The face-to-face between the opponents of a project of agricultural basins and the police could continue in Sainte-Soline (Deux-Sèvres). “More than a thousand gendarmes will remain while we make sure that no ZAD [Zone à défendre] is not built”Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin announced on Sunday, October 30, claiming to act “at the request of the President of the Republic”.
He speaks at the end of two days of demonstrations which gave rise to clashes and degradations on the sidelines of the construction site of one of these water reservoirs. On Saturday, some demonstrators managed to cross the gates protecting the site, before being repelled. On Sunday, some cut a pipe. They claim that it must be used to feed a future basin, which the Minister of the Interior disputed on Sunday, assuring that it belonged to a farmer.
>> Agricultural basins: why are these water reserves criticized by ecologists and farmers?
The actions of these opponents”amount to eco-terrorism”estimated Gérald Darmanin, adding “only about forty” activists “S files” were identified on the spot.
On Saturday, the prefecture said that projectiles, including molotov cocktails, had targeted the gendarmes, who launched tear gas canisters. According to Gérald Darmanin’s report on Saturday evening, 66 were injured, including 22 “seriously”. “Some are still hospitalized”, he said on Sunday evening. The organizers of the demonstration identified about fifty injured participants, five of whom were hospitalized. Several activists as well as a deputy and a European deputy from Europe Ecologie-Les Verts have “suffered beatings during law enforcement operations”denounced the party in a press release on Sunday evening.
The Sainte-Soline gathering had been banned upstream by the Deux-Sèvres prefecture. “There were less than a dozen arrests”said Gérald Darmanin on Sunday, justifying this figure by the priority given to the gendarmes to protect the site.
If the gathering of opponents of the basin project was to end on Sunday, demonstrators continue to occupy land near the site lent by a farmer. On Sunday, they began building watchtowers on this site, which is to become “the starting point for a whole host of harassment actions that will be carried out if the work were to continue”said Julien Le Guet, spokesperson for the collective.
“The state cannot intervene” on private land and prevent opponents from settling there, recalled Gérald Darmanin on Sunday. But he assured that the State was preparing appeals if they continue to build buildings “manifestly totally illegal”in order to “destroy them”.