PARIS—They are the undesirables, the displaced, Les Misérables. But most of all they’re out of sight. A bus ticket to somewhere else is just about all that this city’s homeless — migrants, transients, asylum seekers, the shuffling desperados — have been offered, their existence scrubbed from view in advance of the .
Take it or leave it. But leave. and bridge underpasses of Paris as “social cleansing.
’’ Over the past few months and especially in recent weeks, and the most vulnerable souls made to move along, as far away as possible from the Olympic spectacle. Officials are intent on showcasing the grandeur of France and the beauty of Paris. There’s no room in that pretty postcard scene for the destitute and the sleeping rough.
“People were living here a week ago,’’ Paul Alauzy was saying on Thursday, pointing to the cement structures — they look like giant Lego blocks, with a knobby surface, by design impossible to sit or lie upon — that have been affixed to the ground beneath Pont de Stains bridge that spans the Canal Saint-Denis on the outskirts of the city. “They’d already been expelled from the city centre, pushed out here. Then they were pushed away again, all the tents torn down.
We had a warning but it was still shocking. “This really represents social cleansings in a nutshell.’’ Upwards of 120 people got booted from this location alone, hundreds more along a series of five canal bridges.
Colourful screens were dropped from the ov.