Violent clashes erupt as ‘black vest’ protesters storm Paris landmark

Around 700 migrants and their supporters joined the demonstration, with some pushing into the historic complex at around midday (1100 GMT) 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 vest” is a Paris-based migrant association that takes its name from the “yellow vest” anti-government protest movement.

As they went inside, tourists were evacuated from the Pantheon, which is the final resting place of France’s greatest non-military luminaries including the writers Voltaire, Victor Hugo and Emile Zola. Outside, hundreds more were gathered under the watchful eyes of a heavy police presence.

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.

Scuffles break out at Yellow Vests protest in ParisScuffles broke out between police and protesters at the 31st consecutive week of ‘Yellow Vests’ protests in Paris.

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 center of the Republic,” Le Pen said.

“Expulsion should be the immigrants’ future — that is the LAW,” she said.

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.

(Source: AFP)