Bambazenebou, 30, is exhausted. Nine months pregnant, the young woman with a well-rounded belly has been camping on the Place de l’hôtel de ville in Paris for almost three weeks, in the middle of a dodger, in the midst of dozens of women and children, sometimes a few months old. only. It is 28 degrees this Monday and the voice of this Ivorian, whose right to asylum has been rejected and expelled from her temporary accommodation since May, is so weak that it is almost inaudible.
“We’re tired,” says this mother who also has to take care of a two-and-a-half-year-old child whom she cannot enroll in the crèche for lack of accommodation. “All I ask for is shelter,” says Bambazenebou, who participates in this spontaneous mobilization of migrants to ask for permanent housing.
“The problem is beyond our means”
This Monday morning, around fifty people were referred for shelter, precisely, towards Orleans in a regional airlock, according to our information, confirmed by the regional prefecture. But this is far from covering all of the people present. Of the 200 people who initially counted the camp, there remain this Monday afternoon visibly a big hundred.
An aberration for Félix, who handles communication for Utopia 56, an association that supports these migrants. “During previous mobilisations, in March and December, people were accommodated within 72 hours”. The association helps migrants find emergency solutions with solidarity hosts and hostesses, or in places that are lent to it, but this time, Félix feels “helpless”: “In the month of August we don’t have enough volunteers to accompany the families. We are at the end of our limits to fill the void. The problem is beyond our means. »
Saturated devices
This is also the opinion of the Paris City Hall, which has asked the State to assume its responsibilities. “We are constantly asking the State for a sheltering operation to put an end to this unworthy situation”, underlined to AFP Ian Brossat, deputy mayor of Paris in charge of housing, accommodation. emergency and refugee protection. “We are ready to do our part by providing places that belong to us. It is now time for the State to do its job, it is its competence,” added Ian Brossat.
State emergency accommodation systems, including for very vulnerable people such as pregnant women or very young children, are completely saturated. Fatoumata, 27, 5 months pregnant and originally from Côte d’Ivoire, shows us her phone’s call log, with the three calls made in the morning to 115, like every day. She can’t stand these living conditions any longer, sleeping on the ground on boxes, without a tent, without a sleeping bag.
“Families gave us floor mats, water packs, milk, nappies, food. But we are cold at night,” she says, pointing to a little boy with a runny nose. “We were attacked by passers-by, the police are no longer watching. We got racial slurs like “dirty niggers go home feeling good”, and all kinds of slurs. Passers-by film us without asking us, ”she complains.
“In the middle of the ford”
With local residents, the situation is sometimes tense. A municipal police patrol passes shortly after our interview with Fatoumata, explaining to us that they are acting so that the children stop blocking the elevators in the parking lot located under the square, or to free access to the metro station, some passers-by feeling insecure. . A fight broke out this morning, over newcomers hoping to land shelter without having camped here for weeks, according to an employee who has been observing the situation for weeks.
“I see people who can no longer have it under their windows,” comments Aurélien Véron, city councilor and spokesperson for the Changer Paris group. However, the elected representative on the right does not wish to send these people home, preferring “an active and rapid German-style integration with a strategy to obtain financial autonomy”. And to conclude: “Today, we are in the middle of the ford, we leave the doors open but without a strategy behind. You have to decide: either really send them back, or integrate them. But I find it hard to imagine that these women are not dynamic enough to be able to have a job within a year. »
On the side of the regional prefecture, we want to be rather reassuring this Monday evening: “We want to resolve the situation by the end of the week, with all the people taken care of. »
2023-08-21 22:12:58
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