A banner was displayed on the gates of Pantin Town Hall during the week. Porte de la Villette crack camp: for 365 days, the Minister of the Interior [Gérarld Darmanin] lies to us”, can we read there, with an electronic counter ticking the days.
It is in front of this banner that dozens of inhabitants of the neighborhood, with signs “Treat them, protect us”, met on Saturday, September 24, at the call of the 93 Anti-Crack association and Mayor Bertrand Kern (Socialist Party, PS), for a march against the installation of a camp for crack users in Square Forceval, near the Porte de la Villette, for a year.
Joined by residents of Aubervilliers and 19e arrondissement of Paris, as well as their respective mayors, Karine Franclet (Union of Democrats and Independents, UDI) and Francois Dagnaud (PS), they were some 450 people to converge towards the “wall of shame”built end of September 2021 and supposed to prevent « crackers » to join Pantin.
Two days earlier, at this same place, the three elected officials also held a press conference to announce their decision to seize the Defender of Rights, Claire Hédon. “Constitutional rights and freedoms are no longer guaranteed by the State in this district in a situation unworthy of the French Republic”warned Bertrand Kern, encouraging all his injured fellow citizens to do the same.
“A real hell”
In the crowd this Saturday, all are desperate to celebrate this anniversary of inaction. On September 24, 2021, local residents watched helplessly as the transfer of a hundred crack users from the Jardin d’Eole (18e district) at Square Forceval. On September 28 in the National Assembly, Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin affirmed that the situation would only last “a few hours, a few days”.
Today, 150 people sleep in this camp and about 600 pass through there during the day. According to the prefecture, the place had the advantage, unlike the Jardin d’Eole, of having no dwellings in the strictly immediate surroundings. “Today, 25,000 people live in the district, in particular Villette-Quatre Chemins, who are living a real hell and who are suffering”s’alarme Bertrand Kern.
“We really feel like under-citizens, enrages Thibault Mahiet, from the Villette Village collective, who has lived there for twenty-eight years. They landed here because we’re a popular immigrant neighborhood. We have the impression that this authorizes them to ransack everything since it is a district where the authorities have never put a lot of money. »
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