In La Rochelle, the anti-basines between anger and frustration

Saturday was marked by clashes between police and demonstrators in La Rochelle, where 10,000 demonstrators gathered according to the organizers, nearly 6,000 according to the prefecture, against the construction of “mega basins”.

The anti-bassines, gathered in Deux-Sèvres since Tuesday, had arranged to meet in the neighboring department, Charente-Maritime, on Saturday July 20. With the aim of blocking the port of La Pallice, in La Rochelle, which the demonstrators consider a symbol of the agro-industry. But the mobile gendarmes managed to keep them at a distance.

At the head of the procession, several hundred protesters dressed in black, masks and protective glasses on their faces. Some say they have revenge to take a year after Sainte-Soline. The first stones are thrown at journalists, bank and supermarket windows are targeted, trash cans are burned. The procession is then blocked by the police and the first tear gas is fired.

For Sylvie, who was in another, more peaceful procession, these images do not reflect her fight. “How many cops are there? Why don’t they arrest 150 people when there are 10,000 people?”asks the protester.It suits them to leave it so that that’s all that remains in the press, so that people say ‘it’s violent’. When it’s a fair ecological fight.”

Camille shares this opinion, he says he is frustrated after a week of mobilization at the “Water Village” in Deux-Sèvres. “Frustrated, because we have been harassed continuously by the police for a week. We were not even given a chance to demonstrate, even peacefully,” he denounces. For Camille, the violence is on the side of “those who have been tracking us, tracking us, and beating us for too long.”

“Violence is not on the side of a few shards of glass on the ground or a wall covered in paint, but of those who repress and who have prevented for a week any form of civic, pacifist expression.”

Camille, protester

to franceinfo

The anti-basins were unable to reach their initial objective, the port of La Palisse, but a small group of farmers reached it in the early morning with tractors before being evacuated.