The government spokesperson, Olivier Véran, confirmed on Tuesday, June 20, the forthcoming dissolution of the environmental association Les Uprisings of the Earth (SLT) because “the climate cause does not justify going to stone the gendarmes on a field “.
Perhaps at the Council of Ministers on Wednesday, perhaps at that of “next week” but in any case the dissolution will be pronounced “as soon as possible”, specified Mr. Véran on CNews. “We do not dissolve an association based on its ideas, we dissolve it because there are abuses or the endangerment of public security, this is the case here”, he summarized. From a source familiar with the matter, the dissolution decree will be presented to the Council of Ministers on Wednesday, unless there is a surprise.
The Earth Uprisings, he said, “showed violence in Sainte-Soline (during a demonstration against a giant reservoir of water for irrigation), inviting thugs who came from all over Europe with metal bars, petanque balls to try to kill police officers”.
Blocked procedure
The Minister of the Interior, Gérald Darmanin, had initiated this dissolution procedure on March 28, a few days after the violent clashes in Sainte-Soline (Deux-Sèvres). Remained blocked for more than two months, the procedure moved last week, after the deterioration in particular of a vegetable farm in Saint-Philbert-de-Grand-Lieu (Loire-Atlantique) during a traveling demonstration against the exploitation sand for industrial purposes in Saint-Colomban, at the request of SLT in particular.
Jean-Luc Mélenchon regretted Tuesday on Twitter that these activists are “repressed like terrorists that they are not”. They “must be listened to. (…) The ecological emergency must be understood, ”lamented the leader of La France insoumise (LFI).
The Uprisings of the Earth are a motley collective of associations, unions, groups created in January 2021 in the former ZAD (zone to defend) of Notre-Dame-des-Landes. The collective was present this weekend in the demonstration against the Lyon-Turin tunnel project. In a press release published on June 15, SLT says it contests “the legal basis as material for this dissolution” and wants to initiate “an appeal against this draconian measure if it were pronounced”. “We say it again today, we are a broad movement, not a ‘small group’ or a ‘nebula of activists’. We are not an association or an organization with any “leaders”, but a constellation of coordinations, assemblies and coalitions that build actions on the ground as close as possible to local struggles. »
Asked about the upcoming dissolution of the Uprisings of the Earth, Tuesday on LCI, the LFI deputy Eric Coquerel said “to see an authoritarian drift of the government. Every society must accept, within a certain limit, the counter-power “.
“It’s a total aberration”, reacted Monday on France Inter the science fiction author Alain Damasio, who participated in the writing of a collective work to defend the collective: We do not dissolve an uprising. Forty voices for The Uprisings of the Earth, published on June 9 by Editions du Seuil. Dissolving Les SLT, “it’s not just a bad idea, it’s a total, absolute aberration”, reacted Alain Damasio, in the sense that the collective “defends in a very simple way” the idea that “water must remain a common good (…) Water is the new gold, it will be decisive with the drought: we see it, it becomes constant. »