“This is a great victory for human dignity”! Samy Djebaoun, the lawyer for Utopia 56, is delighted. The association has just won, along with several other human rights organizations, a battle against the police headquarters, which had decided to ban food distributions in several districts of the capital.
The Paris police headquarters (PP) issued an order banning, from Tuesday and for one month, food distributions in a district in the north of Paris where migrant and homeless camps are concentrated, causing the ire of associations.
Between 200 and 500 people impacted
The police highlighted the existence of “disturbances to public order” linked according to them to “gatherings” and “overflows onto the roads”, in particular. But the court rejected this argument, for lack of demonstration on the part of the police: “If the prefect of police maintains that the police services have received multiple reports from residents, he does not establish this. Nor does it establish that because of these distributions, people would gather along the side of the road or on the public highway, creating a risk for their safety or that of others,” explains the court in its decision, consulted by 20 minutes.
“Given the size of the perimeter prohibiting the distribution of meals decreed by the contested order and the saturation of other food aid systems located in the surrounding area, this measure has the effect of complicating or restricting for hundreds of people in very precarious situations access to a basic food supply for a period of one month”, adds the administrative court, which accedes to requests also made by the Human Rights League, the Paris associations of ‘Exil and Emmaüs France, the Abbé-Pierre Foundation and the Immigrant Information and Support Group.
The bans would have deprived between “200 and 500 people” of food every day, according to Utopia 56, which works with exiles on the streets.