After more than an hour of negotiations, the tension rose a notch on Saturday June 17, on the route of a demonstration by opponents of the project for a new railway line between Lyon and Turin. Some of the militants threw projectiles in the direction of the police, which blocked the passage of this procession prohibited by the prefecture, on the D1006 at the height of Saint-Rémy-de-Maurienne (Savoie). They used tear gas. Follow the situation in our live.
Several thousand participants. The organizers claimed more than 4,000 participants in the procession, which left La Chapelle shortly before 1 p.m. The Ministry of the Interior mentioned for its part “more than 3,000 demonstrators”. It should be noted that the deputy Mathilde Panot, patron of the group La France insoumise in the Assembly, was present in the procession before the incidents, alongside several elected environmentalists and insoumis.
Divergences on the course. The procession left calmly in the middle of the day at the call of a dozen organizations, including the Uprisings of the Earth, threatened with dissolution by the Ministry of the Interior, and the Italian No-Tav, mobilized against a building site “pharaonic” judge “harmful” for the environment. The elected officials present negotiated for more than an hour with the police about the continuation of the demonstration, blocked in Saint-Rémy-de-Maurienne, on the edge of the area where the prefecture has banned all gatherings. .
TER traffic disrupted. Traffic on the TER line linking Modane to Chambéry has been interrupted “due to the presence of demonstrators on the tracks”, says the SNCF. Protesters have indeed invaded the nearby railway line, AFP also noted.