the LDH accuses the police of having hindered the intervention of the relief workers

“We explicitly heard the emergency doctor from the Samu say clearly that they had the order not to intervene from the command on site”said Sunday March 26 on franceinfo Pierre-Antoine Cazaux, one of the lawyers of the League of Human Rights (LDH), the day after the clashes in Sainte-Soline in the Deux Sèvres between police and opponents to the mega-basins which injured several people including a life-threatening protester hired on Sunday.

>> REPORT. “Mega-basins”: in Sainte-Soline, despite the violent clashes, the demonstrators want to “continue to mobilize”

The organizers denounce obstacles on the part of the police to slow down the intervention of the relief workers on Saturday March 25. A team of observers from the League of Human Rights (LDH) – present on site – confirms this. Pierre-Antoine Cazaux adds that he attended “several calls with the Samu from a doctor who explained that there was a life-threatening emergency. The answer we gave him was that he could not intervene.”

“There were at least 20-30 minutes during which there was no intervention from the Samu”specifies the lawyer of the LDH before adding: “But that’s from the moment we are alerted. Which means that the time during which there was this call is even longer”. And to conclude: “On this, we can confirm that there was a long delay in intervention.”

“Extremely difficult” intervention conditions according to the prefecture

For its part, the prefecture of Deux-Sèvres responds and affirms that “the emergency services (firefighters and Samu) intervened in extremely difficult conditions, even though the clashes had not ceased and the police continued to be attacked.”

The prefecture then justifies the emergency response times by explaining that it was difficult to locate the injured: “Even before being able to intervene, the emergency services were faced with a first difficulty, precisely locating the injured.” Another difficulty according to the prefecture, the fact that the emergency services “were then hampered in their progress by the clashes which continued as close as possible to the reserve of substitution. It is in particular from this point that doctors from the gendarmerie went to provide first aid to several wounded including a demonstrator seriously injured, or even a press photographer victim of a stone throw”she concludes.