A reinforcement of weight for the anti-A69. Environmental activist Greta Thunberg came to Tarn on Saturday February 10 to support opponents of the motorway project, who are organizing a weekend of mobilization near an occupied wooded area.

The world muse of the fight against global warming, fuchsia raincoat, gray hood and Palestinian keffiyeh around her neck, is part of an international delegation arriving late in the morning in Saïx, a few kilometers west of Castres (south from France). She arrived on foot at a shed located on private land. She was surrounded by a few dozen activists, some of whom carried signs reading "Stop A69", and was due to participate in a press conference a little later.

Organizers hope to bring together 500 to 1,000 people over the weekend for workshops, round tables and concerts, but rainy and windy weather and Friday's intervention by law enforcement in the immediate vicinity could dampen enthusiasm. .

On Friday, the prefect of Tarn announced that he had "issued an order prohibiting demonstrations and gatherings" on Saturday and Sunday in Saïx, citing "risks of major disturbances to public order".

Makeshift tree houses at the ZAD camp during a demonstration against the construction of the A69 motorway, on February 10, 2024 in Saïx, in Tarn. © Lionel Bonaventure, AFP

“Gathering on a private estate, with the agreement of the owner, is not prohibited, everyone can invite whoever they want to their home,” the prefecture services told AFP on Saturday.

“What happened yesterday (Friday) was that there were violent opponents who blocked the public highway with barricades, hence the strong action yesterday (Friday),” said a prefecture official, confirming that two people had been arrested on Friday and that seven members of the police had been injured, notably by stone throwing.

“Putting the struggle on an international and national level”

On Saturday morning, AFP journalists saw around a hundred demonstrators facing police officers on a railway line a few hundred meters away, next to a wooded "ZAD" (zone to be defended) set up on land being the subject of a dispute in connection with an expropriation of its owner due to the construction of the highway.

According to the prefecture, this is an “illegal occupation” of private land and state services are “working on this subject”.

Opponents of the construction of the A69 motorway face the police in the smoke of tear gas, February 10, 2024 in Saïx, in Tarn. © Lionel Bonaventure, AFP

“A hundred individuals blocked the railway between Toulouse and Castres and they put obstacles on it. The individuals had set up three barricades and set one on fire, the gendarmes managed to reopen the municipal road which had been blocked” , indicated the prefecture in a message.

The presence of Greta Thunberg "allows the fight against the A69 to be fully registered at the international and national level and encourages political leaders to take stock of their stubbornness", one of the organizing groups, No Macadam, underlined on Friday.

Almost half of the budget already committed

In recent months, the protest movement seemed to be running out of steam, while "45% of the budget" for the project was committed and "95% of the deforestation" carried out, according to the Atosca company, the highway concessionaire.

The French government is determined to carry this section of motorway “to completion”, which would reduce the Castres-Toulouse journey by around twenty minutes and must be put into service in 2025.

A parliamentary commission of inquiry at the initiative of environmentalist deputies will soon begin its work, to explore the “legal and financial set-up of the project”.

Opponents of the construction of the A69 motorway face the gendarmes near the ZAD camp, on February 10, 2024 in Saïx, in Tarn. © Lionel Bonaventure, AFP

According to its opponents, this decades-old project is obsolete, dating from before the awareness of the changes in behavior made necessary by climate change.

"Dear Greta Thunberg, (...) the A69 motorway responds to a vital need for Tarn and its inhabitants", on the contrary declared Friday in a press release the president of the Tarn departmental council, Christophe Ramond, for whom his department "has no lessons to learn in terms of sustainable development".

With AFP

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