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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 were still closed as more than a hundred boys and young men were deported, many from West Africa. It was just after 7am
“It’s always the same,” said Tomster Soumah from Guinea, who has moved more times than he can count. The stoic 16-year-old gathered his belongings in a plastic bag and went with his friends to look for a new place on the other side of town.
As he left, he marveled at the irony that Paris will play host to one estimated 10 million spectators for the upcoming Olympic Games. “They tell everyone, ‘Come!’” he said. “‘France is a country of freedom, solidarity and fraternity!’ But that is not the reality, not for us.”
It is estimated that around 3,500 people in Paris will be homeless this year (probably an underestimate), an increase of 16 percent compared to last year.
Human rights groups say police have stepped up evictions and deportations of people living and working on the streets of the capital and surrounding suburbs in the run-up to the Paris Olympics, in what some describe as social cleansing.
“I have police officers who have told me that their mission is to get people out of their homes quickly,” he said Paul Alauzy, coordinator of Doctors of the World.
“The goal is to have a postcard for Paris, and normally we wouldn’t be against that. But this was a missed opportunity to find more dignified solutions, where people are not simply moved further and cut off from access to concern.”
An increase in the number of camp evictions
Alauzy is also a spokesperson for The other side of the Medailleor “the other side of the coin,” a coalition of more than a hundred human rights groups advocating for marginalized people in addressing the Olympic Games.
The collective took place in June report that the number of evictions has risen steadily, from 121 operations in 2021-2022 to 137 in 2023, accelerating to 16 evacuations in 17 weeks by the end of that year.
Although many evictions are taking place in Paris, a spokesperson for the city insists that the French government is planning them, and that emergency shelters are within the federal agency’s jurisdiction.
Paris “calls on the state to house people in the many vacant buildings,” the spokesperson said.
Many hotels ever rent out rooms for the homeless under government contracts are now returning to tourism and contributing to the Strong decline in available beds.
To relieve the pressure, the Prefecture of Greater Paris arranges for homeless migrants to be transported by buses to other regions, such as Bordeaux and Lyon.
“It is unacceptable that they have to live this way,” a prefectural spokesperson said. “In the Paris region there is shelter for around 120,000 people, and we have reached a saturation point.”
An ongoing cycle
According to rights workers on the ground, only three of more than a hundred people boarded the bus bound for Lyon that Tuesday. Few ever take them.
After taking one previously, 41-year-old Arouna Sidibe from Ivory Coast vowed never to do so again. Sidibe fled his country in 2016, fearing for his life after a falling out with a powerful family member.
He was among more than 150 people evicted from a Paris gym last fall. After being homeless for more than seven years, he and his partner Ramatou Koné, 26, boarded a bus to Normandy in the hope of finding shelter until his refugee claim was processed. But after just five months they were told that they had to leave the hotel room there, at the government’s expense.
They returned to Paris, where Sidibe works as a carpenter.
He is now awaiting a ruling on his appeal against the rejection of his refugee status. “It’s so tiring,” he said. ‘We have been here for eight years and we are leaving the country? Where to?’
In addition to waiting for court decisions, many people stay in Paris to work or study, or to have friends and family here. So the cycle continues: they sleep somewhere until the police chase them away, and then they find a new place until they are discovered again.
In 2023, under pressure from the rapidly rising far-right National Rally, French President Emmanuel Macron’s government passed immigration legislation so strict that NR’s Marine Le Pen called it a “ideological victory.”
“The most vulnerable people are being criminalized, while street vendors, sex workers and the homeless are being fined and deported,” said Aurélia Huot, member of the Paris Solidarity Bar Association and of The other side of the Medaille.
“They appear in court for offenses that would normally not be punished.”
Organizers of the Paris Olympics plan to make this summer’s Games the greenest ever, but that will also mean reducing air conditioning to reduce energy consumption. With temperatures rising worldwide, some are suggesting organizers should take extreme heat into account when awarding cities to the next major Olympics.
Most controlled event in the history of Paris
Nails and rocks have been used to ward off people sleeping in the wild, such as under the bridge at Gare d’Austerlitz, where the Olympic opening ceremony will take place on July 26.
“I was shocked to see these measures against the homeless,” said Olivier Le Marois, 63, an entrepreneur who lives in the area. “I’ve read about the expulsions, and it’s like we’re in the early Soviet Union, where they show you a model city and hide everything that’s wrong!”
Recent studies indicate this half of the respondents are planning to watch the Games this summer, with views on the event – and the preparations – decidedly mixed.
“It is of course a big challenge, but it can give a beautiful reflection of Paris, of France,” says Jean-Christophe, 43, head waiter at a restaurant. He only gave his first name.
“In terms of safety and hygiene [the clearing of camps] is something that absolutely had to happen,” he said. “It would of course be ideal to find alternatives for these people.”
Residents near the Olympic Village have also been forced to move. Thousands of students in northern Paris and neighboring boroughs had their leases torn down to make way for mostly Olympic staff. That led to protest and campaign to oppose eviction.
It will be the most controlled sporting event in the capital’s history, with as many as 45,000 law enforcement officers deployed in and around Paris.
“The closer we get to the Olympics, the more we will saturate public spaces with police officers,” said Paris police chief Laurent Nuñez. told Le Parisien newspaper.
None of this has stopped France from billing Paris 2024 as being inclusive And “open to everyone.”
Jules Boykoff, author of Power Games: A Political History of the Olympics, joins CBC News Network’s Andrew Nichols to discuss why fewer cities are bidding to host the Olympics.
Not unique to the Olympic Games in Paris
“This is not new: we see this at all the Olympics,” said Melora Koepke, a Paris-based Canadian social geographer. “People who are labeled as ‘undesirable’ in public spaces are… controlled by police forces and political pressure.”
Earlier this year, Koepke held workshops in Vancouver and Paris, where Canadian and French community organizers, scientists and practitioners explored the impact of the 2010 Winter Olympics on vulnerable people in Vancouver.
The police were already in 2008 criticized for carrying out a ‘ticketing blitz’ for issues such as loitering and deception, targeting marginalized people in the Center East Side.
“The patterns are the same,” said Caitlin Shane, a Vancouver lawyer who spoke at the workshop.
“Evicting people from camps… but never actually addressing the systemic problems, which is a growing housing crisis – it’s all about optics.”
The other side of the Medaille says the Olympic Games organizing committee and corporate sponsors have rejected their request for a 10 million euro “solidarity fund”. It would have helped finance shelter, food and health care for those in need during and after the Games, and would have amounted to just over 0.1 percent of the Games’ estimated €9 billion. budget.
While Alauzy says the coalition has managed to slow down the law enforcement machine by monitoring evictions and putting pressure on officers, he wants future Olympic organizers to go further.
The group is not against the Games as a whole. But as a warning, Alauzy cited Denver, which canceled the 1972 Games due to protests and public opposition over environmental problems.
The coalition may not be able to stop the cycle of deportations in Paris. But the message is already spreading as far as Brisbane, where the Olympic Games will be held in 2032.
“It’s a bit head-spinning to be interviewed on Australian television about our little collective,” says Alauzy.
“So we share our activist journey and say to them: ‘Build coalitions now, make sure you identify the risks, make demands and make sure the promises are kept.’”
