The organizers had promised “ramdam” in the Tarn to say “no to tarmac”. “More than 10,000 people”, according to their last count at the end of the afternoon, responded on Saturday to the call to demonstrate against the A69 Toulouse-Castres motorway project, with percussion, drums, banners and slogans. The prefecture reported a main procession of 2,400 demonstrators and “2,500 radical and violent individuals”.
If, in the main procession, the mobilization took place in a good-natured atmosphere during the afternoon, a group of activists “almost all hooded, dressed in black, helmeted”, according to a press release from the prefecture, took place is detached from it before heading towards the Carayon cement factory and a construction company, Bardou et fils, both involved in the A69 construction site, according to the Atosca concessionaire.
Carole Delga condemns the violence and degradation
In the cement factory, “a [construction modulaire], three router vehicles and a public works machine” were damaged during a fire started by these activists, who “damaged the building” of the Bardou company and “torn down its fences, before being pushed back by the forces of order”, according to the prefecture. In total, seven arrests took place and the police used “74 tear gas grenades”, according to the same source.
In a tweet, the PS president of the Occitanie region, Carole Delga, often criticized by demonstrators for her support for the A69, condemned in a “very firm” manner the “violence” and “degradation” which targeted the two companies.
The PS president of the Tarn departmental council, Christophe Ramond, described the violence committed as “intolerable”. “Protesting is a right. Breaking is a crime,” he said.
“Why a motorway when we need more stations? »
Several kilometers away, the bulk of the demonstrators marched calmly, the main procession walking on the road, behind tractors from the Peasant Confederation, while another group of several hundred people chose to take the route at one point. railway, before joining the first parade.
“What shocks us is the inconsistency of the project in relation to the climate emergency,” explained Colette Faber, a resident of Tarbes, who came to demonstrate with her husband and their two daughters, based in Albi. “Why a motorway when we need more stations, trains, public transport? Why sacrifice nature when we need it? “, she said.
Side by side, at the bend of the various processions, marched former mobilized people from the Larzac plateau with younger activists, the banners and signs multiplying puns: “Make the 69, not the A69”, “The A69 will end in a cul de sac”, “Meadows, not Ferraris” or even “More vegetables, less asphalt”.
Work well underway
“Never has there been such empathy for our struggle,” said Gilles Garric of the La Voie est libre collective, which with other associations and unions (Extinction Rebellion, Les Uprisings of the Earth, National Group for the Surveillance of trees, Confédération Paysanne, Solidaires, etc.) organized the gathering.
Based on an Ifop survey carried out a few days ago among the population of Tarn and Haute-Garonne, he indicated that 61% of respondents were in favor of abandoning the motorway project and that they were 82% to vote for a local referendum.
For its part, Atosca, relying on another survey carried out by Opinion Way, argued that 53% of French people are in favor of the motorway. The company also insisted on the fact that around 40% of the project budget has already been committed and that the work was therefore well underway.
Towards the creation of a ZAD
“Lies,” respond the opponents who hope that the construction site will be stopped. “We are cutting down trees for a project that serves no purpose,” lamented Sandra Lima, a 48-year-old psychologist who takes the national road which currently links Toulouse and Castres every week. “Maybe it should have been widened a little but it was enough,” she added.
At the end of the afternoon, the demonstrators were back at the camp located in Saïx, about ten kilometers east of Castres, and near which several activists, according to the organizers, had taken over “manor houses expropriated by the construction site” in the locality of Crémade to create a ZAD (Zone to be defended) called “CremZAD”. According to La Dépêchedu Midithe police would have approached the area this Sunday morning.