'We are disobedient': protesters against mega-basins want to put up the pressure again

Charles Guyard, edited by Laura Laplaud 14:03 pm, March 25, 2023

Will violence return to Sainte-Soline? 20,000 activists are expected, according to the organizers, this Saturday and throughout the weekend to protest against the project of "mega-basins". A demonstration yet banned by the prefecture. Europe 1 went there.

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"We've come to the right place"

Several thousand people have just left the Vanzé field in which a camp has been established for two days. The militants are heading towards Sainte-Soline, six kilometers away, a site banned by the prefecture of Deux-Sèvres. However, the determination is total as Marine Tondelier, national secretary of Europe Ecology The Greens (EELV), who says she is ready to put herself in illegality. "We are disobedient, it's something we claim. It has been done in the past. Today, if we want to save the climate, we think we are in the right place and we will continue to do so."

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"It would be a political mistake not to be present. People who think that we will break everything will be very disappointed since the Sainte-Soline basin today is not built. It's a hole. You cannot destroy a hole. So 3,200 gendarmes, CRS, police to defend a hole where there is nothing to destroy, it is still a little disproportionate and it is sure that it brings people who are no longer there for the gendarmes, the police, the CRS than for the basins.

3,200 police forces mobilized

Faced with thousands of demonstrators, 3,200 police are deployed in numbers, on horseback, on quad bikes and even in the air, with several helicopters currently flying over the advance of the procession. "Without all this pressure from the Ministry of the Interior, without all this intimidation, it would go very well," concludes Marine Tondelier at the microphone of Europe 1.