Prefecture claims deforestation along route is “completed”, 17 arrests since Friday

Clashes between opponents of the project and the police broke out on the night of Saturday to Sunday.

“Deforestation planned all along” of the A69 motorway route is “already completed”the Tarn prefecture said in a statement on Sunday, September 1, adding that there were four people still perched in the trees. “The operation started on Friday in Saïx (Tarn) and along the construction site (…) is making significant progress”estimates the prefecture, which specifies that the SNCF line between Toulouse and Castres has reopened “early afternoon”Sunday.

The clearing of the construction site for the future Toulouse-Castres motorway began around midnight, “under the protection of law enforcement”according to the same source. Tensions erupted during the night between the two camps.

“The gendarmes were the target of mortar fire and projectiles thrown from catapults”but “no harm to property or people is to be deplored”she explained in a statement.

For its part, the collective La Voie est Libre, opposed to the project, denounced police violence that occurred during the evacuation of the camps in recent days. The anti-A69 notably accuse the police of having caused a heavy fall of one of their members on Friday, which would have caused six fractures of the spine, “destroyed”according to a message posted by the group on Facebook.

In total, 17 arrests have taken place since Friday, when anti-A69 activists were dislodged from a camp near the construction site in Saïx. However, several of them remained perched in trees, in the hope of preventing them from being cut down. The activists had built tree houses in advance to be able to retreat to them in the event of police intervention, an AFP journalist noted.

Early Sunday afternoon, the felling continued on the land of the former camp, under the gaze of about twenty opponents, an AFP photographer noted. About fifty kilometers further, in Verfeil, in Haute-Garonne, anti-A69 activists occupying another piece of land on the route of the future motorway claimed to have been victims of a second attempted arson during the night from Saturday to Sunday.