FRENCH police yesterday ejected nearly 300 African immigrants occupying a Paris gymnasium to demand residency permits, triggering angry protests by human rights activists.
In the second mass eviction in three days, hundreds of police swooped at dawn on the gymnasium where the demonstrators, many of them with their families, had been sheltering since being forced out of a nearby church last Friday.
Police said 294 people, including 77 women and 100 children, were detained. They said many were later released and 63 people without children were being held pending expulsion for illegal entry into France. Some 150 human rights activists who tried to stop police were briefly held for identity checks.
The Paris police chief, Mr Philippe Massoni, led the swoop on the immigrants, whose protest against stringent immigration laws had become increasingly embarrassing for the government. The swoop came a day after the Prime Minister, Mr Alain Juppe, pledged to maintain a tough stance on immigration.
Abbe Pierre, a popular Catholic priest and campaigner for the destitute, angrily accused Mr Juppe of breaking a pledge not to eject the protesters. "If he has no authority over his interior minister, let him leave his job to someone else," Abbe Pierre told reporters.
Mr Juppe's office acknowledged that he had telephoned Abbe Pierre but denied he had made such a promise. It said Mr Juppe ordered police to clear the gymnasium to avoid possible violence and that authorities would carefully study the legal status of each of the protesting families.
The Group of Information and Support to Immigrant Workers (GISTI) accused the government of breaking the law and said many of the African protesters were entitled to residency permits.
In further embarrassment for the government, a court released 40 Africans who were detained after they were evicted from Paris's Saint Ambroise church on Friday. The court ruled that their ejection from the church was illegal as it had taken place before 6 a.m., the earliest hour allowed for eviction under the law.
The protesters were seeking residency permits, arguing that they had been in France for years and some had children who were born there.
GISTI accused Archbishop Jean Marie Lustiger of Paris of giving the protesters "the kiss of Judas" for allowing police into the church despite the Catholic Church's tradition of asylum. Police said they had acted because of deplorable sanitary conditions in the church and accused the immigrants of refusing to negotiate with them.
France has at least four million legal foreign residents and up to one million others believed to be in the country illegally.