"We have witnessed scenes of war" that illustrate "a violent drift of the state," said at a press conference the MEP EELV Benoît Biteau, the day after this demonstration, banned by the prefecture, which gathered between 6,000 people, according to the authorities, and 30,000 according to the organizers.
More than 3,000 gendarmes and police officers had been mobilized to defend the basin (name given by opponents to these reserves for agricultural irrigation) under construction in Sainte-Soline as part of a project that provides for 16, with a total capacity of six million cubic meters.
The government denounced Saturday "an intolerable wave of violence" on the part of the demonstrators but the organizers blame the clashes to the police.
"They are the ones who fired first to keep away" the demonstrators, said Mr. Biteau alongside representatives of the agricultural union Confédération paysanne, the collective Bassines non merci and the movement of the Soulupings of the Earth. Like the national secretary of EELV the day before, Marine Tondelier, they denounced the intervention of a "squadron of quads" against elected officials who protected the wounded.
Observers from the League of Human Rights reported "several cases of obstruction of rescue" by the police, on which they will report. "The observations made are far from the official discourse on the violence of the demonstrators," said Sunday the regional committee Poitou-Charentes of the LDH.
The authorities on Saturday blamed the delay in the intervention of the emergency services to violence by activists against the gendarmes who had to secure their access to the site.
© 2023 AFP