Hundreds of people sleeping on streets of Paris are forced to carry their backpacks and small children, as they were surrounded by the buses of armed police on Thursday. The latest group of Paris residents experiencing homelessness and migrants forcibly removed from the city to make way for the 2024 Olympics.
The group of African migrants are taken to the fringes of the city in buses paid for by the french government and they will accommodate them in the temporary lodging until the Olympics game will last. Some residents were happy to have a roof over their front for a few nights, while others knew what will be their future after the game when Paris will be off from the world’s eyes.
Nikki, a 47 years old homeless Parisian said “it’s like poker. I don’t know where i will go, or how much time i will stay”
French Authorities have been kicking people out of homeless camps for months to make the city look good for the big sports event. This is a huge moment for President Emmanuel Macron at the time of political turmoil. Parisians have complained about everything from increased public transit fees to spending on cleaning up the Seine River for swimming instead of investing and helping people who actually need it. Games faced criticism because of this.
Authorities are being criticised by everyone as they used camping migrants from the city centre where the Olympics are taking place to the other part of the city. Many different activists groups and migrants called this practice ‘social cleansing’ which was also used by cities like Rio de Janeiro in 2016 who hosted the Olympics previously.
Different Delegates like Christophe Noel Du Payrat, chief of staff of the regional government of Zle-de-France firmly denied such accusation saying the government has relocated migrants from the city for years, and said “We are taking care of them, we don’t really understand the criticism because we are very much determined to offer places for these people”.
While some residents accused the authority “They want to clean the city for the Olympic Games, for the tourists' ' said by Nathan Lequeux, an organiser for the activist group Utopia 56. “As treatment of migrants is becoming horrible and infamous, people are being chased off the streets…since the Olympics, this aggressiveness, this policy of hunting has become more pronounced.
Just like Nikki, hundreds of other migrants protested continuously for three days, sleeping in front of the local government office but their efforts went in vain as the buses came on Thursday to take them from the camp. But they railed against authorities for breaking their camps and demanded better access to temporary housing.
Among them there was a migrant, Natacha Louise Gbetie, a 36 year old migrant from Burkina Faso, who carried her 1 year old son on her back. Who was working as an accountant in her country, migrated to the Southern French city of Montpellier with family members five years ago.
There are families from different countries like African countries once colonised by the French, including Burkina Faso, Guinea, Ivory Coast and Senegal are relocated by French authorities like Gbetie.
Gbetie was moved to Paris after an abusive situation. She was able to make ends meet working as a babysitter and sleeping in public housing. That ended during the lead-up to the olympics. She said most of the employers don’t want to hire her because she is an immigrant without legal status, and she felt rejected as an anti-immigrant.
“I think France is saturated. They’re tired of migrants, they want us to leave their country,” Gbetie said.
Noah Fargeon, a spokesman for Saccage 2024- a group that has long campaigned against the games, called the Paris Olympics “a monstrous waste of public finds”.
“Paris is being transformed into Disneyland for the tourists, a LVMH (Louis Vuitton) image”, Fargeon said. “But on the other hand, those who actually live in the city are being moved along. Rather than putting money into helping people get lodgings, money is put into representing them”.
