The protesters of the Maison des Ensembles

The last photograph that I took of the weekly protests of the "undocumented immigrants of the Maision des Ensembles" is dated January 11 2003. After that date I no longer went to Paris on Saturdays often enough to provide an account of the determination of this group of around forty men who were demanding the right to live decently in France. I stopped taking the pictures which I had started on September 8 2001, but I continued to follow their story from afar. For example, during a report broadcast on France 2 on the increase in temporary work I saw one of the protesters who was filmed entering a temporary employment agency. I said to myself, that's great, he finally got his working papers (after four years of protests). Also, an article published in the newspaper l'Humanité on June 24 2003 entitled "The Maison des Ensembles evacuated by the police" reminded me that decidedly, the protesters situation had not been resolved.

The journalist Jacques Cortie wrote in his article that "the evacuation operation of this nerve center in the struggle of undocumented immigrants started at dawn. All the streets leading to the Maison were blocked. A total of seven police vehicles, four of which were buses, blocked access to the rue d'Aligre from the rue de Charenton, rue Malot, rue de Cotte, and the market square. Then, at 6:00 am, law enforcement forces intervened. Mamadou Traoré, a 38 year-old Malian who is a spokesperson for the Autonomous collective of documented immigrants, said: "There were about 200 of us inside. The police forced open the doors and yelled, 'Everyone out!' Some of the occupants were manhandled, and very few people were able to collect their belongings. Since then the police and their vehicles have prevented us from going back." "We are like sheep", said one of the evacuees, "My immigration file is inside: how am I going to get it back?"

"In front of the police bus at the corner of the rue de Charenton", Jacques Cortie wrote, "where the evacuees and their supporters gathered, the incomprehension was complete: the evacuation was not followed by any checking of identity papers and nobody was arrested. 'The want to destroy the center of social struggle that the Maison represents', said Larbi Fertani, one of the collective's delegates. Around them and on the sidewalks in front of the café Le Rössli, around thirty people were sitting, looking rather disoriented. Some of them were able to grab a plastic bag holding their belongings, maybe a suitcase; but now what could they do? Where could they go?"

After that I heard nothing more until October 23 2003 when I learned on the website Indymedia Paris that after the evacuation of the rue d'Aligre the collective had gone and occupied an empty building at 104 rue des Couronnes, which had just been evacuated by the police that very morning. At that time the last "undocumented immigrants" of the Maison des Ensembles were 14 in number. They were arrested again. I learned their names: DIARRA Ibrahima, DIARRA Ntigui, SAMASSA Tombé, DOUMBOUYA Chekhné, BAKAYOKO Chekhna, TOUNKARA Mody, DIAWARA Thierno, TRAORE Moriba, BANE Boubou, BA Samba Mamadou, CAMARA Bouyagui, KEITA Souleymane, KONATE Ansoumane, STELLA Damien.

On October 24 at 6:30 pm, also on Indymedia Paris, I learned that six of them had been freed by the judge due to incorrect arrest procedure, two remained in detention in Vincennes, and one accepted a voluntary repatriation. The others would appear in court on October 25. On October 27 at 9:56 pm, Indymedia revealed that the five remaining protesters were also freed for the same reasons: the arrest procedure had been incorrect. The Ministry of the Interior decided to appeal the judge's ruling.

It was only the next day that the court would decide whether or not to uphold the deportation decrees issued by the Prefecture. Since then there has been no more news.