At dawn connected August 14, seventy Roma were evicted from the location successful which they were squatting successful the metropolis of Montreuil, conscionable southbound of Paris. Fourteen men were separated from their wives and children and placed into constabulary custody. As evening neared, the men near the constabulary presumption aft each had been handed an authoritative document: an Obligation to Leave the French Territory (OQTF), a month’s announcement to battalion their bags.
OQTF presented to Roma men
The papers intelligibly states the crushed for their expulsion: they’ve lived successful France for implicit 3 months, person insufficient fiscal resources to enactment and nary household obligations successful the country. In accordance with European law, this gives France capable crushed to request their departure.
The group’s lawyers, Helene Clement and Guillaume Traynard, deliberation otherwise. The documents issued to the 14 Roma families are identical, prevention the blank abstraction wherever their names and dates of commencement were filled successful by hand. Clearly, Clement and Traynard, argue, French authorities person failed to cheque the presumption of each of the Roma.
The Montreuil eviction does not look to beryllium an isolated case. Since 2008 French migrant advocacy groups person voiced their interest implicit prewritten and identical declarations presented to each occupants of evacuated Roma camps crossed the country. “We can’t constitute it disconnected arsenic specified negligence by immoderate policemen. It is intelligibly a nationalist policy,” says Claudia Charles, who works with the French organisation Information and Support Group for Immigrants (GISTI).
French and European laws are wide connected this point: the idiosyncratic circumstances of each OQTF campaigner indispensable beryllium reviewed to find their ineligible status. “The lone happening these men person successful communal is that they beryllium to the Roma community,” says Traynard. “It’s an evident singling-out of a population.”
Among the 14 men, galore importune they person not spent 3 months successful France. Their assertion, however, is intolerable to verify. As European citizens, they person nary work to registry successful their big country, oregon to person their passports stamped erstwhile crossing the border.
The evicted Roma families are present surviving successful a location lent to them by the Montreuil metropolis authorities. Their lawyers person filed a question to overturn the OQTF’s issued connected August 14.
The Roma question
Sitting connected 1 of 4 treble beds that capable the main country connected the crushed floor, Badarut Lunca, 33, speaks jokingly astir his time astatine the constabulary station. “The translator told america we had to permission France, but we were not obligated to instrumentality to Romania. We tin conscionable spell to Belgium and return.” Like each his Roma friends, Lunca has nary volition of returning to Romania.
The European Roma Research Center (ERRC), a Budapest based pro-Roma advocacy group, says it has documented 5 cases identical to Montreuil’s successful the past 2 months. But its indictment of French authorities goes beyond bureaucratic negligence.
“The OQTF’s being churned retired are not the full story. When we talked to radical who had been handed the documents we recovered a wide clime of fearfulness and intimidation by instrumentality enforcement agents,” says Victoria Vasey, manager of ineligible affairs astatine ECRR.
On September 29, the European Commissioner for Justice, Viviane Reding, gave Paris an October 15th deadline to show that it is carrying retired Roma expulsions successful compliance with European law. “The Commission wants to cognize if France failed to instrumentality directives and the procedural rights of EU citizens successful a systematic way,” said
Reding’s spokesman, Matthew Newman.
An unsatisfactory response, the European Commission has warned, could compel it to instrumentality France to the European Court of Justice. But migrant rights groups fearfulness that for the involvement of appeasement, the Commission could bounds its probe to ineligible concerns. “Where France is blameworthy is successful its procedure,” decries GISTI’s Charles.
Burden of proof
“We volition bring distant each the evidence, each the indispensable guarantees, that determination was idiosyncratic introspection [of each Roma expulsion case] successful August," migration curate Eric Besson told France’s Senate tv transmission connected Wednesday.
Meanwhile, the lawyer Guillaume Traynard says his clients are “sure to win” since they are European citizens and are protected by EU laws. A tribunal successful Montreuil volition perceive their lawsuit aboriginal adjacent year.
In Montreuil the Roma families huddle astir their lawyer arsenic helium distributes a caller authoritative document. A tribunal insubstantial stating that an entreaty of their OQTF is nether consideration. “If the constabulary halt you, amusement them this. They cannot deport you with it,” explains the lawyer. Nodding arsenic they judge the document, the radical looks acold from convinced.
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