She is still in shock when she mentions Sainte-Soline. Elicha, environmental activist at Extinction Rébellion, was a street medic during the demonstration against mega-basins which took place on Saturday in Deux-Sèvres. An activist within the movement since 2019, this emergency nurse had never seen such violence break out before. “I had never suffered such violent and aggressive repression,” she says. When we demonstrated in Saint-Soline last October, it was also very violent. But not to this point. And no activist had found himself in mortal danger,” she exclaims.
The pictures speak for themselves. In addition to the burned police vehicles, the security forces as well as the demonstrators counted, in their respective ranks, many injuries. Mortars, LBD fire, tear gas and disencirclement grenades… If the government claimed that the demonstrators were came to “kill cops”, activists accuse, for their part, a heavy human toll. The environmental organizations present ensure that around 200 demonstrators were injured during the clashes, three of which are in absolute emergency. While, on the police and gendarmerie side, 47 wounded were counted.
Rescuers prevented from going to the scene
It is barely 1 p.m. when the first projectiles shoot out on both sides, near the Sainte-Soline mega-basin. Elicha, on the front line, then begins to hear people shouting “medic!” “. A signal that lets her think that the violence she sees is causing many injuries around her. “It happened all of a sudden,” she recalls. It was then that I saw the first injured. He had a round hole in his thigh with a piece of flesh missing…”. His race then begins. She tries to treat the many people with multiple injuries as best she can, using haemostatic compresses that reduce bleeding: “Fortunately, I took some with me. I used all my stock! “.
Around her is chaos. “I stayed to help on… This ambient brothel”, she says. She then heads near the paths that encircle the megabasin, on which the wounded are repatriated, far from the clashes that continue. “When I arrive, I see a person in absolute emergency. She had a head trauma and had lost consciousness. It’s usually a very bad sign,” she explains. But help is slow to come. Elicha does not understand. No information filter. “At first, we thought the Samu didn’t want to come because of the violence of the clashes,” she recalls. She will learn only later that it is obviously the police who would have given the instruction to the Samu not to intervene. A version denied by the prefect of Deux-Sèvres, Emmanuelle Dubée, in a press release. But that a telephone conversation between a doctor and the Samu, published on the World websiteseems to corroborate.
“Emotional debriefs” for protesters
Help finally arrives an hour later, and take the wounded that Elicha and other street medics like her have sorted according to the severity of the injuries. After several hours and after having had to carry out numerous sutures on the spot, the young activist, accompanied by other demonstrators, finally returned to the base camp, in Melle, a neighboring town of Sainte-Soline. “On the way back, I started replaying the film and feeling bad. It was the backlash, ”she analyzes. On her way, she meets several people with whom she exchanges. And realizes that some of them are already suffering from post-traumatic stress.
The same evening, the various environmental movements decided to set up, as a matter of urgency, “emotional debriefs” to try to support people who were psychologically weakened after this day of action. Since then, several discussion groups have been held, and will be held again this week to allow everyone to come back to the clashes of extraordinary violence.