Strasbourg (AFP)
A ready-to-wear shopkeeper from Blotzheim (Haut-Rhin) has started a hunger strike to obtain, if not the "reopening of local shops", at least "the stopping of the sale of non-essential items by supermarkets, "she told AFP on Saturday.
"I am in mourning for my store and for all the local businesses which have already gone out of business after the first confinement," said Véronique Weingarten who began her movement on Thursday.
Manager of the only women's ready-to-wear store in Blotzheim, a town of some 4,500 inhabitants, she symbolically dressed in black.
"Ideally, I want to be able to reopen our business like all local businesses. We can not catch the virus more from us than in a supermarket. It's even rather the reverse," she argues.
Véronique Weingarten wishes at least that, as for books, the government prohibits "the sale in supermarkets of non-essential products".
She explains that she made her decision on Wednesday evening, "just after Emmanuel Macron's speech".
“I had to act. I didn't want to be a little sheep,” she said.
Since Friday, the shopkeeper has taken up a position in front of her shop.
She also installed a bed in her window "to sleep in front of people to show (s) determination".
After the first confinement which made her "lose 120,000 euros", the second, "it's the key under the door", she assures, "I took out a loan of 100,000 euros (...) which 'it will be necessary to reimburse ".
“The first confinement, we were put to sleep. We had been promised aid that was not kept. We had not said anything and yet the supermarkets were already selling non-essential items. It is not possible to 'accept that a second time,' insists Véronique Weingarten.
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