France deports record number of Roma

France forcibly evicted a record 19,380 Roma migrants in 2013 — more than double the figure from the previous year — two rights groups said in a joint report released Tuesday.

The France-based Human Rights League (LDH) and the Hungary-based European Roma Rights Center (ERRC) said the number was a startling increase from the 9,404 Roma evicted in 2012 and the 8,455 evicted in 2011.

"Forced evictions continued almost everywhere without credible alternative housing solutions or social support," they said.

France and many other Western European countries have been dealing with increased tensions between Roma — who often live in rundown areas on the edges of cities — and other residents. Lately the debate has become polarized, with more Roma being deported and far-right and leftist groups calling for their eviction.

The controversy has been especially palpable in France, where socialist President Francois Hollande, once thought a supporter of Roma rights, has taken a hard line on the ethnic group. Interior Minister Manuel Valls has said Roma are “different from us” and incapable of becoming integrated into French society.

Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius has opposed allowing Romania and Bulgaria — where many of France’s Roma come from — to join the European Union’s Schengen area, within which passport checks at border crossings are not required. The European Commission is deciding whether to allow the two countries to join the zone.

France’s far-right National Front, enjoying a recent surge in polls, has lambasted the idea of allowing more immigrants into the country.

There are an estimated 20,000 Roma — mostly migrants from Bulgaria or Romania — living in temporary, often illegal camps on the edges of French towns.

The report said that government policy requiring social assessments before evictions "is rarely implemented."

France has come under attack from rights groups over the current climate of hostility toward the ethnic group, especially after a 15-year-old Roma girl was taken off a school bus and deported with her family in October.

"This policy of rejection is ineffective, costly and unnecessary since nothing has changed after these evictions," said Pierre Tartakowsky, president of LDH. "Roma still live in France, in settlements they have rebuilt a little farther away, but their situation is increasingly insecure. The ongoing, increased evictions pave the way for the expression of extremism and anti-Roma racism."

ERRC chief Dezideriu Gergely called for an immediate end to forced evictions and for a "real integration policy for those people at risk of poverty or social exclusion."

The data showed that evictions peaked in summer but continued at a high rate in the last three months of the year. The report said 56 percent of the evictions took place in Paris and the surrounding region.

Al Jazeera and wire services