04 June 2018•Update: 04 June 2018
By Hajer M'tiri
PARIS
French police on Monday evacuated nearly 1,000 refugees and migrants from two makeshift camps in Paris, just a few days after clearing a larger camp.
The evacuation operations came amid repeated calls made to the government by non-governmental organizations and the City Hall for "urgent action" to find a lasting solution to the issue.
Monday's operation targeted a campsite at the Porte des Poissonniers in northeast Paris, where nearly 450 people lived, and another site next to the city’s Canal Saint Martin, home to an estimated 550 mainly Afghan migrants.
The migrants were taken in buses to be lodged in temporary shelters in and around Paris, while their administrative situation is examined, according to local authorities.
The deteriorating conditions at the camps and the increased risks to security and health there had sparked a row between city authorities and the Interior Ministry over finding a strategy to resolve the long-lasting crisis.
Two migrants had drowned this month in the canals along the encampments while others were reported injured amid rising tensions in the filthy and packed camps.
Last week, police cleared out around 1,700 migrants from one of the largest makeshift migrant camps in northeast Paris.
Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo had appealed to the government earlier this month to urgently provide shelter to migrants sleeping rough in deteriorating conditions and fix the “inhumane” situation.
In turn, the government insisted that unless the mayor initiates legal proceedings to evict migrants living there illegally, the problem is for her to solve.
The Interior Ministry has already carried out 36 such evacuation operations since 2015, clearing out some 29,700 migrants.
Many of the migrants are reportedly requesting asylum in the EU country where they were first registered under the Dublin convention.
France received a record 100,000 asylum applications last year and offered refugee status to only 30,000 people. Nearly 14,900 were forcibly expelled.
