In Paris, for more than a month, a disused school in the very chic 16th arrondissement has been occupied by young migrants who come mostly from West Africa. Since the start of the occupation, this school has become the target of the far right, which has multiplied demonstrations in front of its doors.
Mamadi Traoré is waiting to pass under the mower of a friend who came like him from Guinea. ” There are Guineans, Cameroonians, Ivorians, Malians, Senegalese too… There are many of us here! They are about 400 to sleep every night in the rooms of this small school in the 16th arrondissement, against 230 on April 4 when the Utopia association took them out of the street where they had been sleeping for several weeks or several months. A dozen or even twenty newcomers arrive every day. And the list of nationalities drawn up by Mamadi Traoré is not exhaustive.
Moussa Diallo comes from Gambia. After Libya and crossing the Mediterranean, it was via Spain that he came last January. But since he didn’t speak Spanish, he went to France. A piece of mirror in his hands, he is shaving. ” Frankly, if I had known, I would have stayed in Spain. I was better received. Here, if we don’t have papers, we don’t eat well and we don’t sleep well, he complains. We don’t know where to go, we ask for help from the state. »
But it’s not just well-meaning people towards them. As if their situation wasn’t already difficult enough, the intimidations have followed one another since their arrival. On Tuesday evening, members of a far-right group gathered outside the school gates to cries of “go home” or “clandestine expulsions”. ” These demonstrations were difficult for us. We are here, we do nothing. We only come here to eat and sleep “, continues Moussa Diallo.
What they are all waiting for, or almost: it is the result of the appeal they have brought before the juvenile judge to be recognized as unaccompanied minors after having been considered as adults by the social assistance for children.