Despite the ban on the demonstration and the intervention of the police on Friday, environmental activist Greta Thunberg joined, on Saturday February 10, in the Tarn, in pouring rain, a gathering of opponents of the project. A69 Toulouse-Castres motorway.
The global muse of the fight against global warming, gray hood and Palestinian keffiyeh around her neck, is part of an international delegation arriving late in the morning in Saïx, a town located a few kilometers from Castres where Saturday and Sunday a weekend of awareness of environmental issues called La Cabanade.
She is surrounded by activists carrying signs reading “Stop A69” and was to participate in a press conference a little later.
“Risks of major disturbances to public order”
Organizers hope to bring together 500 to 1,000 people for workshops, round tables and concerts, but the rainy and windy weather and the intervention of law enforcement in the immediate vicinity could dampen enthusiasm.
Friday, the prefect of Tarn announced that he had “issued an order prohibiting demonstrations and gatherings” Saturday and Sunday in Saïx, evoking “risk of major disturbances to public order”. “Gathering on private property, with the agreement of the owner, is not prohibited, anyone can invite whoever they want to their home”however, the prefecture services clarified on Saturday to Agence France-Presse (AFP).
“What happened yesterday [vendredi]is that there were violent opponents who blocked the public highway with barricades, hence the strong action [des forces de l’ordre] »a prefecture official told AFP, confirming the arrest on Friday of two people and seven members of the police injured, notably by stone throwing.
On Saturday morning, AFP journalists saw around a hundred demonstrators facing police on a railway line a few hundred meters away. This wooded area is the subject of a dispute linked to an expropriation of its owner due to the construction of the highway and activists camp there in tents or in cabins built in trees.
According to the prefecture, this is a “illegal occupation” of private land. “A hundred individuals are blocking the railway between Toulouse and Castres and they have put obstacles on it. The individuals had set up three barricades and set one of them on fire, the gendarmes managed to reopen the municipal road which had been blocked”reported the prefecture.
Parliamentary commission of inquiry
The government is determined to carry out “until its end” this section of motorway, which would reduce the Castres-Toulouse journey by around twenty minutes and which must be put into service in 2025.
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A parliamentary commission of inquiry at the initiative of environmentalist deputies will soon begin its work, in order to explore the “legal and financial arrangement of the project”. According to its opponents, this decades-old project is obsolete, dating from before the awareness of the changes in behavior made necessary by climate change.