French policeman filmed ridiculing weeping refugee woman after her camp is dismantled

Armed riot police officer appears to laugh at woman who wanted to retrieve belongings from the camp

The officer appears to laugh as the woman cries (Al Jazeera/YouTube)

A policeman in France has been caught on camera apparently mocking a distressed refugee who wanted to retrieve belongings from a camp in Paris before it was dismantled.

The incident happened when heavily armed French police were dismantling a large migrant camp in the centre of the French capital which had been home to as many as 1,400 people.

Many of the migrants did not have time to collect their belongings as gendarmes moved in to dismantle the camp situated between Jaures and Colonel Fabien stations on Metro Line 2.

Video taken by a journalist, purportedly on 22 July, shows a distressed woman who apparently wanted to return to the camp to pick up personal belongings being shoved by a gendarme as he tells her: “I'm the one giving orders. Leave.”

As the woman shows her papers to a female police officer while crying loudly, another gendarme can be seen seemingly mocking the woman, laughing and saying to colleagues: “There is not a single tear on her face. Not a tear.”

The incident on Friday was the 26th time police have broken up refugee camps in Paris over the last year.

The refugees in the camp were largely men from Afghanistan, Somalia and Eritrea, according to AFP. Many of them were escorted onto coaches to be driven to permanent migrant camps.