Belgian café owner holds ‘sleep-in protest’
Pepinster, Belgium - A fed-up café owner in Belgium is sleeping in her premises with little food, in protest at the monthslong shutdown of her sector to curb the spread of the coronavirus.
“To remain like this, without working, losing everything - every day to see you’re losing a little bit more - it’s hard,” Christelle Carion said sitting on her bed, set up beside the bar.
The 48 year old has been holed up in the closed Amon Nos Autes café in the eastern village of Pepinster since Tuesday, to draw attention to the ordeal that she and other owners in Belgium’s bar and restaurant sector are going through.
They have been ordered shut since October 19 to counter the second coronavirus wave sweeping Europe, after having been closed for three months for the first wave in early 2020.
From the start of the pandemic until now, Belgium has gone from being one of the worst-hit countries in the world - with one of the highest per capita COVID-19 mortality rates - to being among the few EU countries to get a grip on curbing infections.
But Carion - known in her village by her nickname ‘Betchette’, which adorns the café she took over 12 years ago - said she was seeing possible dates for reopening repeatedly being pushed back, fuelling her desperation.
“Already at the beginning of the second lockdown I had it in mind to show the rage that it's the restaurants and cafés that are always first to get it,” she said. “A time comes that this just has to stop.”
She was refusing solid food, getting by on soup, coffee and cigarettes. She hopes that the protest from her army cot, donated by a friend on her second day, will be heard by politicians.
Although the government is providing financial aid to bars, cafés and hotels - € 2,700 a month in the case of Carion, before tax - that is not enough for many to survive.
Around 40 per cent of hospitality establishments were already on the brink of bankruptcy following the first lockdown, according to a survey last year by the Foodservice Alliance.