A slum evacuated Grenoble – Le Figaro

Slum housing some 300 people, including many children, were evacuated early this morning in Grenoble by a large police device, at the request of the municipality EELV-Left Party, said a journalist. Camp residents, who were the subject of an order of discharge taken by the Mayor of Grenoble Monday were only about 150 to the arrival of the police this morning. They were placed on buses and sent to different places in the city for their relocation. Fifty people had to be supported by the mayor and 90 by the State. Five persons, subject to an obligation to leave French territory, were taken to the administrative detention center in Lyon.

By midmorning, excavators began to destroy makeshift homes. Located in a suburb of Grenoble, near a shopping center, the “slum Esmonin” which had up to 400 people, including 200 minors, provoked strong tensions with neighbors for several months. The dismantling of the camp was announced in mid-May by the mayor of Grenoble environmentalist Eric Piolle who says he wants to guarantee “human security”, the “mafias” it being developed. “We can not bring himself to leave the world in this state, to see him back slums like in the 60s,” said this morning on France Inter Eric Piolle asked about the evacuation. “Nobody will sleep outside tonight or in the coming days,” he has said, denouncing the “inhuman conditions” in this slum.

Some 150 mobile police and gendarmes were deployed in front camp Wednesday morning, said a journalist from AFP. “This took place peacefully. We have shown the strength to avoid having to use it, “said the prefect of Isere John Paul Bonnetain. “There was no physical violence, there has been no destruction of property and people but still there is a symbolic violence: this awesome device is necessarily traumatic,” criticized Jo Briant, activist CISEM (Isère Coordination of solidarity with migrants foreigners) and Eric Piolle running mate in the last municipal elections. Before his election, Eric Piolle was cofounder of a group to help undocumented families in Grenoble. After the evacuation of the slum, “he wanted everyone to be relocated but it encountered” the opposition of other local authorities, according to Jo Briant.