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French Riot Police Scuffle With African Immigrant Squatters

By Ian Brockwell  

A video that shows French riot police dragging immigrant women along the ground (with babies on their backs) during an eviction has caused outrage in France and produced strong criticism from other countries.

According to MRAP, a leading human rights group, the people in the video had all been expelled from previous housing.

Whilst no one can deny that the video is disturbing and considerable forced was used, we should perhaps look a little deeper into how this situation arose.

Firstly, we are talking about "squatters", people who illegally take up residence in properties that do not belong to them, pay no rent or taxes, and almost certainly have no jobs.

We should also question the sanity of the mothers who put their children (and in one case an unborn child) in harms way, perhaps knowing that the police would use force. Would any normal mother do this?

Clearly, the immigrants involved in this video were hoping that the police would not evict them if they used their children in such a way. Had they been successful, many others would have used the same tactics to break the law.

There are many thousands of people who have been evicted over the years, not just in France, but in many other countries as well. It is not a nice situation to be in, but very few resort to sitting on the road with babies in protest.

Politicians in France, and the media, have attacked a number of new government proposals that target immigrants suspected of crimes.

Immigration is becoming a serious problem in many countries, especially those that have taken a more lenient stance with immigrants in the past (like France, Britain and even the United States). The willingness of countries like these to "do the right thing" has led to some taking advantage of the system and abusing the benefits on offer.

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Obviously, this puts a considerable strain on resources and angers those that have to support these people with the taxes they pay. Nobody wants to see women and children dragged along the ground, but do they want their country to be blackmailed into allowing this abuse, just because these women are prepared to put their children at risk to get what they want?

I remember watching a documentary recently about a famine in Africa, and seeing pictures of children that were clearly starving (brought to a help centre by their mothers). According to the report, the children had not eaten for around 40 days and the images seemed to support this. Initially, my focus was of course on the children (as I'm sure it was for everybody who was watching), but then I noticed the mothers of these children, and wondered why the lack of food had not affected them. None of them showed any signs of starvation, in fact one appeared overweight. I can only conclude that the children were purposely neglected to attract more attention (or sympathy), to maximize the help they were seeking.

Admittedly, this situation is not true of all the famines we have witnessed in Africa, but it certainly was in this case. Most of the mothers I know would put their children first, no matter what the cost to themselves.

It is of course easy to condemn the French police for their actions in the video, but the mothers of the children involved can hardly be considered blameless. Parents using their children in such a way should face a criminal investigation, just as some of the police in the video will do.