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IMMIGRATION

Hundreds of migrants ‘occupy Pantheon in Paris’

Hundreds of undocumented migrants surged into the Pantheon in central Paris on Friday, briefly occupying the vaunted memorial complex to demand talks with the prime minister on regularising their status, activists said.

Hundreds of migrants 'occupy Pantheon in Paris'
Undocumented migrants demonstrate to ask for the regularisation of their status. Photo: AFP
Around 700 migrants and their supporters joined the demonstration, with some pushing into the historic complex at around midday on Friday, a member of the Chapelle Debout collective said. Footage posted on Twitter from inside the building's main dome showed hundreds of people waving papers in the air shouting “Black vests, black vests!” and “What do we want? Papers!”
 
The so-called “Black Vests” is a Paris-based migrant association that takes its name from the “yellow vest” anti-government protest movement. 
 
Photo: AFP
   
In a statement, the Black Vest protesters said they wanted “papers and housing for everyone”, describing themselves as “the undocumented, the voiceless and the faceless of the French Republic”.
   
“We don't want to negotiate with the interior minister and his officials any more, we want to talk to Prime Minister Edouard Philippe now!” they wrote. 
 
They stayed there for several hours until they were calmly evacuated through a back entrance mid-afternoon, AFP correspondents said. 
   
“All of the people who gained entry to the Pantheon have been evacuated,” Philippe tweeted early evening as a police source said 37 arrests had been made.
   
'Rule of law'
 
“France is a country based on the rule of law which means respect for the rules that apply to the right to remain, respect for public monuments and for the memory they represent,” he added.
   
Some leftist lawmakers came to the site to offer moral support to the migrants but Marine Le Pen, leader of the far-right National Rally, tweeted her indignation.
   
“It is UNACCEPTABLE to see protesting illegal aliens occupy, with wholesale impunity, this is the centre of the Republic,” Le Pen said.
 
“Expulsion should be the immigrants' future — that is the LAW,” she said. “The Pantheon is a symbol of great men. Inside there are symbols representing the fight against slavery. We are fighting against modern-day slavery,” said Laurent, an activist from French rights group Droits Devant. 
   
“Many people have been living without rights for years. We have done this to ask the prime minister for an exceptional regularisation. There has never been such a thing since (Francois) Mitterrand took power” in 1981. “It's about time we had one.”
   
The “Black Vests” are known for staging headline-grabbing protests in support of the undocumented. 
 
In June, they briefly occupied the headquarters of the Paris-based Elior Group which works in contract catering and property. And a month earlier, its activists occupied terminal 2F at the city's Charles De Gaulle airport against “Air France's collaboration” in the deportation of undocumented migrants. 

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CRIME

Germany mulls expulsions to Afghanistan after knife attack

Germany said Tuesday it was considering allowing deportations to Afghanistan, after an asylum seeker from the country injured five and killed a police officer in a knife attack.

Germany mulls expulsions to Afghanistan after knife attack

Officials had been carrying out an “intensive review for several months… to allow the deportation of serious criminals and dangerous individuals to Afghanistan”, Interior Minister Nancy Faeser told journalists.

“It is clear to me that people who pose a potential threat to Germany’s security must be deported quickly,” Faeser said.

“That is why we are doing everything possible to find ways to deport criminals and dangerous people to both Syria and Afghanistan,” she said.

Deportations to Afghanistan from Germany have been completely stopped since the Taliban retook power in 2021.

But a debate over resuming expulsions has resurged after a 25-year-old Afghan was accused of attacking people with a knife at an anti-Islam rally in the western city of Mannheim on Friday.

A police officer, 29, died on Sunday after being repeatedly stabbed as he tried to intervene in the attack.

Five people taking part in a rally organised by Pax Europa, a campaign group against radical Islam, were also wounded.

Friday’s brutal attack has inflamed a public debate over immigration in the run up to European elections and prompted calls to expand efforts to expel criminals.

READ ALSO: Tensions high in Mannheim after knife attack claims life of policeman

The suspect, named in the media as Sulaiman Ataee, came to Germany as a refugee in March 2013, according to reports.

Ataee, who arrived in the country with his brother at the age of only 14, was initially refused asylum but was not deported because of his age, according to German daily Bild.

Ataee subsequently went to school in Germany, and married a German woman of Turkish origin in 2019, with whom he has two children, according to the Spiegel weekly.

Per the reports, Ataee was not seen by authorities as a risk and did not appear to neighbours at his home in Heppenheim as an extremist.

Anti-terrorism prosecutors on Monday took over the investigation into the incident, as they looked to establish a motive.

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