PH
The “Tous au bistrot!” (All to the bistro!) campaign was launched by the Fooding gastronomy guide.
As its symbol it adopted the “peace for Paris” Eiffel Tower sign that went viral on the internet following Friday’s attacks, flanked by a knife and fork.
Fooding said on its website of the spontaneous initiative that it wants to commemorate the victims, support the hospitality industry, and show that “France will not give into fear.”
“Let’s sing, despite the tears,” it adds.
Members of the trade union of French restaurant, café and hotel owners GNI-Synhorcat were urged by their president Didier Chenet to publicize the campaign, and to observe a minute’s silence at 9 pm (2000 GMT) to commemorate the dead.
At 21:25 on Friday, gunmen opened fire on diners at the Le Petit Cambodge restaurant and the bar Café Carillon. At 21:32 they shot dead and injured patrons at the bar Bonne Biere.
Four minutes later the assailants fired at the La Belle Equipe restaurant, while a suicide bomber blew himself up in the restaurant Comptoir Voltaire around 21:40.
Amid anecdotal evidence that Parisian hotels were hit by a wave of cancellations following the attacks, Chenet was quoted as saying by the AFP news agency that his associates were going to lose a lot of business.
“It is still too early to have some numbers, but it is sure that the economic impact will be significant for the entire sector,” he said, evoking the business fallout in January, following another terrorist attack.
On January 7-9, Islamists stormed into French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo and a Jewish supermarket. Twenty people were killed, including three attackers.
