Frédéric Masquelier (LR), mayor of Saint-Raphaël and president of the agglomeration, and David Rachline (RN), mayor of Fréjus, have announced that they will suspend subsidies to associations in the La Gabelle district in Fréjus.
This announcement came after "excesses" following Morocco's qualification for the quarter-finals of the World Cup last Tuesday.
We went to meet the locals.
“Fréstup”, corrected with a thick marker, in bravado and in a play on words, an individual on the eastern entrance panel to the city of Fréjus (Var), on the “border” with Saint-Raphaël.
On the other side of it begins the district of La Gabelle, a collection of private condominiums and HLMs named after the salt tax that the lords levied on the peasants, and where 4,000 inhabitants live.
A popular district, disadvantaged one could write, like France knows hundreds, on the outskirts of medium-sized municipalities.
A district today under the light after Frédéric Masquelier (LR), mayor of Saint-Raphaël and president of the agglomeration, and David Rachline (RN), mayor of Fréjus, announced the suspension of subsidies to associations in the district.
A form of retaliation for the "excesses" that occurred last Tuesday after Morocco qualified for the quarter-finals of the World Cup.
These “provisional” sanctions, insisted David Rachline, hit the support association Epafa, which notably provides French lessons and which is financed to the tune of 69,000 euros.
His manager has been unreachable for the past two days.
A micro-nursery project that was to be set up in the neighborhood has also, for the time being, been abandoned.
The deliberation which provided for the granting of a subsidy of 20,000 euros was withdrawn from the agenda of the agglomeration council held this Friday morning.
Only four elected officials, out of the thirty sitting on the community body, opposed this withdrawal.
At the same time, at the neighborhood mosque, installed in former garages and entirely financed by the inhabitants of La Gabelle, the imam held a sermon condemning these excesses and inviting calm.
"A message he had already sent on Friday", recalls a resident still in a prayer habit and typing the discussion with a friend who is tinkering with his car in the parking lot at the foot of his four-storey high apartment block. .
However, he remains critical of the announcements made by elected officials.
“They are the ones who want to be lathered.
I was born here and I learned in passing that there was to be a micro-nursery and that an association gives language lessons, the forty-year-old is surprised.
But look: there is nothing here.
No playpen, nothing.
They put a lick of paint, made a football field, redid the tar and say ''we have invested enough''.
It was the big companies that took the money,” he accuses.
Frédéric Masquelier recalled that the community had invested nearly 30 million euros in this district over the past fifteen years.
“I had warned, however, that the condition for continuing is that the neighborhood be pacified, explained the elected official at the exit of the community council.
What we do is the consequence of what we said.
»
“They want to make us look like a ghetto”
"It's racist", considers, for her part Aniss, 30, seated at the associative café l'Oasis, the last place of sociability in the district.
On the central reservation facing it, a column of raw concrete eight meters high and at the top of which sits a video surveillance camera.
A facility quickly dubbed the "watchtower" by young people here.
“They want to make us look like a ghetto, we know the politicians.
They seek pretexts to remove subsidies and manipulate public opinion.
"According to the story of neighborhood residents and regulars of the café, the scenario of Tuesday's "overflows" is the result of "about thirty little shits, half from neighboring neighborhoods", and "police provocations" .
“We went out to celebrate qualifying on the roundabout,
it set off a few fireworks and the police then drove us back with tear gas towards the neighborhood.
»
There followed "a bit of stonework", without injuries or arrests, a police source told AFP.
A scene which lasted about twenty minutes and which the police experience from time to time when they intervene in this district.
“They think that by removing the subsidies, it will calm people down, but that only lights the fuse,” says the man Aniss nicknamed Ayw.
At 32, he is part of the last generation of young people who have experienced an active social center.
“There were organized ski trips, football tournaments, we even went to Germany thanks to him.
The social center closed in 2018, replaced by a tiny construction shack.
The original building, a hundred square meters in size, was abandoned and then burned down.
"We could meet there in the evening, play the console or whatever while being warm," he recalls.
“It saved us.
The truth is that there is nothing left for the youngest.
So the kids zone out, make fires to warm up and the police intervene” according to a scenario written in advance.
The group of thirty-somethings around whom the discussion at the cafe is agitated nevertheless explains well trying to talk to them.
“But what do you want, we are not their parents either and it is not with an old blackmail that we are going to find solutions”, summarizes one of them.
However, they are not short of ideas on the infrastructures that the old social center could house if it were rehabilitated: a boxing hall, a gymnasium, an outdoor center, educators, help with homework.
" In any case,
An opinion that does not fully share Azaoum, 70, including 55 years at Gabelle, finds the suspension of subsidies “normal” for him.
And to add, while filling a bag of clementines at the neighborhood greengrocer: “The mayor is right.
A garbage can that burns is 400 euros.
The last time, I saw a twelve-year-old kid get angry against a light pole.
I shook him.
He said to me: ''Pardon uncle'', but they have nothing in mind.
»
“A healthy collective and educational pressure”
A little higher up, seated on a bench, Albert, from Saint-Raphaël, and Alexandre, a resident of La Gabelle, confess to waiting for people to notice them and hoping to be able to buy a piece of pot.
All of them nevertheless consider this "collective punishment" to be "unjust".
A measure that Frédéric Masquelier, the president of the agglomeration at the origin of this decision, fully assumes.
He hopes to obtain "a healthy collective and educational pressure".
With David Rachline, they are also pursuing another objective: "To issue a warning signal to the State whose services have deserted the neighborhood (the post office and the CAF have also closed), and not to leave us alone in the face of this delinquency, ”continued the mayor of Fréjus.
A coup that seems successful, at least by the media attention aroused.
The expected micro-crèche will certainly not see the light of day at the start of the 2023 school year, as presented in the deliberation that was finally withdrawn.
And the match between Morocco and Portugal this Saturday in the quarter-finals of the World Cup has a double challenge here: the party will have to be beautiful, on and off the field.
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Frejus
Paca
Subsidies
Piece
World Cup 2022
The Republicans (LR)
National Rally (RN)
Association
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