Started around 7 a.m., the operation was still in progress around 10 a.m. to take care of “between 700 and 1,000” people on board around twenty buses and transfer them to accommodation centers, half of them in Ile-de- France, told AFP Nikolaï Posner, a manager of Utopia56 who works with migrants on the street. “It’s 80, 90% Afghans and a few people from East Africa. On site, the situation was particularly complicated because it was starting to get very cold,” he added, deploring the “perpetual cycle” of formation of camps and police evacuations.
About 500 people lived on the site
“The need for first reception centers” to avoid compulsory passage through the street “is particularly increased at the moment because there are a lot of arrivals with a lot of newcomers, especially Afghans”, added Hélène Soupios-David, of France land of asylum (FTDA). According to the estimate of the latter, between 360 and 540 people lived on November 15 on the site evacuated Thursday.
Since the last operation on October 27 on this same place, with tents distributed above the rails of the Gare du Nord to the aerial metro in the Stalingrad district, “we have seen a significant increase in the number of people” who are added to those who had not been taken care of at the end of October, added the head of advocacy at FTDA.