Paris Olympics 2024: Migrants and homeless evicted from Paris before event

On Thursday, July 25th, 2024, the French government and its armed police put thousands of homeless immigrants on buses and sent them out of Paris ahead of the opening ceremony of the Paris Olympics 2024. 

The majority of African migrants boarded buses provided by the French government and made their way to the city’s outskirts, where they found temporary housing that would last at least until the end of the Games. While some of the homeless people were grateful for a place to sleep for the night, few were aware of what would happen when everyone’s attention was diverted from Paris.

France’s Emmanuel Macron has pledged that the Paris Olympics 2024 will highlight the majesty of his nation. However, the Olympic Village was constructed in a destitute suburb of Paris, where thousands of people reside in makeshift shelters, encampments on the streets, and abandoned buildings.

Paris Olympics 2024: Who Said What?

“It’s like poker. I don’t know where I will go, or how much time I will stay,” said Nikki, a 47-year-old homeless Parisian who asked that her last name not be used to protect her privacy.

According to Christophe Noël du Payrat, a senior government official in Paris, the police and courts have expelled about 5,000 people from the city in the last year, the majority of them were single men. Authorities in the city advise them to take buses to Lyon or Marseille. “We were expelled because of the Paris Olympics 2024,” said Mohamed Ibrahim, from Chad, who was evicted from an abandoned cement factory near the Olympic Village.

He moved to a vacant building south of Paris, from which the police evicted residents in April. A bus drove them two hours southwest to a town outside Orléans.

“They give you a random ticket,” said Oumar Alamine, from the Central African Republic, who was on that bus. “If it’s a ticket to Orléans, you go to Orléans.”

Prior to the huge international sporting event, which is significant for President Emmanuel Macron at a time of political unrest, French police have been removing homeless and migrant camps for months. However, the Paris Olympics 2024 games have also drawn criticism, with Parisians voicing their displeasure over a range of issues, including increased public transportation costs and government spending on Seine River cleanup rather than social safety net investments.

Government representatives for Mr. Macron declined to comment. However, they have stated that the goal of this volunteer program is to lessen the scarcity of emergency accommodation in Paris.

“They want to clean the city for the Paris Olympics 2024, for the tourists,” said Nathan Lequeux, an organiser for the activist group Utopia 56. “As treatment of migrants is becoming more horrible and infamous, people are being chased off the streets…Since the Paris Olympics 2024, this aggressiveness, this policy of hunting has become more pronounced.”

The government established ten makeshift shelters around the nation last year in order to accommodate the 100,000 homeless people who reside in and around Paris, which makes up half of all homeless persons in France.

The busing’s connection to the Paris Olympics 2024 is denied by the authorities. However, we were able to receive an email from a government housing official stating that the objective was to “identify people on the street in sites near Paris Olympics 2024 venues” and relocate them before the Games. This email was first made public by the newspaper L’Équipe.

“They’re kicking everybody out of the squats no matter where they are and even if they don’t want to build something there for the Paris Olympics 2024,” said Roxanne Pitchelu, part of a group helping hundreds of young people, most of them migrants like Isaac, get off the street.

Pitchelu, who is also co-president of a separate volunteer group called Tara that helps migrants with legal aid, said Isaac is a good example of how “a whole system can crush somebody.”

Others, like Gbetie, worried about the future of her 1-year-old son, Richard. Despite being born in France, he was among those who had been forgotten, Gbetie said.

“We have children who are French,” she said. “They will be the future engineers and executives of this country. Think of them first and, for now, forget about the Paris Olympics 2024.”

Seine-Saint-Denis, the center of the Olympics, has the largest percentage of immigrants in the nation, at about one in three. The area has been developed at a cost of billions by the government.

Last year, there were more police raids on deserted properties and homeless camps. They said they would help relocate the people they evicted while collaborating with city officials. According to a recent report by Le Revers de la Medaille, a group of rights organizations and local charities, nearly 13,000 marginal Parisians, including migrants, homeless people, drug users, and sex workers, were moved outside Paris in the year leading up to the Games in an effort to present a scrubbed-up version of the City of Light.

The group has been keeping an eye on how the Games are affecting Paris’ most disadvantaged citizens. Seine-Saint-Denis, the center of the Paris Olympics 2024, has the largest percentage of immigrants in the nation, at about one in three. The area has been developed at a cost of billions by the government.

Last year, there were more police raids on deserted properties and homeless camps. They said they would help relocate the people they evicted while collaborating with city officials.

According to a recent report by Le Revers de la Medaille, a group of rights organizations and local charities, nearly 13,000 marginal Parisians, including migrants, homeless people, drug users, and sex workers, were moved outside Paris in the year leading up to the Games in an effort to present a scrubbed-up version of the City of Light.

The group has been keeping an eye on how the Games are affecting Paris’ most disadvantaged citizens. At what they referred to as the “Counter Opening Ceremony,” representatives from several associations spoke about the expense of the Games. They claimed that in an effort to maintain a postcard-perfect view of the city, officials had been using them as a pretext for social cleansing by evicting homeless and immigrant people from the streets. “La France, championne du mal-logement” (France, champion of bad housing) was one of the things one read.

One more said, “L’heure est grave.” No apartments, no Jo’ (The state of affairs is dire. No lodging, no entertainment). One flag showed French President Emmanuel Macron with his hands through the Olympic rings, appearing to be shackled, while another called for extinguishing the Paris Olympics 2024 flame.

“Even in these past weeks there was an archway under a subway line where people were sleeping, and they put a wall of cement to stop people coming back,” said Paul Alauzy, a spokesman for the Revers de la Médaille group (the other side of the medal). “There is a quay in Aubervilliers where they put blocks of concrete with spikes on.”

A giant banner was draped on the square’s iconic statue reading ‘JO de l’exclusion, 12,500 personnes éxpulsées’ (The Games of Exclusion, 12,500 evicted).

“Shame, shame, shame,” the crowd of around 200 people chanted as smoke canisters in the colours of the Olympic rings were set off.

Organizations supporting disadvantaged communities have taken a keen interest in these eviction activities. According to the French news outlet, Paul Alauzy, coordinator for health monitoring at Médecins du Monde, criticized the government for “hiding the misery under a rug” in order to portray Paris in a positive light during the Games.

The old Belleville district headquarters of a metalworkers union, Maison des Metallos, appears to be one location where displacement and the Paris Olympics 2024 are directly related. The area has hosted workshops and events related to art and culture in recent years. It was also home to Abou, Mamadou, and about 175 other youths, the majority of whom were unaccompanied child migrants from West Africa, until early July, when they were forcibly evacuated by authorities.

After the authorities broke up their tent camp in the neighbouring Belleville park in April, they relocated to Maison des Metallos. The teenagers were assisted in obtaining blankets and sheets to sleep on by volunteers Pitchelu from Tar and Alauzy from Medecins du Monde.

“In the gyms you have to leave at 8 a.m. each day and then come back at night. It’s not good,” Abou said.

“I’m calling it the final phase of the social cleansing,” Alauzy said about a week before the Paris Olympics 2024 grand opening ceremony was due to take place on the river Seine. “There’s an evacuation every day now.”

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