The police began, on Sunday October 22 at midday, the evacuation of a small “zone to defend” (ZAD) erected at a place called La Crémade, east of Castres, during of a weekend of mobilization organized by opponents of the A69 motorway project between Toulouse and Castres. The occupants feared the evacuation of the premises, the prefecture having announced that all the demonstrators should have left the site on Sunday evening.
Barricades had grown during the night near the base camp of opponents of the project, around the ZAD installed near an old farmhouse, on the edge of a field lent by a farmer. The site is named “Crem-ZAD” in reference to the name of the place. Before the evacuation, Anna (who requires anonymity, like all the demonstrators interviewed), a young activist from Extinction Rebellion, hoped that the outcome would be the same as for the ZAD concerning the Notre-Dame-des-Saints airport. Landes, in Loire-Atlantique: abandonment of the project. But neither the concessionaire, nor the government, nor the Occitanie region, in favor of the future motorway, are suggesting that the A69, which must be completed by the end of 2025, could meet the same fate.
The day before, more than 10,000 demonstrators, according to the organizers, marched near the village of Saïx (Tarn). The prefecture, for its part, puts forward the figure of “2,400 people in the procession”while specifying that “2,500 violent individuals broke away from the procession declared to commit abuses”. The route had been the subject of lengthy negotiations, but instead of one, six separate processions set off in all directions, departing from the opponents’ base camp, most of them taking undeclared routes.
By adopting this strategy, the organizers – The Way is Free, Les Uprisings of the Earth, the Peasant Confederation, Extinction Rebellion Toulouse, Attac, the National Tree Protection Group and Solidaires 81… – have, in fact, limited the possibilities of intervention by law enforcement.
A cement factory vandalized
Opposite, the security system was important, with 1,600 police and gendarmes mobilized, as well as 300 firefighters. But if the pressure had been put on on Saturday morning, with very strict controls of vehicles and people around the base camp, the system was less visible on Saturday afternoon, the squadrons mostly stationed away from the route, ” so that [leur] presence is not perceived as a provocation”mentioned a police source.
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