In the afternoon, hooded activists, in overalls and equipped with a grinder, shovels and pickaxes cut one of the pipes supposed to supply the future water reserve.
The mobilization continued on Sunday against the construction site of a water reserve intended for agricultural irrigation in Sainte-Soline (Deux-Sèvres), with the construction of watchtowers and the ransacking of a pipe, in the day after a demonstration and violent clashes with the police. “About forty people stuck on the ultra left were spotted in this demonstration, with operating methods which are, I am not afraid to say, eco-terrorism“, declared the Minister of the Interior, Gérald Darmanin.
The minister denounced a demonstration “prohibited” and “extremely violent“, with some “bocce balls, molotov cocktails, blunt objectsused against the gendarmes. “I want to reiterate our desire that no ZAD settle in Deux-Sèvres“, continued Gérald Darmanin, who announced that “more than a thousand gendarmes will remain” on the spot.
The minister also mentionedprivate landwhere some protesters have started building watchtowers. It’s private land.where the state cannot intervene“, explained the minister. But he clarified that if these constructions “contrary to town planning law“were observed, “we will commit the necessary means to have them destroyed and evacuate the peoplehe repeated.
SEE ALSO – Demonstration in Deux-Sèvres: “Ecoterrorism”, according to Gérald Darmanin
Register over time
Opponents of the project want to register their actions in the long term, the private land they occupy, loaned by a farmer, being available until mid-May. “This will be our basis for the next actions against the site if it were to restart. ZAD or not ZAD, it will be in these terms“, assured AFP Julien Le Guet.
Sainte-Soline is the second of a project of 16 substitution reserves developed four years ago by a group of 400 farmers to reduce their water withdrawals during the summer, thanks to the pumping of surface water tables in winter. Access to this storage is conditional on the adoption of practices that are more respectful of the environment, but none of the beneficiaries of the first deduction has committed, for the time being, to reducing their use of pesticides.
“Today, we are building a lookout, a lookout to anchor the fight on this ground, to be able to see the enemy coming“, explained David, a 43-year-old peasant baker who requested anonymity, who participated in the construction of one of the wooden watchtowers.
Sixty gendarmes injured on Saturday
On Saturday, several thousand people (4,000 according to the authorities, 7,000 according to the organizers) gathered in Sainte-Soline, east of Niort, to protest. Violent clashes erupted with the 1,500 mobilized gendarmes when opponents of the project wanted to enter the site, which was forbidden to access. Some of them succeeded before being repelled.
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About sixty gendarmes according to the Ministry of the Interior, one of whom was hospitalized, and about fifty demonstrators according to the organizers of the demonstration, five of whom were hospitalized, were injured in the violence attributed by the prefecture of the department to radical militants.
The future reserve intended for irrigation, with a capacity of approximately 650,000 cubic meters, the equivalent of 260 Olympic swimming pools, is denounced by its detractors as a “water grabbingby the agro-industry, coupled with an ecological aberration at a time of global warming and repeated droughts.
There was no new intrusion attempt in the end but, in the afternoon, an action of “civil disobedienceAccording to opponents of the project: hooded activists, in overalls and equipped with a grinder, shovels and pickaxes, cut one of the pipes supposed to supply the future reserve, according to them.
Read alsoTensions in the Deux-Sèvres: do the “mega basins” of water threaten the environment?
“We just knocked off one of the octopus’ six arms“, welcomed Julien Le Guet, spokesman for the collective anti-”basins“, nickname given to these restraints by their detractors. A police helicopter flew over the scene but the police did not intervene.
SEE ALSO – Sainte-Soline: thousands of demonstrators gathered against the “mega basin” project