They want to make this place “immigrant embassy”. Several dozen undocumented migrants and their supporters have been investing unoccupied premises in the 9th arrondissement of Paris since Monday, April 18. This action, on the initiative of the collective La Chapelle Debout, aims to claim rights for all.
Migrants and activists supporting undocumented migrants entered old, empty offices on rue Saulnier. They occupied the floors and unfurled a banner that read “No to racism! Equality” or “Immigrants’ lives matter”. Outside, about twenty Extinction Rebellion activists had come to support them.
Abouakar, a 36-year-old Mauritanian who has been undocumented in France for three years, told AFP how “it’s hard” to be “in the street”, “out of work”, in the “get by”. “Support our struggle!” he launched.
ONGOING ACTION
Need support now! Join us !!! 17 SAULNIER STREET, CADET METRO #occupation#papersforall#housingforall pic.twitter.com/syMPpfEJ6k— The Chapel Up! (@chapelledebout) April 18, 2022
“The idea is that people on the street can have a roof over their heads and that they organize themselves” in order to obtain rights, a member of the La Chapelle Debout collective told AFP, regretting the years “lost” in “procedures that do not succeed”. “As a collective that fights for papers and housing for all, we are very happy that the Ukrainians receive this. We even say ‘the proof by Ukraine!’ It is possible in two weeks to set up a whole accommodation system, to give everyone papers, to give free transport to everyone”added the one who calls himself Nestor.
A few members of the security forces, who came shortly after the arrival of the militants, observed the occupation from the street. In July 2019, several hundred undocumented migrants and their supporters had briefly occupied the Panthéon in Paris to demand their regularization, at the initiative in particular of this same collective.