Police clear out a migrant camp in central Paris. Activists say it's a pre
PARIS (AP) — French police evicted migrants from a makeshift camp in Paris a few steps away from the Seine River on Tuesday, the latest operation in what aid groups call a campaign of ‘’social cleansing’’ ahead of the Summer Olympics.
Before dawn on an unusually cold April morning, around 30 teenage boys and young men from West Africa were awakened by police and urged to pack their tents and belongings. Most of them were underage and in the process of seeking residency papers.
“I was already scared but I am even more scared because I don’t know where to go,” said Boubacar Traore, 16, who said he fled conflict in Burkina Faso and arrived in France two months ago.
The operation came days after police carried out a large-scale eviction at France’s biggest squatter camp in a suburb south of Paris.
Such evictions and evacuations of migrant tent camps happen every spring after the end of a winter ‘’truce’’ during which authorities put such actions on hold.