More than 60 organizations are launching an awareness campaign on Monday because they fear a “social cleansing” of the streets of Paris between now and the Olympics. It “has already started”, according to the collective “the other side of the coin”.
“The social cleaning of the streets of Paris and the Ile-de-France region has already begun”, explained Monday, October 30 on franceinfo Paul Alauzy, spokesperson for the collective “the reverse of the medal” and coordinator of migrant health monitoring and psychiatric duty at Médecins du monde. In an open letter, more than 60 organizations express concern “social cleansing” streets of Paris before the 2024 Olympic Games. But, “the regions do not have more means to accommodate in the long term” the homeless, warns the collective “the other side of the coin”.
franceinfo: Why are you talking about social cleansing and what do you fear?
Paul Alauzy: There are some very well-known elements about the Olympics in general. A report shows that, during the Games between 1980 and 2007, two million people were displaced and each time, we speak of undesirable populations. At these Olympic Games, we have the chance to be grassroots associations that are present with all people on the street: those in the slums, drug users, sex workers, the homeless. Social cleaning of the streets of Paris and the Île-de-France region has already begun. I can cite the expulsion of a living space of 500 people on Saint-Denis Island, on the site of construction of an Olympic village. Five other squats have already been evicted. Evictions from migrant camps take place every two to three weeks and people are systematically sent to the regions. There are no more job offers in Île-de-France.
The State is talking about sheltering migrants. How does it happen ?
People are never warned beforehand. People have been living in a squat or in a poverty camp for several years, they hear rumors, they see people dismantling their furniture and in the morning you have hundreds of police officers coming. Then people are either put on buses or returned to the streets. Most of the time, people want to get on this bus because they are tired of living on the streets, but we ask that they have decent and lasting housing. The problem is that we send them to the regions with constant resources and that the regions do not have more resources to welcome them in the long term.
Why do you say it’s linked to the Olympics?
For us, it is the continuation of policies towards migrant people, on the streets, but we see that the Olympics are an accelerator and that this reinforces these policies.
What will happen in the coming weeks?
We are waiting for the exclusion zones that the authorities will reveal. We have a health center in 93 and we are pretty sure that it will not be open or accessible to vulnerable populations during the Olympics. It is a care and guidance reception center, it is open to all people who do not have access to health insurance and these centers are frequented by 80% of people who are foreigners. Another example, Refugee Food distributed 40,000 meals in six weeks last summer at Paris City Hall. We know very well that during the Olympics, there will not be 40,000 people on the street who will come to eat at City Hall. We know that 3,000 places in social hotels were closed so that hoteliers could recover their hotels, to accommodate tourists during the Olympics, at least that is how it is interpreted. So, that’s 3,000 fewer places at 115 in Île-de-France.