Deux-Sèvres: more than 3,000 gendarmes and police mobilized to defend the "basins"

Europe 1 with AFP 15:12 pm, March 24, 2023

The Minister of the Interior announced the mobilization of 3,200 gendarmes and police this weekend for a new banned demonstration against the "basins" in the Deux-Sèvres, twice as many as during the last rally punctuated by clashes. Military trucks, quads, helicopters, the police began to take position on Friday around the water reserve under construction in Sainte-Soline, theater at the end of October of this last demonstration, also prohibited.

"We expect significant violence"

The authorities expect the arrival in the department, Saturday, of 7,000 to 10,000 opponents of these water reservoirs for agricultural irrigation, including a thousand radical activists. "We will see extremely harsh images because there is a very large mobilization of the far left and those who want to attack the gendarmes and maybe kill gendarmes and kill institutions," Darmanin told Cnews.

"We expect significant violence," added the prefect of Deux-Sèvres, Emmanuelle Dubée, at a press briefing at midday in Sainte-Soline, referring to "significant seizures of objects constituting weapons or weapons by destination" carried out during controls before the demonstration.

>> READ ALSO - Why the Sainte-Soline mega-basin project is legal

"We seized petanque balls, slingshots, blunt objects, incendiary products such as mortars (...) There are also knives, axes (...) a whole panel that demonstrates the violence that will be exercised by the most determined activists and their willingness to come to battle, "detailed to journalists General Samuel Dubuis, commander of the region of gendarmerie Nouvelle-Aquitaine.

The organizers of the rally - the collective "Bassines non merci", the environmental movement of the Earth Uprisings and the agricultural union Confédération paysanne - announced for their part the installation of a camp "near the demonstration area, under the nose and beard of the prefectural device and the many controls on the zone".

"Standing together to defend water"

According to them, this "base camp" installed on a private plot, lent by its owner, is located outside the perimeter of prohibition of the event, whose exact place is still unclear, between the communes of Sainte-Soline "and / or" Mauzé-sur-le-Mignon, where a first "basin" is already in service. "As the country rises up to defend pensions, we will simultaneously stand up to defend water," the organizers said. They are due to hold an afternoon press conference in Lusignan, in neighbouring Vienne, where tractors are due to converge ahead of the demonstration, among other convoys expected from several towns.

Sixteen reservoirs, with a total capacity of about 6 million cubic meters, are to be built, mainly in the Deux-Sèvres, as part of a project led by a cooperative of 450 farmers with the support of the State.

It aims to store water drawn from surface aquifers in winter in the open air, in order to irrigate crops in summer when rainfall is scarce. Its supporters make it a condition for the survival of farms in the face of the threat of recurrent droughts. Opponents of the "basins" denounce a "grabbing" of water by "agribusiness" at a time of climate change, and demand a moratorium on their constructions to launch "a real territorial project" on the "sharing of water".

The Greens are worried about potential eavesdropping of elected officials

The national secretary of EELV Marine Tondelier questioned Friday Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne on potential illegal eavesdropping of environmental parliamentarians as part of the surveillance of anti-basin activists. The Greens will seize the national commission for the control of intelligence techniques to shed light on this issue, says the boss of the ecologists in this letter, of which AFP has had a copy.

This letter follows the publication on Wednesday of an article in the Canard Enchainé, entitled "Darmanin with joined feet in the mega-basins". According to the newspaper, wiretapping of anti-basin activists, in view of a rally organized from March 24 in Sainte-Soline (Deux-Sèvres), would have drifted towards wiretapping of elected officials, which is prohibited.

The Deux-Sèvres are preparing for a new demonstration banned Saturday against the "basins", water reserves dedicated to agricultural irrigation, five months after the last one that had given rise to clashes with the police. Marine Tondelier has planned to go there. In his letter, the ecologist notes that the article mentions "intelligence techniques used to place 'activists' under 'surveillance' (shadowing, infiltration, computer trapping, beaconing, geolocation, as well as administrative eavesdropping). In this context, "it appears that elected ecologists would have been the subject of illegal interceptions," indignant the head of EELV.

"These revelations, of extreme gravity, lead us to request that checks be undertaken to establish the reality of these illegal interceptions." The collection of information vis-à-vis an elected official is very supervised, and must be examined by the National Commission for the Control of Intelligence Techniques. Marine Tondelier also regrets "strongly that such means of surveillance are deployed against pacifist environmental activists, which contributes to a criminalization of ecology".