With the Olympics 2024 nearly two weeks away, the French government has started evicting thousands of homeless migrants from the capital city of Paris, a New York Times report said on Thursday.
The Olympic Games 2024 are set to be held between July 26 and August 11. As per the NYT report, authorities are asking the immigrants to board buses to cities like Lyon or Marseille.
These immigrants were reportedly given the assurance that they would get housing in their new locations. However, many of them were living on streets that were unfamiliar to them without assured accommodations or facing potential deportation.
One of the immigrants who was evicted from an abandoned cement factory near the Olympics village told The New York Times that they were expelled because of the upcoming Olympic Games.
“They give you a random ticket,” said another immigrant from the Central African Republic, who was on the eviction bus. “If it’s a ticket to Orleans, you go to Orleans,” he further stated.
Earlier this year, in April, police conducted a large-scale eviction at the country’s biggest squat in the south of Paris. The makeshift camp at an abandoned bus company headquarters in Vitry-sur-Seine was cleared by the authorities.
Around 300 people were clutching their belongings in bags, suitcases, or trolleys to depart from the camp. Most of the immigrants were young men. The crowd, however, also had several women with children.
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