Europe 1 with AFP / Photo credit: THIBAUD MORITZ / AFP 6:55 p.m., March 23, 2024
A year after the clashes in Sainte-Soline between environmental demonstrators and the police against the mega-basins project, some 200 opponents began “commemoration actions” days this Saturday. In a field made available by the town hall of Melle, a cairn was built in the morning, as a place of memory.
Construction of a cairn, militant songs and pétanque tournament... In Deux-Sèvres, some 200 opponents of megabasins began calmly days of "commemor'actions" on Saturday, a year after a violent demonstration against these reserves agricultural water. In a field made available by the town hall of Melle, a few km from Sainte-Soline, a cairn, a stack of stones, was built in the morning, as a place of memory. “The idea is to ensure that in the decades to come, people can come here and know what happened on March 25, 2023,” said Julien Le Guet, one of the leaders of the protest. anti-basins.
File a complaint against Gérald Darmanin
That day, around a reserve under construction protected by more than 3,000 gendarmes, 30,000 people according to the organizers, 6,000 to 8,000 according to the authorities, took part in this gathering banned by the Deux-Sèvres prefecture. Violent clashes broke out, leaving many injured, including two demonstrators who fell into a coma. Julien Le Guet, spokesperson for the "Bassines non merci" collective, castigated "those who made the strategic choices to take 3,200 agents, nine helicopters, armored vehicles and thousands, tens of thousands of bombs", calling for what they give “account of their choices and the consequences they had”.*
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From Sunday, the collective will "offer the opportunity" to those who wish to file a complaint with the Court of Justice of the Republic against Gérald Darmanin, accused of having "lied on several occasions" about the progress of the demonstration. In the afternoon, the demonstrators symbolically joined the Sauzé-Vaussais gendarmerie on foot in an attempt to recover objects that had been confiscated from them a year earlier, before concluding the day with a pétanque tournament. Their actions continue until Monday. To date, only one basin, among the 16 programmed in Deux-Sèvres, is operating, in Mauzé-sur-le-Mignon. Three others are under construction, in Sainte-Soline, Priaires and Epannes.