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News server Romea.cz. Everything about Roma in one place

France: Mayoral candidate for 6th arrondissement of Paris would "concentrate" Gypsies in "camps"

10 March 2014
2 minute read

Paul-Marie Coûteaux, a candidate for the fringe CIEL party (which stands for "Sovereignty, Independence and Freedom") linked to the  anti-EU and anti-immigrant National Front (FN) party, has compared the presence of Romani people in Paris to an "invasion of lepers" undermining the city’s "aesthetic order". In a blog posting dated 19 February, Coûteaux wrote:  "What can the interior minister do other than concentrate these foreign populations into camps where they would no doubt feel that life there is so far removed from their traveling lifestyle that they would rather leave such an inhospitable country."

A French rights group called SOS Racism stated last Monday that it was planning to initiate court proceedings against Coûteaux for his "flagrant" and "anti-republican" statements. In a subsequent interview for the French news server Metronews.fr, Côuteaux said his words had been misunderstood.

"If people have misinterpreted my use of the word ‘camps’, then I am sorry," the candidate said."I am a Catholic and a Gaullist… how could I be calling for the creation of concentration camps in the year 2014?"

In that same interview he proposed two possible "solutions for how to dispose of the Romani question". The first proposal was "to shut these people into administrative interception centers", which are currently being used to accommodate illegal immigrants.

However, Côuteaux also stated that he had visited one such center and found it to be horrible and inhumane. In his view, a second "more rational, humane and reasonable" solution would be "to suspend the Schengen Agreement", which facilitates freedom of movement within the European Union.

French daily Le Parisien asked Wallerand de Saint-Just, the FN spokesperson who is running for mayor of Paris in the local elections this month, about Côuteaux’s statement. The FN candidate said he was "not in a position" to criticize Côuteaux but that he himself "would not have expressed it exactly like that". 

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