The contrast between the 'haves' and the 'haves-not' in Paris is striking.
‘Let them eat cake’ – a quote attributed to Marie Antoinette during the French Revolution feels prescient today, hours before the Opening Ceremony of the 2024 Olympic Games gets underway.
On the evening before the Olympic torch lights up the banks of the River Seine, the contrast between the ‘haves’ and the ‘haves-not’ in Paris is striking.
Outside City Hall in the 18th district, a camp has been set up by 300 families with children who have been left without a home by French authorities.
Alongside migrants, squatters and sex workers, they were targeted as part of a ‘social cleansing’ of the capital that drew widespread criticism in the run-up to the Games.
Multiple squats and migrant camps across Paris have been cleared, leaving about 12,500 people without shelter.
What has happened to the majority of these people remains an unanswered question, even for charities working in the homelessness sector.
Metro.co.uk met some of the victims of this ‘social cleansing’ at Le Pont de Stains, in the northeastern suburb of Aubervilliers.
Julien, aged 16, and Abou, aged 17, both came to France from West Africa hoping to have a chance at education.
With them was Namawa, a young mother of a one-year-old baby, who travelled from the Ivory Coast. She was pregnant during her journey to Paris.
She was homeless for eight months before giving birth on a street in the capital. One month ago, Namawa was finally given accommodation, but she fears it will all be taken away after the Olympics.
Across the city, president Emmanuel Macron hosted an extravaganza at the Élysée Palace for the richest men in the world.
Guests included Tesla and X owner Elon Musk, with a fortune of $231.6 billion, and India’s steel magnate Lakshmi Mittal, with a net worth of $14.9 billion.
France’s richest man, LVMH chief Bernard Arnault, worth $179 billion, was also a guest of Macron, who is often referred to as ‘the president of the rich’.
Until several months ago, Pont de Stains, along the Saint-Denis canal – where Metro.co.uk met Julien, Abou and Namawa – was an area used by migrants to take refuge under.
Under the bridge, next to the Aime Cesaire metro station, there were between 300 and 500 tents pushed against each other.
As part of the preparations for the Olympics, French authorities evicted them and removed all their belongings.
Instead of the tents, there are large LEGO-like blocs of concrete with spikes on top of them to ensure that no one can sleep there.
This is an operation that has been repeated again and again across encampments in Paris, targeting up to 12,500 families living in shelters, migrants, homeless and sex workers.
It was all part of Macron’s plan to showcase France’s grandeur during the Games.
Some people were relocated to temporary accommodation in Paris, others were put on buses and driven to cities like Marseille and Lyon, as there are not enough shelters in the capital.
No temporary solution has been offered by the government and for the majority of victims, their future remains bleak.
Aurelia Huot, lawyer at the Paris Solidarity Bar, told Metro.co.uk: ‘In the last few months, the French government has organised what we call social cleansing.
‘It concerns all people who live and work in the streets, who it does not want tourists to see – migrants, homeless, drug users and even sex workers. They are just pushed away instead of being taken care of.
‘We are not against the Olympics; we share a lot of values like solidarity and friendship between people from different countries.
‘But if 1% of the budget for the Olympics had been dedicated to social issues, we could have offered proper housing to people. If a small budget was dedicated to this, we could have offered an actual dignified solution.
‘Right now, we do not know what has happened to these people. They are not to be seen anywhere. This has a very dangerous impact as many have health issues, which are not being taken care of.’
At Place de la République in central Paris, a popular square for protests, activists gathered to show their solidarity with the victims and to shame authorities for ‘playing ping pong’ with their lives.
Several human rights groups were there for what they called ‘Counter Opening Ceremony’, giving speeches about the cost of the Olympics.
Various signs were dotted around the square. At the bottom of the monument, a giant banner was draped, reading ‘Jo de l’exclusion, 12,500 personnes éxpulsées’, translated to ‘The Games of Exclusion, 12,500 evicted’.
Nathan Lequeux, an organiser for the activist group Utopia 56, said: ‘They want to clean the city for the Olympic Games, for the tourists.
‘As treatment of migrants is becoming more horrible and infamous, people are being chased off the streets.
‘Since the Olympics, this aggressiveness, this policy of hunting has become more pronounced.’
A report released in June by the collective Le Revers de la Médaille, which represents 90 associations concluded that the Île-de-France region has been emptied of some of the people that ‘the powers that be consider undesirable’.
Christophe Noël Du Payrat, chief of staff of the regional government, has firmly denied those accusations.
He insisted that the government has relocated migrants from the city for years.
‘We are taking care of them,’ he said. ‘We do not really understand the criticism because we are very much determined to offer places for these people.’
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