“I have the feeling of being abandoned”: in Marseille, these residents of the northern neighborhoods call on the State for help

Frédéric Michel (special correspondent in Marseille) / Photo credit: ANNE-SOPHIE NIVAL / HANS LUCAS / HANS LUCAS VIA AFP 2:43 p.m., March 7, 2024

In these streets of the northern districts of Marseille, littered with rubbish, it is the word insecurity that comes up the most when we question these inhabitants of the 15th arrondissement.

“There were people who were shot and killed 50 meters from here. What are the security services doing?” asks Hervé, who has lived here for 40 years.

Thursday and Friday, a senatorial commission of inquiry will look into the drug trafficking which is blighting and bloodying the Marseille city.

Its members are also passing through this Thursday to “pay particular attention to the reality experienced by the residents”. 

They actually ask themselves a lot of questions and are waiting for answers.

"It's very hard, there is no security. I have the feeling of being abandoned by the State, the mayor... I'm going to move, I'm trying to leave", confides Agnès who was established two years ago in Marseille. 

“We don’t see the elected officials or see them very little” 

Mario saw the situation deteriorate from year to year.

“There, it is not a feeling of abandonment, it is an abandonment. It is not the same thing. There is a laxity of a part of the population which has nothing to do here. The elected officials, we don't see them or very little, the State has completely disappeared. I know what's going to happen: the extreme right will win or the popular right, call it what you want." 

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Hamza, 25, denounces broken promises.

“While we hear that budgets are increasing and that the police are supposedly more and more present, we, on a daily basis, do not see the difference.”

It is therefore a real electric shock that these Marseillais are waiting for.