Looters and shopkeepers
From Nice to Paris, shop owners are counting their losses after the weekend of 17 October; the public is opening its wallet, and so are the insurers.
· N° 3
In Nice on Saturday evening, Pierre stood in front of the Micromania store where he works. A hooded looter hit him in the back, others threw things at him. He did not move. The videos went round social media, and the mayor, Éric Ciotti, came to see him on Sunday.
Thousands are in his position. Nearly 3,000 shops, restaurants and hotels were targeted on the fringes of the protests, for hundreds of millions of euros in damage. In Marseille, more than 600 premises were looted. Online, dozens of shopkeepers filmed themselves outside their shops, defending them as best they could. In Bordeaux on Sunday, one of them called the police, who did not come. He watched his work go.
« [I stayed] in front, hoping people wouldn’t try to get in too violently »Pierre, sales assistant at a Micromania store in Nice, on BFM TV
88,000 euros in a single day
In Paris, Hassan had opened his phone shop three months earlier. A fundraiser launched on Sunday had passed 88,000 euros by Monday. Solidarity has its parasites: fundraisers are circulating in Pierre’s name, and he is not behind them.
The government is promising short-time work, fast insurance assessments and a "riot fund". Paid for by whom, and by which taxpayer? A shop window is replaced in a week; trust takes longer. What is left of a shop when fear walks in before the customer?
Based on France 24, Euronews, BBC World and Numerama