At least thirty people were injured, several of them in serious condition on Saturday during the rally against an artificial water reserve project. Environmental activists, cheered up, do not intend to leave the scene.
More than 3,000 police and gendarmes remain positioned in Saint-Soline (Deux-Sèvres), Sunday, March 26, the day after the violent clashes which punctuated the demonstration against the construction of an artificial water reserve. According to the Niort prosecutor’s office, seven demonstrators were injured, including three in absolute urgency, while 28 gendarmes were injured, including two in absolute urgency. The organizers, themselves, evoke a heavier toll of 200 injured.
>> “Mega-basins”: demonstrators and gendarmes injured, mortar fire, burned vehicles… What happened on Saturday in Sainte-Soline?
This violence does not discourage the demonstrators whom we met on Saturday evening in the village of Melle, a quarter of an hour by car from Sainte-Soline, where a water festival is organized this weekend.
Sharing this resource is an issue that surpasses everything, says Edith: “We are coming to a period where the drought, we can see that it has an impact on our daily life and all year round not just in summer”.
“It’s so absurd to have such strong repression compared to what we defend. We feel so duty bound to defend the common good that we will continue to mobilize”.
Edith, opponent of the artificial water reserve projectat franceinfo
At the microphone, an opponent of “mega-basins” also castigates the intervention of the police: “It’s only to dissuade us from continuing the fight. It’s only because they feel they’re losing ground and that’s why we’re going to continue in the months and weeks to come to fight against the basins.”
A mode of claim “that makes people talk about the subject”
The demonstrators can count on the support of Sylvain Griffault, the mayor of Melle, who lent them the campsite and municipal land. He wants to believe that the clashes have not totally eclipsed the fundamental debate on the management of water resources: “I believe that shocking things have happened, but this mode of claiming, unfortunately, we can say that it makes people talk about the subject, believes the chosen one. When you only sit around a table, you don’t necessarily talk about it as much.”
Sylvain Griffault is now waiting for the round tables on water scheduled for this Sunday in his town: “We need to be able to show that this subject can also be treated with complete peace of mind. And the municipality of Melle was able to host and also had the will to host this event. We have a municipality that took a motion against the replacement reserves, a little over a year and a half ago now. There are other solutions than taking the water out of where it is and putting it in the open air”.
Excluded – Demonstrators attacked one of the valves of the future basin project in Sainte Soline. They managed to pierce the steel slightly using a grinder. pic.twitter.com/yPhy0nRXIo
— Willy Moreau (@wy_mr) March 25, 2023
The collective of associations “Bassines non merci” claims to have gathered up to 30,000 people on Saturday afternoon. The gendarmerie counts 8,000 demonstrators. Some of them damaged one of the valves of the future water reserve by piercing the steel with a grinder. 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.