Despite the ban, thousands of opponents of the project flocked to the Maurienne Valley. Clashes broke out and security forces used tear gas to “keep hostile demonstrators at bay”. The demonstrators notably tried to block the A43 motorway.
No question of backing down: despite the ban, opponents of the Lyon-Turin high-speed rail line are demonstrating this Saturday in Maurienne (Savoie), despite a strong police presence in the valley. Some 3,000 activists, according to authorities’ estimates, are present, including 300 radicals, reports BFM TV.
If the procession left calmly at the start of the afternoon, clashes took place between demonstrators and the police. “Use of tear gas by security forces to keep hostile demonstrators at bay following projectile throwing“, indicated the gendarmerie to AFP. Opponents have also started walking on the nearby railway line and rail traffic has been interrupted since 1 p.m. Around 5 p.m., demonstrators crossed the Arc, a tributary of the Isère, to reach the A43 and block the passage of cars. Around 6:10 p.m., calm seemed to have returned.
This demonstration took place at the call of a dozen organizations, including the Uprisings of the Earth, threatened with dissolution by the Ministry of the Interior, and the Italian No-Tav, to protest against the construction site “pharaonic” judge “harmful» for the environment, biodiversity and water resources.
“Radical protesters”
“Citizens also have the power and the duty to protect the environment“, declared Maryline Duval, of the local association “Living and acting in Maurienneduring a press briefing organized on the base camp of environmental activists, under close surveillance. Hundreds of activists, mostly young, had already arrived on Friday afternoon and in a few hours built a camp of odds and ends in the meadows, on land loaned by the municipality of La Chapelle, outside the area of ban announced the day before by the prefecture of Savoy.
The ban, challenged in court by the organizers, was confirmed by the administrative court of Grenoble which rejected on Friday evening a request filed by the Greens (EELV), ATTAC Savoie, and the association Vivre et act en Maurienne, arguing that there “route configuration (…) does not guarantee (…) securityof the procession. The court had also put forward a “risk of intrusion of particularly sensitive sites» and the possible presence of «radical protesters“. “The demonstration has been banned on a perimeter, we will demonstrate elsewhere“, for his part, indicated in a tweet the mayor of Grenoble.
The demonstration, announced for a long time by a dozen organizations including the Uprisings of the Earth and the Italian No-Tav, intends to denounce the ecological impacts, in particular on the water resource, of this construction site “titanic railway, involving the drilling of 260 km of galleries through the Alpine massifs“. According to them, the work has already dried up several springs and catchments in the valley.
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“I believe in it hard as iron”
Supported by the European Union, the new line should eventually link Lyon and Turin, with 70% of the tracks in France and 30% in Italy, with a 57.5 km tunnel crossing the Alps between Saint-Jean-de-Maurienne and Susa. Estimated cost: more than 26 billion euros. Some 2,000 police and gendarmes have been deployed in this border valley with Italy, famous for its major ski resorts. A visible presence Friday evening at many crossroads and near railway infrastructure under construction, AFP noted.
In this configuration, the opponents, who initially hoped to demonstrate from Villarodin-Bourget, a village near Modane, more than 50 km from their camp, said they were studying “several options“. For Max Milliex, resident of the valley and member of a local collective of opponents, it is almost secondary: “It’s a success, no matter what, even if they prevent us from demonstrating it will be a success because the message has passed. We’ve been trying to communicate for 20 years, we can’t“, rejoices this big burly.
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“Just to see the state of excitement of the Lyon-Turin pros, we are delighted, we feel a certain anxiety in them. And then we say to ourselves that we may be able to stop Lyon-Turin. Me, I believe in it hard as iron“, smiles the man, expropriated in 2019 from his house and his sawmill in the village of Villargondran, because of the construction site.
“Absolute contradiction”
For Medef boss Geoffroy Roux de Bézieux, “we are faced with the absolute contradiction of extremist environmental activists. They supposedly want to save the planet but they do not want to give themselves the means: we will not save the planet by doing degrowth”, he commented Friday morning on BFM TV / RMC.
“It’s all the same quite scandalous, funny that the State and the government decide to attack a movement, environmental activists, peasants, trade unions when today we should really attack all industries, to all those who destroy the living, who are making us die of heat“Said Pina, the spokeswoman for the Uprisings of the Earth, during the speeches.
“The promoters of these great devastating works can meet as they want, at our expense, eating toast and drinking champagne, while the opponents cannot show their dissatisfaction.“added Lorenzo of No-Tav. Authorities plan tojust under 5,000 participants, including many Italian and Swiss nationals“, with “more than 400 radicals likely to cause serious disturbances to public order“.
Some 107 administrative prohibitions of territory – intended to block the access of a foreigner to France when “its presence constitutes a serious danger”- were taken, according to the Interior Ministry. A hundred vehicles were checked Friday in the valley, and 119 sharp and blunt objects confiscated, as well as two fireworks, said the gendarmerie. Five buses of Italian activists, about 250 people, also remained blocked at the border, noted an AFP correspondent on the spot.