French police on Thursday evacuated a controversial slum inhabited by some 300 Roma in a northern Parisian suburb to prepare for its demolition, reports FRANCE 24.
Local authorities in the French capital said the Samaritain slum in the Courneuve suburb, made up of ramshackle huts with no electricity or running water, posed a health and safety risk to the community.
“We cannot tolerate the presence of unsafe and unhealthy housing,” town hall spokesman Jean-Luc Vienne told FRANCE 24 earlier in August.
Those who live there feel differently. Resident Miaëla, 19, told FRANCE 24 that for most of the people living there it was “better than being on the streets” and that the Samaritain was a “well organised” community.
Set up by a Pentecostal Christian Roma group at the end of 2007, the camp included a church, three streets and 80 households. Support groups, including the Voix des Roms (Voice of the Roma) association have fought the decision, made by Courneuve’s Communist mayor Gilles Pous in 2013, to close the camp.
“These people's whole lives are right here,” said association head Pierre Chopinaud.