UN rights chief urges France to stop Roma evictions
A senior United Nations official has criticized French authorities for what he described as a "systematic national policy" in France to evict Roma people, calling on President Francois Hollande's Socialist government to stop the controversial expulsion policy.
"It is becoming increasingly apparent that there is a systematic national policy to forcibly evict the Roma," the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Zeid Ra’ad al- Hussein, said on Friday.
He added, "I call on France to replace this punitive and destructive policy with a policy of genuine inclusion."
“A failure to improve treatment of Roma people simply exacerbates entrenched popular discrimination against what is already one of Europe's most deprived and marginalized communities," Hussein noted.
The senior US official was specifically pointing to the August 28 eviction of more than 150 Roma people from a shantytown in the northern Paris suburb of La Courneuve.
The French government justifies acts of evacuation by declaring that gypsy camps are spreading prostitution and trafficking across the country, and Roma community might be stigmatizing the whole country.
Amnesty International says the French police regularly harass and use violence against the Roma, citing several examples of police brutality against the community, including spraying tear gas inside tents where children were sleeping and beating up one man in Marseille in southern France.
According to the rights group, many of France’s 20,000 Roma people live in extreme poverty in makeshift settlements with little or no access to basic services, and at constant risk of forced evictions.
Amnesty also says many of the 10-12 million Roma living in Europe face “the daily threat of forced eviction, police harassment and violent attacks.”
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