Paris police evict hundreds of migrants ahead of Olympics

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Paris police evict hundreds of migrants ahead of Olympics – DW – 04/17/2024
dw.com

The move to empty a migrant camp is the latest effort to get migrants out of public view before the global spotlight is trained upon Paris this summer. Rights groups fear the evicted will be left even more vulnerable.

Police in the French capital, Paris, on Wednesday cleared a major migrant squat in the southern suburb of Vitry-sur-Seine with just 100 days to go before the start of the 2024 Summer Olympics.

The makeshift camp at the site of an abandoned bus company office had been home to roughly 450 migrants, mainly young men but including some mothers with small children as well. 

Rights groups said most migrants there had documents and were awaiting social housing allotments.

Concerned aid organizations expressed fear that those now being ejected in an effort to "clean up" the city before the Olympics take place — from July 26 to August 11 — would not be able to find long-term housing assistance after being thrown out.

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It feels like I've read a similar headline for every modern Olympics.

2020 Tokyo

2016 Rio

2012 London

2008 Beijing

2004 Athens

2000 Sydney

1996 Atlanta

Etc.

Edit: CNN, for a change, has a pretty good opinion article on this.

Nice documentation! I was thinking the same- this is literally every international competition.

The Olympics are a good excuse to do a lot of things that are otherwise unpopular.