Under siege in Paris
01 January 1991
Under siege in Paris
artdoc December=1992
Earlier this year, CARF visited the camp at Vincennes, south-east
of Paris where 31 2 homeless black families - 1,600 people in all
- were living in an improvised `tent city'. On 29 October, with
the aim of forced resettlement, the camp was broken up by as many
as 1,000 gendarmes, including the notorious CRS riot police.
CARF gives the background.
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Seven families - some evicted from their homes, some living in
slums unfit for occupation - decided to squat an empty building
at Fontenay sous Bois, a Communist-run borough. The mayor
persuaded them instead to set up camp at Vincennes, on land owned
by the city of Paris, to draw attention to the failure of the
city authorities to house its own workers. He provided tents and
provisions for the families.
Almost immediately after they set up camp, riot police
acting on orders from the city authorities tore the tents down.
For 1 0 days the families had no shelter: `When it rained, we had
to cover the kids with dustbin bags.'
As word of the occupation spread, the camp grew from seven
to 312 families. They have become well organised, resisting
attempts to force them out.
There are 300,000 people on the waiting list for low-cost
accommodation in the Paris region, 80,000 in the city itself.
But there is no low-cost housing for them. Associations
subsidised by government specifically to provide such housing
have been putting their rents up beyond the reach of low-wage
households. Local mayors have refused to take more `foreigners'
in public housing, imposing illegal conditions or `one for one'
policies (whereby foreigners only get housed in housing vacated
by foreigners). Very little new low-cost housing is being built.
In addition, cheap furnished lodgings are being pulled down to
make way for prestige apartments.
Since the 1970s, `immigrant' workers have campaigned for
decent low-cost housing. There were many rent strikes to protest
against squalid conditions. Then, at the end of 19 86, 110
families, made homeless by an arson attack on their hostel,
camped in Menilmontant Square for four months until they won the
right to be rehoused. In 1990, 48 families camped in Square de
la Reunion for six months and were finally rehoused. In 1991,
103 homeless families, totalling 400 people, camped at the Quai
de la Gare for four months until they received housing.
The Vincennes campers were supported by churches, trade
unions and anti-racist groups such as MRAP (Movement against
Racism and for Friendship between Peoples), and represented in
negotiations with city authorities by the CMF (Council of Malians
in France). Thirty-five families were rehoused at the end of
August, while the others, ordered to leave in September, remain
living under canvas and polythene until the police action.
According to a spokesperson for the Vincennes Committee of
MRAP, a variety of factors contributed to the break-up of the
camp on 29 October, not least the fact that the homeless families
were extremely well organised and had repeatedly embarrassed the
Paris authorities by drawing attention to the appalling
conditions in which many long-settled `immigrant workers' live.
But pressure from Le Pen's Front National, which carried out
at least three demonstrations against the camp, cannot be ruled
out either. On 19 October, 200 FN members protested outside the
Ministry of Towns, shouting slogans such as `Housing for the
French - Charters for the Malians' (a reference to the 1986
deportations of 101 Malians who were forced on to a charter plane
in chains) and `We've had enough of Arabs and Negroes'. There
are rumours that nazis planned an attack on the camp on the
evening of the FN's National Fair which is to be held in Paris
in November.
But whether or not this is true, the FN will take heart f