As human rights activists threaten to take France to court over President Sarkozy’s decision to expel thousands of Roma, Andrew Thomas travels to a Paris camp to hear from the migrants themselves.
Sunday morning and a church service at a community whose days are numbered. The prayer here is that President Nicolas Sarkozy finds compassion.
The camp in La Courneuve, north of Paris, is on land owned by France’s railway company and has been here a year and a half.
Four weeks ago today those living here were served notice. Leave within a month or we will force you, says the eviction order. Fifty people have moved on, but 70 remain. From tonight, every moment will be a mere stay of execution.
With limited power, no running water and the communal toilet simply an open-air area of the camp it is not a hygienic place. A few cents are made scavenging through scrap metal or from begging on the streets.
They may not have much but those living here say it is far better than life in Romania.
President Sarkozy’s comments have worried people here. They take seriously his threat of deportation.
“He wants us to back to Romania. OK, we go – but how?” a camp member told Channel 4 News.
“We don’t have the money, we don’t have the possibility of survival. How? Please don’t look with eyes of discrimination.”
Channel 4 News was welcomed at the camp; an attempt to show that stereotypes about the French Roma are wrong. They are not bad people, they say, and pose no risk to their French neighbours.
It was though a different story at a camp in Pantin, next to Paris’ Peripherique main road.
We had just begun to film when young men emerged demanding money. They threatened us, and the camera, determined to get it turned off. Once it was, one said there’s a simple reason they’re here: get caught stealing a supermarket chicken in France and face a night in the cells; the same in Romania can cost two years in jail.
It is darker side to the Roma camps that President Sarkozy says he wants to rid France of.
But France is divided. A charity shop around the corner from the camp works with the Roma and helps raise money for them.
Muriel’s garden backs directly onto the Pantin camp and though she says the noise, smells and rats can be bad, and she’s had to put screens on all her windows because of the flies, she still doesn’t condemn her neighbours outright.
Midnight tonight will come with greater significance than normal. Those here are aware it will mark the beginning of the end.