Paris city politicians have called on the government to provide shelter for more than 2,000 migrants and refugees sleeping rough under bridges and by canals in what aid groups describe as “catastrophic sanitary conditions”, reports The Guardian.
One camp of hundreds of tents squeezed under a motorway bridge by the Canal Saint-Denis near Porte de la Villette was home to around 1,600 people, making it one of the biggest makeshift migrant camps in France.
Men and some women, who aid workers say have escaped violence and dictatorship in countries such as Sudan and Eritrea, are crammed into tents on a pavement with no proper sanitation.
Hundreds began gathering there during cold weather at the start of the year, and numbers had grown in recent months. There is one water point, no showers and fewer than a dozen temporary toilets.
Charities said people traffickers were targeting the camp where some migrants and refugees were still considering trying to cross the Channel to the UK. People sleeping rough there feared theft and violence.
The French citizens’ rights ombudsman, Jacques Toubon, has denounced living conditions at the camps in the north of the city as an unacceptable denial of fundamental rights. The socialist mayor of Paris’s 19th arrondissement, François Dagnaud, warned of a “humanitarian disaster”, and the mayor of Paris, Anne Hidalgo, urged the government to provide shelter and fix the “inhuman” situation.
The Paris area prefect’s office has said plans were being considered to send police to evacuate the camp later this month, which would involve bussing people to temporary accommodation.
Aid groups said the latest camps were part of a vicious cycle in Paris over the past three years, whereby camps of migrants and refugees have been cleared by riot police, only to spring up again. There have been more than 30 such evacuations since 2015.
At the Canal Saint-Denis camp, men and women – crowded around the taps at the only water point – spoke of the physical and mental exhaustion from living outside in the cold.
Habib, not his real name, had fled from Sudan. The 18-year-old had been in Calais and Le Havre on the northern French coast, hoping to reach the UK. “From Calais it was impossible, the police were targeting us.”
He said he arrived two months ago at the Paris camp where some men were crammed three to a tent, but he slept outside.