On May 5, 2018, while environmental associations were meeting in La-Bastide-de-Sérou, Ariège, some 750 anti-bear activists, hunters and agricultural unionists landed and burst into the village to demonstrate their opposition to the presence of the bear, at the heart of the debates of environmentalist associations.
Stone throwing and assaults had taken place.
This Tuesday, six of the anti-bear activists present that day were given a three-month suspended prison sentence by the Foix criminal court, as well as 500 euros in fines.
Two opposing visions of environmental protection
This file, baptized the "trial of rurality", illustrates the gap that exists in the Pyrenees between two visions of environmental protection.
On the day of the hearing, last October, nearly 2,000 people came to support the defendants, including Christiane Lambert, the president of the FNSEA.
Rémi Toulis, the departmental president of this agricultural union said he was "stunned by the severity of the judgment".
“We wanted, that day, to show our dissatisfaction, and it was organized with the police.
There were no worries.
Frankly, with what we see today on TV… Ariège justice comes to stop and deprives us of our freedom of speech, ”he reacted.
The convicts will appeal
Four organizations were also fined 2,000 euros each: the anti-bear association ASPAP, the FDSEA, the Young Farmers (JA) and the federation of hunters.
All have indicated that they will appeal.
For his part, for Jérôme Brosseron, president of the association approved for the protection of the Ariège rivers, one of the six environmental associations to have filed a civil action, "justice comes to recall that the right of expression and the freedom of assembly are constitutional rights, throughout the territory".
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Justice
Occitania
Pyrenees
Toulouse
Bear
Hunters
Demonstration