New fire at French deportation centre for migrants
10:26 - 3/08/2008 Puntúa la noticia :
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PARIS (Reuters) - Immigrants awaiting deportation from France to their home countries set fire to their mattresses at a detention centre in Mesnil-Amelot, near Paris's Charles de Gaulle airport, police said in a statement late on Saturday.

The incident follows a more serious fire on June 22 thatalmost entirely destroyed France's biggest detention centre forillegal immigrants, at Vincennes on the outskirts of Paris,after a protest by people awaiting deportation.

Police said trouble started at the Mesnil-Amelot centre onSaturday after a group defending immigrant rights held aprotest just outside the facility, prompting people inside tostart their own protest and set fire to several mattresses.

The fire brigade arrived quickly and damage was verylimited, police said.

A member of SOS Sans-papiers, the group that held thedemonstration outside the centre, said the situation got out ofhand inside when police intervened to quell the protest byimmigrants. Police did not confirm this.

A Congolese immigrant held inside the Mesnil-Amelot centretold Reuters by telephone there was intense anger because mostof the people there had jobs and had been present in France forseveral years, even if they did not have residency papers.

"We are demanding the release of all the detainees," saidthe man, who did not wish to be named.

The Mesnil-Amelot centre has already been the scene ofclashes between police and immigrants awaiting deportation.There were a series of skirmishes last winter and some of theimmigrants went on hunger strike.

The opposition Socialist party said in a statement thatSaturday's events were not an isolated incident and there was a"climate of permanent tension" in immigrant detention centres.

"The government's unfair policies are creating unacceptableand dangerous situations, provoking the legitimate revolt offoreigners and those who are defending their rights," it said.

Television footage of the huge blaze at the Vincennes centre on June 22 and of immigrants being bundled into buses bypolice to be taken to other facilities shocked many people in France and re-ignited a debate about government immigration policies.

President Nicolas Sarkozy came to power in May last yearvowing a crackdown on illegal immigration and he has drawn criticism from human rights groups for setting target numbersof deportations, which they say is arbitrary and unfair.

Sarkozy has set a target of 26,000 deportations this yearand Immigration Minister Brice Hortefeux says he is on course,with 14,660 illegal immigrants expelled in the first fivemonths of the year -- up 80 percent on the same months in 2007.
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