The Korean embassy has warned against visiting the migrant-dominated Paris region of Seine-Saint-Denis after thugs terrorised a coach of tourists.
A group of around forty South Korean tourists were ‘slapped’, threatened, and robbed by five men who climbed aboard their coach as it was stuck in traffic near Bobigny, where anti-police riots were taking place.
The intruders first “slapped” some of the passengers, then proceeded to loot the vehicle, stealing “all valuables: blue cards, cash and even Eurostar train tickets” before finally attempting to set fire to the coach as they left the vehicle, Le Parisien reported on Tuesday.
According to the Korean embassy in Paris, the perpetrators shouted as they boarded the coach, and then threatened tourists with what is believed to have been a glass bottle, which they also used to “tap” the heads of passengers sitting towards the front of the vehicle.
The incident took place as the group of holidaymakers travelled from the Eiffel Tower to their hotel in Seine-Saint-Denis. Describing them as “panicked” when they finally arrived at the hotel, its manager said the tourist group refused to leave the hotel to report their ordeal to the police.
“What has happened is extremely regrettable, but thankfully it remains marginal,” the hotelier told Le Parisien, which reported that since then the Korean embassy has advised Korean citizens not to visit Seine-Saint-Denis.
On Saturday evening as the attack on the coach took place, a large gathering of around 2,000 anti-police protesters near the hotel had turned violent after just an hour with “violent incidents, broken windows, tear gas and burnt vehicles”, according to local media.
Seine-Saint-Denis, a department in which already by 2005 almost 60 per cent of under 18s were of foreign origin, has been badly affected by ongoing violence as anti-police protesters riot over the assault of a black youth worker who alleges that he was anally raped with a truncheon while being arrested.
Last month Breitbart London reported that France has seen a steep decline in visitor numbers from East Asia amid surging violence and crime.
President of the Chinese Association of Travel Agencies in France, Jean-François Zhou, warned that “increasingly violent” thefts and assaults are turning France into “one of the worst destinations for foreign tourists”.
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