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And residents and business owners in French cities are bracing themselves for more unrest this weekend. Students and leftist groups are planning further protests. And many people fear there could be a repeat of last week's violence. Our Paris correspondent, Lisa Louie, has been talking to shop owners whose businesses have come under attack as France was gripped by violent clashes last weekend on the sidelines of a demonstration by students, yellow vests, and unions. Groups of lutters descended on shops in cities across France. 3,000 stores were ransacked and plundered like this tobacco shop in Paris. The events here were captured on CCTV footage.
All in all, about 400 people came in and took everything they could find. His employees prevented the writers from entering the back part of the shop where most of the products were stored. They lowered the two shutters and then had a battle with the looters. They kept kicking the shutter with several of them trying to lift it. My employees were on the other side with fire extinguishers. stepped on the lutter's hands and hit them. He took furniture like this and hit them while they were on the other side. This went on for 40 minutes. Then another employee arrived and said, "The police are coming." And they all ran away.
They know that tobacco is valuable and electronic cigarette products are easy to sell. They attacked 86 tobacco shops within a radius of 2 km. Some shops were burnt to the ground. Some shop owners were physically harmed. Shop owners are convinced the looting was meticulously planned. This fashion jewelry store was ransacked at night. The owners believe the attacker scouted out the location in advance. About 15 people pushed up the shutter, smashed everything to enter the shop, and took all our goods. They came with huge bags, and we think there were trucks waiting at the end of the street to collect everything.
Abroad, people seem to think the looting was done by protesters, but these were other opportunistic groups. I think this had been planned for months. They used this demo as a pretext to come and ransack the shops. The family had built up their business over three decades. These are extraordinary people, Iranians that have been giving it their all and achieving great things. Some business owners now ironically call what happened a shopping spree. But not every store was of interest to the lutters.
The lutters arrived at the shop. My employee Leonard started to lower the shutter. They were about to enter the shop, but then one of them said, "It's not worth it. We only sell vegetables." And more of the same seems to be planned this weekend. This post identifies shops in Marseilles that have not yet been ransacked. And this user says people from Marles will come to Paris as another weekend of protest looms. The shop owners are bracing themselves for the worst. I've got a locksmith coming. He'll install big wooden panels like at the McDonald's across the street. This time we'll wait for them. If they come, we'll be here and then they'll get a fight they're not prepared for.
One day there's going to be a tragedy for sure. Even if there's nothing left of our shop, we're afraid of what's to come. What we've seen was terrifying. Terrorism. Authorities are promising extra police to protect businesses, but that's not going to quell residents anxiety over what lies ahead. And DW's Lisa Lou filed that report, joins us now from Paris. Lisa, can you give us an overview regarding the nationwide scale of the destruction? You mentioned 3,000 shops destroyed in your report.
Well, absolutely. you know, the protests were happening here in Paris, but also in lots of other uh cities across the country and uh so there were cars burned uh you know streets damaged uh certain public buildings attacked like for example the town hall in Leos that was partly uh burned out there also the tourism office in Leon in southeastern France and the estimates for now go into you know they say that hundreds of millions of euros will have to be paid to repair these damages obviously including also all the damages that have been done have been made to the shops that you just mentioned.
Now the protests are not unusual in France in recent years we've seen many of them but this was something else wasn't it? Well absolutely I mean in my 20 years here in Paris and France covering protest I've never seen anything like that. Normally you have a demonstration that starts at point A, goes up to point B and by you know when they near point B some people start throwing uh stones at the police or there are clashes between protesters or people and the police. This time around even before the demo started. The de demo started at 2:00 in the afternoon. Clashes started at 8:30
in the morning here in Paris but also in other cities such as in Marseilles. It seems like uh some groups had actually been organizing uh their descent on uh shops in different cities across the country. Also here in Paris, you had hotspots all across the city. So it was very difficult for the police to control the situation and as you just heard in my report, a lot of shops got attacked and ransacked during that day. Now we can clearly distinguish between criminals and legitimate protesters. But does this looting and violence discredit the demonstrators in the view of the general public?
I think the French are very good at demonstrating but also at understanding why it's important to protest against certain parts of public policies. Uh so lots of people here do understand the demands made by uh the students by the pupils uh that initiated these protests you know few weeks back by staging blockades of uh their schools their high schools and a lot of people say it's obviously deplorable that there's so much damage but we should actually distinguish between the two things but then there are people who say maybe we should have a breakth when it comes to the protest until the situation calms comes down. Obviously protesters won't agree on that. They will say we need to
keep on pushing so that we can get acceptable answers to our demands. Now protecting citizens and their property is one of the key responsibilities that indeed promises of the democratic state towards its citizens. Is this becoming a true crisis of the state now? Well, it is a crisis. You know, here in France, we have uh presidential elections in six months time. Many people worry about the political climate. Many people worry uh how divided the country is and certainly these protests over the past few weeks have further uh deepened divisions. You know many people are either for the far right or for the far left and that is also what you can find in polls predicting what might happen in six
months time. At the same time, you have a government that doesn't have majority in parliament is in incredibly weak and you have a financial situation that is a disaster. France will have to save tens of billions of euros next year. It's it has to bring down its budget deficit. So, it has very little leeway to answer to reply to these demands by the protesters. and it's really difficult to see how to find a way out of the situation, how to calm down uh the situation. Lisa Louis there reporting from Paris. Thank you, Lisa.
