A heated row has broken out in France over the presence of Roma gypsies in the country.
A leaked note from a police chief called for police to ‘systematically evict’ gypsies in the classy sixth arrondissement of Paris.
The internal memo instructs police “day and night” to “locate Roma families living in the street and systematically evict them”. The author, a police chief in the sixth arrondissement, was said to have been written “on the orders” of his superiors.
French law holds that police may not stop or single out any population according to their “real or supposed nationality”.
Protests were made by a number of groups, including the Roma defence group La Voix des Roms. The Left-wing magistrates union SM denounced “the daily stigmatisation of certain categories of the population, relegated to the rank of sub-citizens”.
But the local mayor said it was not the note which shocked him but rather it was seeing “Roma families in the street with very young children, which is unacceptable from a human and social point of view”.
Police say the Roma presence has increased in the 6th arrondissement because they have been chased out of neighbouring areas.
“It’s musical chairs”, an official with the police union told Le Parisien. “We chase the Roma from one place to another, from one arrondissement to another and it resolves nothing”.
The uproar brought an intervention from the country’s interior minister who said that the note had been “rectified” but that the police had respected the law and were obliged to “fight illegal begging and the exploitation of minors and prevent families with young children from sleeping in the street”.
Last year, a record 20,000 Roma were expelled by French authorities. An Amnesty International report accused French police of using excessive force against Roma people, especially when evicting them from illegal camps.
