The migrant camp set up for several months near the city center of Strasbourg was calmly evacuated by the police on Tuesday morning. The evacuation, which began shortly after 6 a.m., was completed around 7 a.m. The site has been the subject of several passes of arms between town hall and prefecture.
Police vehicles took up position, surrounding this camp located on a square on the edge of the hypercentre with warning tape. Under the lights of powerful spotlights installed by the police, a few dozen agents went from tent to tent to ask the migrants to leave the premises. They were evacuated in two buses. The operation took place peacefully. The journalists and several association activists present were kept at a distance.
Located since the end of May under the windows of the town hall, this wild camp has counted up to 200 people, many of whom have come from Eastern Europe. “45 were taken care of by state services and sheltered in a gymnasium for the purpose of examining their administrative situation and determining a suitable accommodation solution,” said the prefecture.
“My father in Albania wanted to kill us, that’s why we came to France”
The tents, several dozen, will be removed. The city will also return to their owners “personal belongings” that may have been forgotten, said Hülliya Turan (PCF), assistant in charge of education, present during the evacuation. “We hope that an assessment of the administrative situations” individual “will be carried out” so that each evacuee can be directed “towards care arrangements”, “many people” on the camp suffering from “serious pathologies”, said Nicolas Fuchs, coordinator for Alsace of Médecins du Monde.
Also present, the LFI deputy from Bas-Rhin, Emmanuel Fernandes, castigated “the reception policy as it is carried out by Gérald Darmanin, Minister of the Interior, and such as the good student that is the prefect of Bas-Rhin, Josiane Chevalier, applies to the letter”. “I regret that we could not find shelter solutions earlier” for these migrants, including “families” with “children”.
Among them, Fabian, a 10-year-old Albanian, says he has lived “for four months” in the camp with his mother. “My father in Albania wanted to kill us, that’s why we came to France, to protect ourselves,” he explains. Arla, 10, has been living “for eight months in a tent” with her parents and her brother. They too came from Albania. “We hope that they will find us another accommodation, because it is too difficult”, confides to journalists this school child who “does not know” where she will sleep this Tuesday evening.
The municipality, which said on Monday that it had reached the end of what it could do in terms of accommodation, had already opened a gymnasium in mid-September to shelter certain migrants. This camp was at the center of several exchanges between the environmentalist mayor of Strasbourg, Jeanne Barseghian, and the prefect, Josiane Chevalier.
On Monday, the EELV councilor announced his decision to take the state to court for its “failure” to shelter people on the street, launching a national appeal to “elected officials” and “associations” who so wish. to rally its action. “The mayor of Strasbourg plays politics, I am here to apply the law, the State does not have to be ashamed of what it is doing in the Bas-Rhin. It finances 10,000 places” in the department “which is a considerable effort”, argued the prefect on France Bleu Alsace.