Some 400 migrants were evicted from their tents on the banks of the Seine in Paris on Wednesday March 6, an action carried out due to the risk of flooding according to the Paris Police Prefecture, while associations are opposing these pushbacks. The prefectural decree is based on the Vigicrues bulletin from the day before, placing the area on yellow alert and announcing that the level of the Seine has been rising since Saturday evening and will result in “the arrival of flood waves propagating upstream of Paris” which will continue with “a maximum to be observed this Wednesday”.
“The Paris Police Prefecture has just filed an eviction order for all the quays of the Seine within the city walls. This affects almost 400 people. The pre-Olympics manhunt has begun,” however, the Utopia 56 association, which helps homeless exiles, protested on X. No sheltering is planned, declared the Revers de la Medal collective, which brings together some eighty French associations and NGOs, as well as Canadian organizations defending social rights.
In its decree, the prefecture estimates the number of occupants installed “irregularly” in these camps between the Pont Marie and Austerlitz station to be “around 420”.
For several months, associations helping people on the streets have denounced a “social cleansing” of the Ile-de-France region, gradually emptied, according to them, of its most precarious populations living on the streets, with a view to the 2024 Olympic Games. argue for their part that 120,000 people are accommodated every night under the emergency in Ile-de-France.
