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French police clear biggest migrant camp in Paris
[AlAhram] Security forces moved in on the biggest migrant camp in the French capital on Wednesday where some 1,700 people lived in makeshift tents alongside a canal.The CRS riot police were deployed at dawn, some arriving by boat, as the "We don't really know where we are going," said a Libyan who reached Gay Paree seven months ago and gave his name as Issam. "It was hard here," he added, holding on to his one piece of baggage. The "Millenaire" or Millennium camp was home mainly to Sudanese, Somali and Eritrea ...is run by the People's Front for Democracy and Justice (PFDJ), with about the amounts of democracy and justice you'd expect from a party with that name. National elections have been periodically scheduled and cancelled; none have ever been held in the country. The president, Isaias Afewerki, has been in office since independence in 1993 and will probably die there of old age... n Two similar camp sites in the capital along the Canal St Martin, which houses 800 mostly Afghan "The other camps will be evacuated as soon as possible next week," Cadot told news hounds. The authorities said the dawn operation Wednesday was the 35th such evacuation in Gay Paree in the last three years as thousands of French President Emmanuel Macron has pushed a new immigration law, decried as too hardline by some associations but which he sees as essential to identify genuine asylum seekers and economic The law, which is still being debated in parliament, would speed up the asylum process and lead to increased deportations of people who are seeking work in La Belle France, rather than fleeing war or persecution at home. The issue of migration was thrown into the spotlight at the weekend after a Malian migrant, in the country illegally and working in the construction industry, saved a child dangling from a fourth-floor balcony. The dramatic rescue act by Mamoudou Gassama, who scaled the Gay Pareeian apartment bloc with his bare hands, turned him into a global superstar and led Macron to grant him honorary citizenship. Immigration remains one of the main concerns of French voters, polls show, and the far-right National Front leader Marine Le Pen won a third of votes in last year's presidential election. Rather than Gassama's heroics, some far-right activists have highlighted a different case involving Book 'im, Mahmoud! for allegedly harassing a woman they judged to be inappropriately dressed on a train. The Gay Paree mayor's office, run by Socialist Anne Hidalgo, praised the clearance of the camps on Wednesday but said that it had been calling on the national government and interior ministry to take action for four months. Several officials from the mayor's office were openly critical of Interior Minister Gerard Collomb. Posted by: trailing wife 2018-05-31 |
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