Paris in Wintertime ©laverrue
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With the French economy in deep recession, the poor and homeless are crowding Paris’s doorways and metro entrances. In reaction to the rise of beggars outside Paris’s great landmarks, France’s President Nicolas Sarkozy has launched a war against the homeless in the city, setting himself against Paris’s very popular mayor.
The Champs Elysées was first landmark to institute a begging ban. The ban was to be temporarily in effect from September to January, but it has now been extended to next summer. Recently two more begging no-go zones have been created: around the famous Galeries Lafayette and Printemps department stores, as well as the Louvre and the Tuileries Gardens.
The anti-begging campaign has been characterized as the latest round in Sarkozy’s xenophobic campaign against Roma and Gypsies. Sarkozy’s interior minister and right-hand man, Claude Guéant, claimed that the anti-begging decrees were part of a “merciless fight” against “Romanian criminality”. Guéant further asserts that Romanian criminals account for one in six appearances in Paris courts and half of those arrested were minors.
But the Socialist mayor of Paris–and one of France’s most popular politicians–Bertrand Delanoe, called it a cheap “PR stunt” designed only to “stigmatise part of the population”. He claims that Sarkozy and Guéant are targeting some of Paris’s richest areas while ignoring the root of the problem in other neighborhoods.
Read more at the Guardian.