Paris Gives Free Rein to Tensions in Refugee Camps to Justify Deportations - NGO

PARIS (Sputnik) - French authorities connive in an escalation of tensions in refugee camps in order to justify deportations, Yann Manzi, the co-founder of the Utopia 56 nongovernmental organization (NGO), told Sputnik.

"The state let this decay happen, saw to the escalation of the situation and prevented Paris mayor’s office to take care of it. This is a political problem, the problem at the level of the government… And the government let the situation deteriorate so that they can tell the public ‘the camps degenerate, we need to expulse migrants, they are unmanageable, violence occurs’. So this is used by the government to escalate the situation in order to serve its discourse of deportation policy," Manzi said.

The NGO official added that the French authorities resort to harsh steps as for migrants because they would like to gather the support of right-wing voters.

According to Manzi, it is possible to solve the problems of refugees and to improve their living conditions in migrant camps.

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Thousands of migrants are currently spread around the French capital. Paris authorities and the central government have a different stance on migrants, while Paris’ Mayor Anne Hidalgo takes steps to ensure the rights of migrants, while the Interior Ministry has held operations to evacuate migrant camps. These operations have been repeatedly criticized by Hidalgo.

Since 2015, European countries, including France, have been experiencing the worst migration crisis since World War II, struggling to accommodate hundreds of thousands of refugees and migrants fleeing hostilities in the Middle Eastern and North African countries.