crime
Residents in Marseille fight against drug dealers
In a settlement in Marseille, women and mothers fight drug dealers. photo
© Arne Dedert/dpa
With night watches and a militia, tenants in a housing estate in Marseille stand in the way of young dealers. The protest is led by women and mothers who want to protect their families.
In Marseille, southern France, which is plagued by drug trafficking, tenants in a block of flats have successfully taken up the fight against drug dealers.
Women and mothers, among others, stood in the way of the young criminals who had been trying to set up drug sales in the block of flats with ruthless means since the beginning of the year, the newspaper “Le Parisien” reported. When the dealers dragged a sofa into the lobby to install themselves there, the residents decided to resist, said Fatima, the organizer of the protests.
“We agreed with each other and decided to take turns standing in front of the building all day so that they couldn’t settle in,” Fatima told the “Parisien”. “We took their place and told them: This is our building! I myself stayed from noon to three in the morning, we kept getting up for shifts.” The young dealers did not come back at first because the police were also very present.
“Young people were becoming more and more aggressive, so people formed a vigilante group,” said René, a 77-year-old local resident. “It was the women who were on the front line and mobilized everyone.” And a cleaning lady added: “They are family mothers, they didn’t want to have drugs on their doorstep and drug dealers asking for your papers so that they could go home.” Because the dealers set up roadblocks at the entrances to several blocks of flats, where they check who is coming to the buildings.
Visiting women’s organizations
Impressed by the protest, women’s organizations from other drug-ridden districts in the north of Marseille visited the organized resistance to exchange views on successful methods. As the prefect of the Bouches-du-Rhône region, Frédérique Camilleri, explained, the police are supporting residents with reinforced patrols on site.
Drug gangs dominate entire residential areas in France’s second-largest city, and there are regular deadly accounts. However, the authorities have recently been trying to fight the trade more effectively with concentrated police action. In a major operation in the summer, the riot police first cleared the way for the regular police to advance into the settlements.