Riot police clash with migrants to clear up Paris tent camps
After the closure of the Calais Jungle camp in northern France, riot police smashed up migrant camps set in the French capital Monday and clashed with migrants who tried to save their possessions. The raid started soon after 8 a.m. Paris police and regional officials say the operation Monday is not an evacuation, but aimed at verifying migrants' documents and sanitary conditions in their cluster of tents.
01.11.2016Footage on BFM television showed migrants pushing back against the shields of the riot police at the scene in northern Paris, near the Stalingrad subway station.
Following the razing of the Calais Jungle refugee camp last week, the number of migrants living in tent camps on the streets of Paris has increased by at least a third, French officials said, revealing miserable conditions of migrants at the French capital. More than 2,000 newly-arrived migrants have set up camps in northeastern Paris where hundreds of igloo tents have popped up along a 700-meter stretch of Avenue de Flandres, a tree-lined boulevard leading towards the city center.
French President François Hollande said they too would be evacuated. "Those who have gone to Paris are not people who have come from Calais. There are perhaps a few," he said, describing them as part of "a new migration wave of people coming from Libya in recent weeks and months." Aid groups say some of the migrants recently fled a camp being dismantled in Calais, though Hollande said most are from recent migration from Libya. Such camps frequently surface in Paris, and are routinely cleared out. "We are going to do the same as we did in Calais," the French leader said, meaning makeshift camps in Paris would also be cleared. Anti-immigrant sentiment in France has complicated efforts to address the long-running migrant drama. In a bid to protest the arrival of migrants who are being dispersed around the country, the far-right party Front National (FN) urged mayors to resist the Calais relocation plan. Resistance to immigration is central to the campaign platform of National Front leader Marine Le Pen in her bid for the French presidency in elections next year.
01.11.2016Footage on BFM television showed migrants pushing back against the shields of the riot police at the scene in northern Paris, near the Stalingrad subway station.
Following the razing of the Calais Jungle refugee camp last week, the number of migrants living in tent camps on the streets of Paris has increased by at least a third, French officials said, revealing miserable conditions of migrants at the French capital. More than 2,000 newly-arrived migrants have set up camps in northeastern Paris where hundreds of igloo tents have popped up along a 700-meter stretch of Avenue de Flandres, a tree-lined boulevard leading towards the city center.
French President François Hollande said they too would be evacuated. "Those who have gone to Paris are not people who have come from Calais. There are perhaps a few," he said, describing them as part of "a new migration wave of people coming from Libya in recent weeks and months." Aid groups say some of the migrants recently fled a camp being dismantled in Calais, though Hollande said most are from recent migration from Libya. Such camps frequently surface in Paris, and are routinely cleared out. "We are going to do the same as we did in Calais," the French leader said, meaning makeshift camps in Paris would also be cleared. Anti-immigrant sentiment in France has complicated efforts to address the long-running migrant drama. In a bid to protest the arrival of migrants who are being dispersed around the country, the far-right party Front National (FN) urged mayors to resist the Calais relocation plan. Resistance to immigration is central to the campaign platform of National Front leader Marine Le Pen in her bid for the French presidency in elections next year.