Nonprofits and local officials say the 2024 Games event is failing a pledge to be ‘first ever inclusive and socially responsible’ event of its kind.

French authorities are ridding the capital of “everything that doesn’t fit into the ‘Emily in Paris’ postcard” ahead of this summer’s Olympic Games, human rights groups are warning.

At around 6 a.m. on Tuesday across from Paris’ iconic city hall, about 80 unhoused asylum seekers were evacuated by the French police from one of the many makeshift camps set up around the French capital. The scene took place just a few steps from the River Seine — where the opening ceremony of the Summer Games will take place in late July.

The camp’s residents were offered alternative solutions and temporary shelter, but with a downside: relocating to the city of Angers, more than 160 miles away from Paris.

Most of the dwellers had tried and failed to receive recognition as undocumented minors upon arriving in France, and now face ongoing legal proceedings that would be further complicated by any relocation, on-site nonprofit representatives told reporters.

  • Bartsbigbugbag@lemmy.mlEnglish
    16·
    7 months ago

    I heard they’re having to hire retired people for security for the Olympics because all the unions are boycotting them over the retirement law macron pushed through. There’s also the fact that the river the Olympians are supposed to swim in is dirty and polluted. Also major plans for labor actions to shut down the airports and other places. They’re throwing students out of student housing to house the athletes. The people who are supposed to make the medals are on strike, so there will be no medals for the athletes. They’re trying to get students to drive the subways because the subway workers are planning on striking. It’s going to be a shitshow, and no one should go and support the Olympic Games unless they plan on being stuck in Paris.

  • Flying Squid@lemmy.worldMEnglish
    151·
    7 months ago

    Sounds familiar. Olympics don’t only give cities a chance to get rid of its homeless, it gives them a chance to get rid of all the poor and “undesirable” people they want.

    https://ceasefiremagazine.co.uk/olympics-opportunity-cleanse-city/

    The 1996 Atlanta Olympics resulted in the demolishing of 2,000 public housing units – evicting 6,000 residents, in addition to the 30,000 residents who were displaced as a direct result of gentrification brought on by the Olympic ‘development’. Indeed, as if to say that the poor and black of Atlanta had not suffered enough, the city issued over 9,000 arrest citations for the city’s homeless population as part of a concerted ‘clean up’ effort, a kind of ‘two-week face lift’.

    At the time, the New York Times reported that the Atlanta urban renewal projects saw ‘virtually every aspect of Atlanta’s civic life transformed’. In the Summerhill neighborhood adjacent to the Olympic stadium, for example, 200 slum houses had been levelled, while “clean, colorful subdivisions have risen in their place”. As one business owner candidly explained, speaking of the poor and homeless “even if it means busing these poor guys to Augusta for three weeks and feeding them, we ought to do it. It sounds very brutal for me to say it, but they can’t stay here for the Olympics.”