The approximately 1,000 homeless, mainly migrants, who had been camping since Wednesday in front of the prefecture of Ile-de-France in Paris to claim accommodation solutions were evacuated this Saturday at dawn.
At around 7 a.m., agents from the Paris town hall and the prefecture entered the André-Citroën park (15th arrondissement) to evacuate the tents, under remote police escort. Volunteers from several associations, including France Terre d’Asile, were also present.
Fear of cold
The homeless, overwhelmingly from Afghanistan and sub-Saharan Africa, have been separated into two groups (families on one side, men on the other) while waiting to be taken care of. to be sheltered by the regional prefecture, which manages emergency accommodation.
“From next month it will start to get cold. It will become too hard to sleep in a tent. I expect sustainable accommodation, not like the last time I stayed for only a week (in an apartment in Saint-Germain en Laye, NDLR). I want to live here, I have no family here. France is my family ”declared Yaseen Saleem, a 24-year-old Afghan who arrived in France“ six months ago ”.
Requisitions collective
The homeless are mounted in a trickle during the morning in buses chartered by the prefecture, the first step towards a possible accommodation solution. “We will not let go, we will continue to make the invisible visible. We no longer want this ping-pong that we have been living for decades, put in shelters and in the streets. We simply want long-lasting housing for all the people there (…) It is time to overhaul the reception system “declared Yann Manzi, founder of the association Utopia56, announcing” another action in the wake “if” all men ”were not taken care of.
About 500 homeless migrants had settled in Wednesday, before being joined by others. This installation in front of the prefecture was the 10th action of the “Collectif Réquisitions”, which brings together several associations (Utopia56, Solidarity migrants Wilson, Children of Afghanistan and elsewhere, the DAL) multiplying the punch actions to make these exiles visible to the street.
In July, this organization had occupied the very chic Place des Vosges, in the 4th arrondissement of Paris, after a town hall gymnasium in May and a former nursery school in January.