She fears a risk for respect for rights and freedoms.
This Monday, Rights Defender Claire Hédon takes up the issue of requisitioned student accommodation and the evacuation of homeless people in anticipation of the Paris Olympic Games this summer.
Read alsoIn Île-de-France, emergency accommodation is preparing for competition… from the Olympic Games
Accusations of “social cleansing”
“There may be a risk for respect for rights and freedoms in a context like that of the Olympics, we are vigilant and we will investigate,” declared Claire Hédon.
She is interested in the accusations weighing on the authorities, in the light of several measures targeting precarious populations in the Ile-de-France region, with students and the homeless at the top of the list.
Several associations criticize a “social cleansing” of the Paris region in order to “clear the way” before the Games.
Migrants in camps, workers' hostels, homeless people, sex workers, people living in slums... Would be subject to unfair measures.
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“The way in which homeless people are sent outside of Paris to accommodation centers, the way in which homes are destroyed” while there is an “obligation to re-housing”.
All this raises the question of “the invisibility of undesirables”, estimated Claire Hédon, whose “recommendations” resulting from this self-referral are expected in April at the earliest.
The survey will also focus on the situation of students in Île-de-France.
By the Olympics, 2,000 of them will be relocated.
In question, the fact that hundreds of Crous housing units are requisitioned for firefighters, caregivers, law enforcement and civil security.
Rights Defender Claire Hédon announced that she had taken up the issue of requisitioned student accommodation and the evacuation of homeless people in preparation for the 2024 Paris Olympic Games #AFP pic.twitter.com/dRn9jj92ue
— Agence France-Presse (@afpfr) January 29, 2024
The prefecture defends itself
The prefecture of the Île-de-France region rejected these accusations.
In December, she assured that the State had not set itself a “zero homeless” objective, as certain associations formulated it.
Conversely, she indicated that she wanted to release “additional emergency accommodation places” to leave a “social legacy”.
Claire Hédon recalls that the idea of such a survey is above all to look at what will be offered to people who will be displaced for the Games.
“What is the reality for students, when are they asked to leave their rooms, are they offered accommodation?
», she wonders, especially since “in the summer, these young people do internships and student jobs”.
Read alsoOJ 2024: high school students recruited to ensure security around the Olympic sites
Freedom to demonstrate and use of AI also scrutinized
The “more general questions of freedom to come and go within the framework of the Olympic Games”, as well as “the use of artificial intelligence”, are also part of the fields of referral, specified the Defender of Rights, while like that of “freedom to demonstrate”.