Sainte-Soline: Jean-Luc Mélenchon denounces a "stalker" organized by the authorities

Europe 1 with AFP 21:46 p.m., March 27, 2023

Jean-Luc Mélenchon denounced Monday a "stalking" that have in his eyes organized the authorities in Sainte-Soline in the Deux-Sèvres, where violent clashes took place Saturday during a demonstration against "mega-basins", leaving two participants between life and death. Several demonstrations were "seriously and deliberately injured," Jean-Luc Mélenchon told a news conference in Paris. He denounced a "stalking" "deliberately organized" in the absence of police roadblocks placed upstream of the site where several thousand demonstrators went, and where several thousand gendarmes were deployed.

>> READ ALSO - Mega-basins in the Deux-Sèvres: why this project crystallizes tensions

Jean-Luc Mélenchon pleads for a Sixth Republic

The former presidential candidate responded to Emmanuel Macron, who judged Monday that the rebels sought to "delegitimize" the institutions: "The one who delegitimizes is him, with the stacked use of all forms of procedures to shorten and prevent debates" in Parliament. "It gives the most brutal and undemocratic version of the Fifth Republic," added the rebel, who pleads for a Sixth Republic strengthening the powers of parliament.

In demonstration or in Sainte-Soline, "the violence that we see on all sides, they are unable to contain them, and it is his fault," insisted Jean-Luc Mélenchon.

>> READ ALSO - Demonstration against the "basins": the vital prognosis of a committed demonstrator, an investigation opened

"Wounded by dozens"

Three rebellious deputies present in Sainte-Soline on Saturday recounted what they had seen. "There was a grenade (tear gas) for two people, a grenade every second, it was an indescribable visual and sound chaos," denounced Clémence Guetté, elected Val-de-Marne. "We come back shocked," she said, recounting having seen "wounded by the dozens, in the face, with holes in the leg, dilapidated wounds, and rescue vehicles were prevented from coming to the scene". The rebels announced that they would request a parliamentary commission of inquiry into the choices of policing in Sainte-Soline. But they have already used their only right of drawing, which would allow its creation of right, in the parliamentary session.

"Behind the quads and water cannons, it was the billions of agribusiness" that the authorities sought to protect, accused the deputy of Côtes-d'Armor Murielle Lepvraud, while the demonstrators advocated peasant agriculture and sober in the use of water. The Niort prosecutor's office announced the opening of an investigation into the circumstances in which three protesters were seriously injured. Interior Minister Gerard Darmanin, for his part, targeted "an unprecedented wave of violence" by some demonstrators, which injured 47 gendarmes.