Please leave the premises for the squatters of Fontaine-lès-Dijon. The Dijon judicial court ordered on Wednesday December 11 the expulsion of the forty asylum seekers who were staying in the premises of the former Chartreuse psychiatric unit in Fontaine-lès-Dijon.
Asylum seekers now have 30 days to leave. The prefecture will then be able to call on the police to dislodge the squatters. “Elle can decide either to expel from mid-January in the middle of winter or from March 31, the date which marks the end of the winter break”, explains Maître Dominique Clémang, lawyer for around twenty squatters. The squatters will also have to pay the city 300 euros for lawyer fees.
“We expected it”
The lawyer is not surprised by the court’s decision. “We resisted for more than 14 months, we didn’t expect to last that long.“Asylum seekers have in fact been occupying these former premises of the Chartreuse since October 2023. The town hall of Fontaine-lès-Dijon then filed a complaint.
On two occasions, the Dijon judicial court suspended the prefectural expulsion order targeting the squatters, because the premises were not used as housing before the arrival of the asylum seekers. No other rehousing solution was then offered in the short term. But this time the town hall of Fontaine-lès-Dijon had an unstoppable argument, the attack on property rights. “Faced with this, there was not much we could do“, regrets Master Dominique Clémang.
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