the bowlers of the Butte Montmartre expelled by the town hall – Libération

The Paris town hall is a square. On Monday, October 21, police officers prevented access to the coveted pétanque court on Avenue Junot for several dozen people who had come to protest against the expulsion of bowlers. An evacuation operation requested and confirmed by the Paris town hall, owner of the place, which had contacted the Council of State for this purpose.

Since April 19, some of the 300 Clap licensees have taken turns day and night, sleeping in tents to prevent their expulsion from the pétanque court, a protected green space nestled in the heart of the mound. At the end of May, the police headquarters indicated that if the proposed mediation was unsuccessful, the “public force competition» would be requested for this expulsion.

Sitting on the ground, around twenty people, including members of the Montmartre pétanque club, protested this Monday against their distancing from this bowling alley, frequented and animated by their club for half a century. Parked at the entrance to the premises of the Lepic Abbesses Pétanque Club (Clap), a truck blocked the passage, while municipal and national police officers prevented around thirty people present from entering, observed a journalist from the AFP. “It’s scandalous,” some of them shouted.

Asked, Kevin Havet, the PS deputy mayor of the 18th arrondissement in charge of security, justified the police operation: “Since this [lundi] morning, the national police intervened so that the City could redispose of this premises and so that the illegal occupation which was in force, despite this decision of the Council of State, could be put to an end.

A decision of the socialist town hall contested

For its part, the Paris town hall intended to recover this bowling alley, which the club “busy”, according to her, “without right or title” since 1971, to make one “accessible green space” to the Parisians who “have been deprived of it for too long.” In July 2023, Parisian elected officials, divided on the subject, entrusted this plot of land to the adjoining luxury hotel for twelve years, which has undertaken to pay an annual fee of 60,000 euros, revegetate it and open it up. to the general public. An operation of “greenwashing”, swept the bowlers questioned by Libé last April.

“If the Clap people are fired, it is quite simply to allow the club’s neighboring mansion to take over the management of the land and turn it into something which is quite nebulous at the moment,” denounced to the AFP the Paris deputy Aymeric Caron, related to La France insoumise (LFI), who came to support the bowlers.

The actor Fabrice Luchini, support of the bowlers since the start of the conflict, spoke on X: “Slight bewilderment to see that a town hall that is nevertheless socialist prefers a luxury tourism project to a pétanque club of local residents from all social backgrounds present for 50 years in a listed square.