France Riots: Small Businesses Face Financial and Emotional Fallout

More than 3,000 businesses across France were damaged or ransacked during Saturday's rioting and behind most of them are individual stories. These were mainly small businesses, small enterprises run by families and their only source of income. Hello, can you tell us what happened on Saturday? I wasn't too far from here. I saw a bunch of people breaking in and taking the merchandise on the CCTV TV. So I came towards the shop. It was very difficult for us. We're a small business and things are already difficult. How do you feel about rebuilding the shop? It's very hard because even if I manage to rebuild my shop, next weekend there could be another protest in this neighborhood. I understand we live in a democracy and people have a right to protest. But if the result is looting, that's complicated for us and for the country. thank you good luck the government has promised uh compensation or soft loans for businesses to try and help with cash flow some larger ones are promising employees a sort of a an unemployment scheme to stop them being laid off but the the psychological effects particularly for some of these small businesses are going to take a long time to repair Bernard Smith Al Jazeera Paris