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.
The decree signed this Monday by the prefect, Laurent Nuñez, provides for a “ban on food distributions” between October 10 and November 10 in a “delimited” sector of the 10th and 19th arrondissements, which concerns nine arteries in the working-class neighborhood around Stalingrad and Jaurès metro stations.
According to the PP, the distributions would lead to the formation of camps
It is there, according to the PP, “that these food distributions generate, by their recurring nature, an increase in the population benefiting from these operations and that they contribute, as a corollary, to stimulating the formation of camps in the sector of the boulevard de la Villette, where migrants, drug addicts and homeless people meet.
The neighborhood, argues the PP, has become “a fixation point for such camps”.
On site, specifies the prefecture, the “gatherings”, the “overflows onto the roads”, certain scuffles as well as the presence of “drug addicts” led “for the first time” the police prefect to issue such an order in this sector Parisian due to “disturbances to public order”.
“It’s once again these people who are going to toast”
However, there “have never been any incidents on our distribution sites”, contests Philippe Caro, a manager of the Solidarité Migrants Wilson collective, one of the organizations whose action is targeted.
“We complicate the lives of associations and people, without ever solving their problems. We are just going to move the problem, but with the Olympic Games coming up, we feel that the pressure is increasing and there the drug addicts will be used as a pretext to kick everyone out of the north of Paris, he believes.
“It is once again these people who are going to toast,” also reacted Samuel Coppens, of the Salvation Army, which carries out distributions in other sectors.
Implemented on the International Day Against Homelessness
The bans will deprive between “200 and 500 people” of food every day, deplores Océane Marache, Parisian coordinator at Utopia 56, who works with exiles on the streets.
For the association, the State applies “the same scheme as in Calais” in Paris, where similar orders have been issued regularly since 2020.
The fact that this Parisian ban comes on Tuesday, on the International Day Against Homelessness, is “revealing of the anti-homeless policy pursued by the State”, she said.