THE French government stuck to a hard line on illegal immigrants yesterday, announcing that 88 deported Africans were flown home despite left wing protests.
Two French planes flew home 88 immigrants overnight, 10 of them expelled from the Netherlands, the Interior Ministry said. This took to 25 the number of French deportation flights since the conservative Prime Minister, Mr Alain Juppe, assumed office Is months ago.
The planes left from an air force base at Evreux, west of Paris, on Wednesday night. Trade unionists and human rights activists had urged civilian pilots not to fly deportees amid a furore over a police raid on a group of Africans in a church last week.
An air force Airbus A-310 flew home 35 Malians and 11 Senegalese. A Boeing 737 of Air Charter a subsidiary of state owned Air France, carried 12 Tunisians and 30 Zaireans, including 10 from the Netherlands.
The Communist CGT and pro Socialist CFDT unions called on airlines not to lend their planes to the government and urged airlines and airport staff to demonstrate at Charles de Gaulle Airport in Paris today against "flights of shame". They said: "Airline personnel must not be turned into police assistants," they said.
Le Monde said France's immigration policy was causing mounting concern in Africa, mainly in Mali and Senegal.
The flights took off as police said 11,000 protesters marched through Paris against the expulsion orders in a demonstration twice the size of a similar protest last week.
Last week French police dragged out 300 African protesters, 10 of them on a hunger strike, who had been occupying a Paris church for two months to demand residence permits. Four of the church protesters were among 57 Africans deported last week on a military aircraft.
Lawyers for the Africans said two Malians flown home yesterday, Diagui and Mamadoo Niakata, had left their wives and children in France, although the Interior Minister, Mr Jean Louis Debre, had pledged not to break up families.
They appealed to the UN High Commission for Refugees on behalf of a Mauritanian, Mr Berke Camara, who is being held pending expulsion and says he fears for his life if he is sent home.