Irún (Spain) (AFP)
"We will not be silent!": The counter-summit of the G7 which began Wednesday in Irun (Spain) and Hendaye wants to be the sounding board of all the challenges of "fortress capitalism" that will incarnate Biarritz, completely "bunkerized" .
Some 200 people and dozens of organizations attended the kick-off of this anti-G7 gathering, for three days of exchanges and debates, before a major demonstration Saturday from Hendaye and occupations of public squares Sunday closer to Biarritz.
"For us, two worlds will oppose this week," said Aurélie Trouvé, spokesperson Alternatives G7. "In Biarritz, seven heads of state in their ivory tower framed by a bewildering police and military device, cut off from the population, and in Hendaye, an open, plural and protest against G7, with a great diversity of Basque movements , French and international who share values and hopes ".
According to her, Emmanuel Macron has demonstrated a "cynicism foolproof" by placing the G7 under the sign of the fight against inequality while it "cuts down all the mechanisms of solidarity" and "destroys social rights".
In the spans of the Ficoba, a large exhibition center in the Spanish border town, you'll just end up hanging on the "alternative village" banner. Ecological, feminist, trade union or agricultural organizations set up their booth, have T-shirts and literature, many of them in Basque.
Near the anarchists of the National Confederation of Labor (CNT), supporters of the boycott of Israel have spread a Palestinian flag. The association which defends the return of the Basque prisoners is in good place.
Further, a model with the effigy of Emmanuel Macron carries a sign of "president of inequalities". At the microphone, "yellow vests" from Saint-Nazaire explain the reason for their presence but emphasize that they do not represent movement.
- "Already a victory" -
"I'm here to inform myself, to get ideas and it's not by staying in your room that you can worry about it." It's not every day that there is a G7 against France! ", Explains Mathias, 28, PhD student in ecology in Toulouse, walking between the tables.
Like people from "Geneva, Brittany and elsewhere", he lodges in the "camp" specially developed in Urrugne, near Hendaye, which can accommodate nearly ten thousand people. This is the figure that the organizers hope to gather at the counter-summit.
"We represent the 99%", as opposed to the richest 1%, explains Sébastien Bailleul, an organizer. For him "it is already a victory to be there" for such diverse movements whose common point is to want a "radical social transformation".
Before the first of some 100 debates and workshops planned, Olivier Besancenot (New capitalist party) denounces to journalists "a world order incarnated caricatured by a kind of authoritarian directory that decides for the majority of humanity and takes the planet in the wall".
"We do not want this world where 26 billionaires have more than 3.7 billion people!" Ton the former presidential candidate.
While 13,200 gendarmes and policemen secure the event, Mr. Besancenot accuses President Macron to make the "same bet" to the G7 that during the crisis of "yellow vests": "to seek to demonstrate strength to ensure his authority" .
The organizers repeat to the envy that they advocate non-violence. "If there is violence in our ranks, we will be able to manage it," assures Mr. Bailleul, "but if other violence takes place, we will blame the State, which for months has shown that its management of demonstrations 'is not proportionate'.
In recent days, small groups mainly antifascists and anarchists have left the official platform of the counter-summit, judging too much controlled by the state to express themselves outside this framework, while the presence of "black bloc" n is not excluded.
© 2019 AFP