PARIS - Some 15,000 demonstrators hit the streets of Paris August 28, for the third time in a week, to support the struggle of 300 undocumented workers who were brutally expelled from the St. Bernard church five days earlier.

The immigrants, mostly from Africa, had been occupying the church demanding regular residency papers. More than 200 of them were arrested.

As the march began at the Place de la République (Republic square), two French military planes took off from a heavily guarded base with their cargoes of undocumented immigrants being deported to Tunisia, Mali, Senegal, and Zaire. This was the second such convoy this week. By the beginning of September, seven of those occupying the church have been expelled along with several hundred other immigrants. Since January, 7,500 immigrants have been deported from France.

To the great embarrassment of the government, mass pressure forced the courts to order the release of almost all of the 200 immigrants arrested during the police assault on the St. Bernard church.

In great haste, the regime rushed the deportation of seven immigrants only to find they had mistakenly sent two citizens of Senegal to Mali and that another deportee was the father of a French citizen and is technically a legal resident.

Berké Camara, a political refugee from Mauritania, was one of the three last protesters being detained by police. "At 8 o'clock in the morning I was told `you are free,' " he said. "But the police put me in a bus and took me to Roissy airport. There, I insisted that I did not want to be returned to Mauritania. The passengers started to get out of the plane to see what was going on and the police were getting a little embarrassed. So they took me back." The next morning Camara walked out of the courtroom in Bobigny a free man.

The police now say they will have Camara tried for another "crime" - refusing to get on the plane. They say he could be imprisoned for three years.

Demonstrations similar to the one in Paris took place in cities around France at the end of August. Prominent in the Paris actions were the large banners by the CGT and CFDT union confederations.

Behind the union banner of a contingent of civil servants from the Labor Ministry, Olivier Chazy said that this was his third march that week. "The other two demonstrations were about the same size as this one," he said. He agreed with the remarks of many other protesters that this fall would be "hot" for the government of prime minister Alain Juppé.

Two days later, workers at Air France demonstrated at Charles de Gaulle airport protesting the use of an Air France chartered plane in the deportations.

In addition to the undocumented workers movement, unions are now meeting to plan a series of actions this fall around layoffs, wage freezes, plant closures, and other questions. Teachers, civil servants, workers in defense plants, bank employees, garment and textile workers, and workers in gas and electric plants are among those concerned. Farmers, particularly cattle raisers, have also been demonstrating for compensation from the collapse of beef prices in the wake of the "mad cow" disease controversy.

A group of African workers in the August 28 demonstration saw the opportunities that have opened since the strike wave last December. Their banner said "Never Again Alone." They also carried a second banner that read, simply, "Resistance."  
 
 
Front page (for this issue) | Home | Text-version home