African community demands safer homes

Thousands of Parisians demonstrated on Aug. 28 to protest the deaths of 17 African immigrants, 14 of them children, in a fire that gutted their decrepit apartment house on Aug. 25 in the southern part of the city. Another 23 people were injured.

Protesters in Paris, Aug. 28.

“Housing for all,” the demonstrators shouted, and “A roof, that’s the law” and “Government—murderer.” Various housing organizations called the action in front of the building, which was blackened and cracked by the blaze.

The protesters’ rage was fueled by the memory that in April another fire in a similar building holding poor African immigrants killed 24 people. Then, on Aug. 29, another worn-out building in Paris housing Africans burned, killing two more people.

Paris protest.

The victims this time were immigrants from Mali, Senegal, Ivory Coast and Gambia. These countries are former colonies of France that still are tied economically to French imperialism, reinforced by language. Just as many people from Mexico, Central America and the Caribbean are forced to migrate to the United States to find work, so do many Africans go to France.

According to a law passed in 1945, the government is required to replace defunct apartments in Paris with adequate housing affordable by the poor and people living in precarious situations. Trade unions and housing associations continue to demand that this law be applied, but the city has lagged in replacing housing over the last decade.

In addition, African immigrants face the rightist government’s indifference to the poor as well as the racism of more reactionary elements, in and outside official circles.

The people in the buildings that burned, as well as many others, have been placed in dangerous run-down hotels, similar to welfare housing in U.S. cities where such housing exists. Some homeless in Paris have been waiting for relocation since 1991.

One tenant said that in some apartments 12 people lived in three rooms. Chil dren often roamed the halls. Overall, 130 people, including 30 adults and 100 children, had been staying in the seven-story building near Place d’Italie.

Now they are lodged in a gymnasium near by. They said they prefer to stay to gether and organize rather than leave the gymnasium individually. They will wait for adequate housing instead, spokespersons said.