Mayor pledges support for businesses hit by riots as Liège remains in shock

The shockwaves from Saturday’s riots in Liège continued to reverberate as the city’s mayor announced a relaunch plan on Sunday for businesses that suffered damage during the unrest while the police suggested the violence had been pre-planned.

Between 200 and 300 rioters broke off from a Black Lives Matter demonstration in the city centre on Saturday afternoon to vandalise and loot shops before pitched battles erupted in the streets as some 250 police officers, backed up by three water cannons, tried to restore order. Dozens of arrests were made and around 36 officers were injured. Nine people, including five police officers, needed hospital treatment.

As the city went about cleaning up after the unrest, Liège mayor Willy Demeyer held a press conference on Sunday to announce that a relaunch plan for businesses will be developed and rolled out in the next few days. The plan will be aimed at helping businesses to recover after Saturday’s violent disturbances.

A structure will be put in place to help businesses to obtain compensation and insurance benefits. “The aim is to restore businesses in Liège as quickly as possible,” Demeyer said.

“We want a city centre in which it feels good to live, where one can flourish,” city councillor Christine Defraigne said. “We shall not let people down, and strong measures will be taken by the municipality.”

Liège is no stranger to unrest and Saturday’s events led many to recall the riots of 2011 in which seven people died. “Businesses on the Place Saint-Lambert have the feeling of reliving the 13 December 2011. That remains etched in everyone’s memory,” said Jean-Luc Vasseur, president of the Commerce Liégeois non-profit association, adding that fear still reigned within the city’s business community after the previous day’s unrest. “Insurance does not work on fear,” he said.

“In my 30-year career, I’ve never seen anything like that, also because the times are more complicated today,” Vasseur said. “It’s a bit like hitting a man or woman who is already down. It was destruction for the sake of destruction, and my heart goes out to the police. I know they did their best.”

Meanwhile, Christian Beaupère, the head of the Liège police force, said that he believed Saturday's riots were organised and planned. "We felt there was organisation behind the violence because the rioters appeared in only a few minutes and in the way they did it, we could see that it was not a trial run, they were very well prepared,” he said.

“These 200 to 300 people are not only from Liège, but there were also people from Brussels and people from the outskirts of Liège. There is now a huge amount of work ahead of us to investigate this based on the images we have," he added.

Video images obtained by the authorities of the peaceful Black Lives Matter demonstration, sparked by an incident of police violence against an African woman earlier in the week, showed around 200 youths breaking off from the main group. They then began throwing paving stones, traffic signs and bottles at police.

The crowd then moved on to breaking shop windows and looting before attacking a police station which was pelted with stones, as were several police vehicles. Reporters from several news outlets were also attacked.

The police on the scene were then reinforced by officers of the federal police. They encircled the Place Saint-Lambert, where about 50 rioters were gathered, and deployed tear gas as the crowd continued to throw projectiles.

By around 20.00 on Saturday evening, calm had returned to the city centre, although police maintained a presence to protect shops that had been looted.