Feminist group FEMEN’s HQ in Paris went up in flames at the weekend, with some activists suggesting it could have been a homophobic attack.

Although police are treating the blaze as an accident, it comes after a recent death threat that said the women should ‘burn like witches’.

In the early hours of Sunday morning (21 July), a fire broke out at 5am in a room where FEMEN’s leader Inna Shevchenko had been staying.

Luckily for her, she was not there at the time. Several other members of the group were asleep in offices located on the building’s second and top floors.

Firefighters say no one was injured.

Member Pauline Hillier told the AFP the group was ‘shocked’ by the incident and said they would ‘really like to know what really happened’.

‘Yesterday we received a message that said “burn witches”. We find that there are many coincidences and this has happened just one week after the stamp controversy.’

On Bastille Day, a new postage stamp to represent François Hollande’s presidency was unveiled.

When it was revealed the inspiration for the image was Shevchenko, several right-wing groups said they would boycott the post.

‘For me, Marianne (the symbol of the French republic), who is represented bare-breasted, would probably have been a FEMEN in 1789 (the French Revolution) because she fought for the Republic’s values — liberty, equality and fraternity,’ the artist Olivier Ciappa said.

When she found out she was the inspiration for the stamp, Shevchenko said: ‘Now all homophobes, extremists, fascists will have to lick my ass when they want to send a letter.’