After a week of tension every evening in the big cities and a Thursday of hectic mobilization, demonstrators and law enforcement met on Saturday in Sainte-Soline, in Deux-Sèvres, on the site of a mega basin. The demonstration quickly turned into confrontation and chaos, between 6,000 to 30,000 demonstrators on one side and 3,000 gendarmes and police on the other. 20 minutes sums up what you need to remember from this day.
The clashes movie
Among the demonstrators, gathered by the collective of associations “Bassines non merci”, the environmental movement of the Uprisings of the Earth and the Peasant Confederation, the authorities denounced the presence “of at least a thousand violent activists”, “ready to fight”. The start of the demonstration was however very calm, but the head of the procession came under tear gas canister fire as it approached the mega basin. This is where the chaos begins. A good part of the procession dispersed to try to escape the gas in the middle of the police spinning at full speed through the fields on quads, while gendarmerie trucks burned nearby.
The demonstrators used “fireworks mortars, Roman candles and high-capacity Molotov cocktails” among other projectiles, according to the gendarmerie, which responded with 4,000 grenades of tear gas and de-encirclement. The police also used LBDs, especially when they were traveling by quad. A video also shows a policeman, passenger of a quad which circulates quickly, to carry out a tense shooting without being able to aim.
The quantified balance sheet
According to a latest count provided by the Niort prosecutor’s office, the emergency services took care of seven injured demonstrators, including three treated in absolute urgency and hospitalized. The organizers evoke a much heavier toll, with 200 demonstrators injured, one of whom is in a coma between life and death, information not confirmed by the authorities.
Opposite, 28 gendarmes were injured, including two hospitalized in absolute emergency. Two journalists were also hit. No arrests could be made during the demonstration, according to the prosecution. Eleven people had been arrested upstream during checks which led to the seizure of numerous weapons.
Controversy over emergency access to the injured
If the count of the wounded differs so much from one camp to another, it is undoubtedly because all the wounded could not be taken care of easily. Present in the procession with other elected EELV and LFI, the national secretary of EELV Marine Tondelier indicated that she had formed a “cordon” to protect the injured while waiting for help to arrive. But this same “cordon” with tricolor scarves was targeted by the police and the SAMU was prevented from intervening according to the League of Human Rights, which had sent observers on the spot.
In a verbal exchange on Twitter with the national secretary of EELV, the Deux-Sèvres prefecture indicated that the gendarmes had been attacked “during the evacuation of the wounded”, and that the elected officials were not identified in the area. This is denied by several videos and testimonies, including journalists present on the spot. A video shows in particular a journalist injured by the explosion of a grenade of encirclement to be evacuated by militants.
Political reactions
In addition to the virulent exchange between Marine Tondelier, present on the spot and supported by other elected officials, and the prefecture of Deux-Sèvres, part of the political class also reacted to this day of violence. “Enough of police violence in #SainteSoline! Enough ! Without the BRAV-M, without this circus, absolutely nothing would happen but a walk in the fields! “, reacted on Twitter the leader of La France insoumise, Jean-Luc Mélenchon.
“This unleashing of violence is absolutely inexcusable,” declared Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin during a press briefing on Place Beauvau, attributing it “to the black bloc, to people on the far left, to people from the ultra-left”. “Support for the gendarmes and firefighters (…) in the face of an intolerable surge of violence in Sainte-Soline”, wrote on Twitter Élisabeth Borne, denouncing “unacceptable acts” and “the irresponsibility of the radical speeches which encourage these actions”.