A report was made Monday to the General Inspectorate of the National Police (IGPN) after the release of a video showing a police officer spraying tear gas on the personal belongings of homeless migrants in Paris, AFP learned from concordant sources.

On a video relayed last week on Twitter by the association of aid to the exiles Utopia 56, viewed more than a million times, we see a CRS which broadcasts several jets of tear gas, including on a mattress on the floor in a makeshift camp under the aerial metro of north-east Paris.

"I was able to film practices that exist but always take place when your back is turned," an activist and independent observer who wants to call herself Ema told AFP.

"Three months" of observations

When questioned, the national police told AFP that the Republican Security Companies (CRS) have opened an administrative investigation into these facts, without specifying the date of opening of the investigation.

On March 9, when she saw a riot police spraying "several throws of mattresses and personal belongings hanging on a fence", it had been "three months" that the activist had been making "observations of daily police harassment" on sporadic camps in the north-east of the capital. "I expect these facts to be sanctioned and for it to serve as an example," she insisted.

The camp has not been dismantled since

"Street harassment is finally demonstrated," said Nikolai Posner, an official of Utopia 56 who accompanied the activist's approach. The association made a report Friday to the Defender of Rights Claire Hédon.

Since the release of the video, the camp at the foot of the Stalingrad metro "is no longer dismantled", observed Utopia 56, while for several weeks the homeless "were evacuated every morning".

Two days before the release of the video, "blankets and mattresses had been distributed" to the approximately "50 to 100 Afghan, Sudanese and Chadian asylum seekers who sleep there every night," Posner added.

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