The French government this summer ordered the forced evictions of hundreds of Roma gypsy families from makeshift camps set-up around several of the country’s major cities, followed by the repatriation of some of the occupants to their native Romania.
The crackdown, ordered by interior minister Manuel Valls, has caused controversy within government and Socialist Party ranks and has been slammed as a return to the harsh, high-profile campaign against Roma immigrants under the previous conservative government of President Nicolas Sarkozy. One objection is that alternative accommodation is rarely offered by the authorities, trapping the families in an endless spiral of poverty.
Following the criticism, and the outcry from associations campaigning for the rights of Roma migrants, who are estimated to number between 15,000 and 20,000 in France, Prime Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault announced an inter-ministerial meeting, to be held this Wednesday, to find wider solutions to the problem. One of the moves the meeting will consider is an end to exceptional measures established under the previous government that limit the rights to employment for Bulgarian and Romanian nationals, and which are often cited as a reason many Roma are unable to integrate into the wider society.
Since the end of July, Roma camps in Paris, Lyon, Marseille, Lille and Aix-en-Provence have been dismantled following court orders for their evacuation. “I cannot tolerate, and even less so when a legal ruling has been taken, that in these camps there are problems of public health which are today quite unacceptable,” said Valls in July. “Yes, when there is a legal ruling taken, there will be a dismantling of these camps”.
Enlargement : Illustration 1
But housing minister Cécile Duflot, speaking last week on French radio station France Inter, openly criticized the manner in which the evictions were being managed. “It is not admissible that in our country families, children, live in absolutely insupportable sanitary conditions, in shantytowns,” she said. “On the other hand, dismantling camps without any solution is to put people in an even more precarious situation.”
Jean-Luc Mélenchon, leader of the radical-left Front de Gauche coalition called the crackdown “unacceptable”. In an interview with French weekly JDD on August 18th, Mélenchon said: “What’s the difference between a camp destroyed upon the orders of a right-wing minister and a camp destroyed by a left-wing minister? […] urgent measures need to be taken, for example the opening up of access to the labour market.”
Nationals from Romania and Bulgaria, members of the European Union since 2007, are subjected to special ‘transitory’ measures taken in France and eight other EU-member states (Germany, the UK, Ireland, Belgium, Luxembourg, Holland, Austria, and Malta) which limit their rights to work and residency. In France, they are entitled to a three-month residence visa upon entering the country, but they are then subjected to a lengthy period before they can receive a full-blown residence permit.
Following the dismantling of two camps near the northern city of Lille on August 9th, at Hellemmes and Villeneuve d'Ascq, four police officers involved directly and indirectly in the operations agreed to be interviewed by Mediapart about the evictions, on condition that their names were not published. Their experiences and opinions largely echo the criticisms voiced by Duflot and Mélenchon, notably about the ineffectiveness of the campaign.
Two of them are from the CRS riot police force, the Compagnies républicaines de sécurité, and who were present during the raids on the camps. The other two are an officer from a local station of the regular national police force, and a detective colleague.
On August 9th, two CRS ‘companies’, representing about 150 men, were called out to secure the area around the camps, one at Lille-Hellemmes, which contained about 30 caravans, and the other, a smaller community, at Villeneuve-d’Ascq. Their mission was to prevent anyone leaving or entering the camp before officers from the border control police (PAF) and regular police had carried out an inventory of everyone present.
Thomas (last name withheld and first name changed), a member of one of the CRS companies involved in the expulsions of the two Roma camps, and who has 25 years’ experience in the force, said the frequency of the evictions he has been called upon to take part in remained the same as under the previous government. “Whether it’s under the Left or the Right, it doesn’t change much, there weren’t more before and no more since the government changed,” he commented.
He said that on the day of the raids, he and his colleagues were readied for duty at about 4 a.m. “We were given the destination at the last minute,” Thomas said. “But when we arrived, the camp was already in the know and the [Roma support] associations were waiting for our visit.”
For him and the other CRS officer Mediapart spoke to, the operation, which ended at around midday, “went well”, and the inhabitants of the caravans and shelters were “cooperative”.
“It wasn’t a tense mission,” commented Thomas. “Unfortunately these are poor people, who live in a totally insalubrious state, with rats. But you need to take into account the nuisance caused to local folk.”
His colleague Pierre (last name withheld and first name changed), commented: “There was no trouble, it was more a good-natured situation. In any case, we’re not asked our opinion, it’s like when we break up a demonstration where people are defending their jobs. But when you see their misery, it’s sadder than other things. They have a right to live, those people.” He said he thought the means employed were disproportionate. “Two companies, not counting the local police and the PAF, that’s enormous given the numbers we found on the site.”
'The problem isn’t solved, what we did is all for show'
“When we got there at about 6 a.m., everyone was already there. The associations who filmed us, the head of security for the département [county], a representative of the prefect, the local press and even a couple of national TV stations,” Pierre complained. “The people were waiting for us outside their caravans and the vehicles in working order were gone. We could have done the job properly and without causing a public outcry. It the decision is taken to deal with a gypsy camp and people are forewarned, then of course those who have a legal problem, or who are wanted, won’t be present anymore.”
The two CRS officers said the expulsions this August, like in other cases, served simply to shift the problem elsewhere. “Maybe in two years I’ll be doing the same job again with the same people,” said Thomas.
Private garages had been hired to take the caravans away on flat-bed trucks to a nearby pound and the few that were road-worthy were eventually handed back to their owners. Several of the expelled families, the CRS officers said, later travelled to Carvin, a small town some 20 kilometres from Lille in the nearby Pas-de-Calais département, escorted by police motorbikes because of the fragile state of their caravans.
“We’re asked to evacuate them, but no-one is prepared to provide them [with an official campsite] in the département,” complained Pierre. “So the problem isn’t solved, what we did is all for show.”
A local police officer, whose name is also withheld, told Mediapart that some of the expelled families moved soon after to other nearby locations, at Haute Borne in Villeneuve-d’Ascq, where several other Roma families had already set up camp, and alongside a railway track at Lille-Hellemmes. He said that as a result he expected there would soon be new complaints lodged by residents about their presence there.
The officer said the evacuation of the makeshift Roma camp at Lilles-Hellemmes on August 9th “was not unconnected” with the opening ceremony on August 17th of a new 50,000-seat football stadium, the Grand Stade Lille Métropole, in nearby Villeneuve-d'Ascq. “The image the city council wanted to project wasn’t necessarily that one,” he added. Built at a cost of just more than 280 million euros, the new stadium will be used when France hosts the 2016 European football championship and is the home venue this season for the Lille football club.
The officer said local police very rarely entered the camps. “It has happened over complaints about smoke or noise, and for some arrests concerning petty thefts when they’ve been caught red-handed, but it’s always complicated for us to go into the sites,” he said. “I think they steal by necessity. It’s above all [thefts of] GPS devices, laptop computers or other things left visible inside cars.”
Another officer, a detective with the local police services and who also spoke on condition of anonymity, said the expulsions and the ensuing dispersion of camp occupants around several geographical areas occasionally had an adverse effect for ongoing investigations into organized crime, although he added that this concerned only a minority of the camps. “If we’re involved in an important investigation, we try to be present for the dismantlement [of the camps], so that we know where they go,” he said. “We are in very close contact with local services so that we know the timetable and can adapt to it. But we wouldn’t prevent an evacuation because of an inquiry being carried out.”
On the wider issue of the effectiveness of the expulsions he commented: “If you’re working with a plan of wanting to re-lodge people, to put them in school, to try and integrate them, you have to negotiate with them beforehand, if only to know how many want to be rehoused.”
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English version: Graham Tearse