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Via Workers World News Service
Reprinted from the Sept. 5, 1996
issue of Workers World newspaper
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Protest French police raid on immigrants

By John Catalinotto

A government attack on African immigrants in Paris Aug. 23 has led to a broader struggle by immigrants, unions and working-class parties against the right-wing regime of French President Jacques Chirac.

Some 210 immigrants, including 68 children, had been staying in the Roman Catholic church of St. Bernard de la Chapelle, demanding permission to live and work in France legally. Many of the immigrants are from Mali or Senegal, two countries that are former French colonies and are now in the French economic zone, with their currency tied to the French franc.

Operating on government orders, police beat their way into the church early Aug. 23 and brought the 210 immigrants to a detention center. They did not allow reporters to contact them at first.

Among the demonstrators at the church were 10 engaged in a 52-day hunger strike demanding the right to stay in France. Police brought them to two military hospitals and forcibly ended the hunger strike.

Like the U.S.

Just as workers from Mexico, Central America and the Caribbean nations tend to emigrate to the dominant imperialist power in the region-the United States-so do Africans from the former French colonies try to emigrate to France.

And just as both ultra-rightists and opportunistic politicians like California Gov. Pete Wilson scapegoat Latino and other immigrants in the U.S., so do the French rightists blame African and Arab immigrants for every problem in French capitalist society.

The immigrants had attracted support from the French left. Hundreds had gathered around the church in an attempt to stop the police raid. Following the arrests, thousands rallied at the Place de la Republique in an evening protest demonstration.

The government is attempting to enforce reactionary immigration laws passed in 1993 under the sponsorship of Charles Pasqua, the then interior minister and a notorious right winger. Chirac is playing to anti-immigrant sentiment and aggravating it.

Following the arrests, however, the government has had a hard time making all the expulsion orders stick. A Paris court ruled on Aug. 26 that three of the 10 who had been on hunger strike could not be expelled.

Lawyers got most of the 210 immigrants released from custody over the weekend as they opened a legal battle to keep them in the country.

But some of the immigrants have already been deported to their countries of origin, which include Senegal, Mali and Zaire. Some others were jailed for two to three months.

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