A number of migrants, including families with small children, were removed from the Paris City Hall forecourt by French police on Wednesday as the city got ready to commemorate 100 days until the start of the Olympic Games.
About fifty people mostly women and children between the ages of three and ten who were huddled into strollers, wrapped in blankets, or covered in plastic sheets to protect them from the rain were taken out by police at dawn.
The refugees boarded a bus after packing their possessions where they were placed in temporary government housing in the eastern French town of Besançon.
Concerns have been raised by aid organisations that the action taken on Wednesday is only the start of a larger push by Parisian authorities to remove refugees and other rough sleepers from the city before the Olympic Games without offering longer-term housing alternatives.
“They’re clearing the way for the Olympic Games,” Yann Manzi, a member of the migrant aid group Utopia 56, told The Associated Press during Wednesday’s police operation in central Paris. “What is happening is nothing short of social cleansing of the city.”
Olympic organisers have stated that they are collaborating with relief organisations to find solutions
A large number of the families are from French-speaking African nations, such as Senegal, Burkina Faso, Guinea and the Ivory Coast.
Aid organisations like Utopia 56 have given food, blankets and diapers to the needy while also assisting some of them in finding short-term housing for a few nights.
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