Paris is the host of the 2024 Summer Olympic Games, the values of which are excellence, respect, and friendship. But there is a deep irony there, because Paris is abandoning those values when it comes to its very own people: it is rounding up thousands of homeless people and
spiriting them away to faraway, strange cities where no support is waiting.
Sign the petition and demand that the president of the International Olympic Committee, Thomas Bach, demand that Paris stop the inhumanity!France's two-faced move is deplorable: show off the magnificence of the nation's capital to the international community at the Olympics, while casting out people who have fallen victim to the nation's most cruel shortcomings.
A country is only as good as the way it treats its most vulnerable people.Over the last year,
police have conducted terrifying raids on encampments, abandoned buildings, and on city streets. They have rounded up thousands of people to expel, giving them no choice as to where they're going or if they can stay. France's government claims that this is all totally voluntary.
But if you were told to get on a bus without knowing where it was going, what was waiting for you there, or if you could ever come back, would YOU volunteer? People who were rounded up said they thought they had no choice, especially with police surrounding and intimidating them.
People were promised help, permanent housing, and social services. But they were also unknowingly entered into a government program to screen for immigration status,
which makes many refugees and immigrants ineligible for actual help. Some immigrants were even scheduled for deportation through this process! Imagine being told that if you got on a bus, you would receive help and support, only to then be permanently deported.
The lies and cruelty are truly gutting.60% of bused people didn't ever receive permanent housing wherever they ended up. And the emergency housing doesn't last long either. People were typically evicted back out onto the streets after a short time…
homeless again but now in a new, strange city.France outrageously claims this isn't even about the Olympics. But a government email obtained by the New York Times literally said the effort was to "'identify people on the street in sites near Olympic venues' and move them before the Games."
The Olympics Games are meant to be about international respect and collaboration.
So the fact that Paris is using it as an excuse to victimize already vulnerable people, many of them immigrants from the international community, is appalling. We must demand that the International Olympics Committee (IOC) remind France that they will not tolerate the host of their games acting in such a way.
Sign to demand the IOC President defend the vulnerable people of Paris, and demand an end to the busing and deportation ahead of the Olympics!