Police in Paris accused of brutality

Dallas Sun Saturday 31st July, 2010

A video has surfaced showing scenes of alleged police brutality against migrant woman and children in Paris.

In the video, a woman is dragged along the pavement with a baby on her back while in other scenes police are seen forcibly removing women amid the cries of their children.

The video, which records an incident that, reportedly, lasted around thirty minutes, was filmed last Wednesday when police were sent into the suburb of La Courneuve in Paris to evict mostly West African migrants from the area.

The group has been peacefully living on the street outside the council homes from which they were evicted to clear the way for a development project.

It was this eviction that they’d been opposing.

Michael Hajdenberg, a journalist with the French media organization Mediapart told CNN that the group comprised of around 60 woman and young children and that they’d been offered temporary accommodation in hotels, but resisted as they wanted a more permanent solution.

The woman and children were predominantly from the Ivory Coast, a principal former colony of France and a major source of resources and forced-labor for the French empire in the 19th and 20th centuries.

In one scene, a women with a baby tied to her back (a popular form of carrying children in some African cultures) is dragged along the pavement by police, causing her baby to fall out of its blanket.

The baby is quickly picked up by a policeman after hitting the pavement.

The scenes were filmed by French rights group, DAL, despite efforts by the police to impose a media blackout over the area in which the protest breakup was taking place.

According to a statement issued by French police, the eviction of illegal squatters is never “a simple procedure” adding that “the situation of the evicted squatters is currently being examined to see if they can be re-housed depending on different criteria”.