On a Tuesday morning in late May, at least three dozen police officers surrounded an encampment in central Paris. The streets above the banks of the Seine were virtually empty and the cafes still closed when they evicted more than 100 boys and young men, many from West Africa. It was just past 7 a.
m. "It's always the same," said Tomster Soumah from Guinea, who has been moved on more times than he can count. The stoic 16-year-old gathered his belongings in a plastic bag and joined his friends in search of a new spot on the other side of the city.
As he left, he marvelled at the irony that Paris will host an estimated 10 million spectators for the upcoming Olympic Games. "They tell everyone, 'Come!'" he said. "'France is a land of liberty, solidarity and fraternity!' But that's not the reality, not for us.
" Some 3,500 people were estimated to be homeless this year in Paris (likely an underestimate), a 16 per cent increase on last year. Human rights groups say that in the approach to the Paris Olympics, police have stepped up evictions and deportations of people living and working on the streets of the capital and surrounding suburbs, in what some describe as social cleansing. "I have police officers who have told me their mission is to evict people quickly," says Paul Alauzy, Doctors of the World co-ordinator.
"The goal is to have a postcard Paris, and normally, that's not something we would oppose. But this was a missed opportunity to find more dignified solutions, where peopl.
