Gérard Dubois, mayor of Pessat-Villeneuve, in Puy-de-Dôme, a village of 650 inhabitants, was upset in 2015 by the photo of little Aylan, this three-year-old Syrian child found dead on a beach in Turkey. The gigantic migrant camp, called the “jungle” of Calais, is then evacuated by the state. We have to find places to welcome hundreds of them. So, he decides to engage his municipality in helping refugees, even if it means facing the hostility of some.
This municipality, part of the urban area of Clermont-Ferrand, in the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes region, is thus volunteering. A first bus arrives and parks on the forecourt of the town hall, since renamed the Parvis for Human Rights and Refugees: “It was so obvious. When I saw these young people get off that bus, tired, scared, and we’ll see later that they were completely malnourished…” remembers the city councilor for the magazine “Nous les Européens” (replay).
“We welcome human beings. Period!”
“We are in the press the next day and we start to have the first phone calls to the town hall … messages of insults, explains Gérard Dubois. It is true that this was done confidentially, but I promised to give explanations to the population on this journey which brought us to the reception. At the public meeting with 300 people, it’s the apocalypse. I take it for my rank. A mother said to me: ‘They are going to rape my children!’ How about that, because I’m not trained for this kind of ‘punch line’ meetings? I don’t have the answers… “
“And in the middle of the meeting, one person just says, ‘How are they?‘tells the mayor to journalist Eléonore Gay. It is a trigger, we are in the process of taking an interest in the human beings who are there. The medics present, who auscultated them, testified about the journeys. We had the reality, there, with the marks of torture… We welcome human beings. Point! We are talking about a simple story and some have tried around to make a bad mayonnaise, but it finally took. She’s nice and it’s going really well. “ Since then, the temporary accommodation center (CPH) has been made permanent and 70 refugees are accommodated there.
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