The Minister of the Interior, Gérald Darmanin, confirmed the statements of the government spokesperson, Olivier Véran: this Wednesday, June 21, the decree dissolving the environmental association Les Uprisings de la Earth (SLT).
Responding on Tuesday to a question from Renaissance deputy Thomas Rudigoz who denounced the violence that occurred between the police and environmental activists during the demonstration against the Lyon-Turin rail link, the Minister of the Interior defended the decree dissolving the SLT arguing that “no cause justifies injuring police and gendarmes”.
“The climate cause does not justify going to stone the gendarmes on a field”, had argued Olivié Véran, on the set of CNews, questioned about a possible “rise in violence” in society, after the very violent aggression of an old lady and a little girl in Bordeaux. “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.
More generally, he felt that “as our society modernizes, the aspirations for security grow.” “In the same movement, we see emerging on the margins of our society several forms of violence”, he continued, citing “the violence that we have seen in certain demonstrations”, “the gratuitous violence of everyday life” , “verbal abuse […] on social media”, “school violence through bullying…”.
The Earth Uprisings denounced a “very political and particularly disturbing dissolution”. This dissolution was “claimed directly from the Head of State by agribusiness and the FNSEA” and “trying to silence Les Uprisings of the Earth is a vain attempt to break the thermometer rather than worry about the temperature,” the radical environmental movement said in a statement.
The Uprisings of the Earth have, according to him, “shown violence in Sainte-Soline [during a demonstration against a giant reservoir of water for irrigation, editor’s note] by inviting thugs who came from all over Europe with metal bars, petanque balls to try to kill police officers”. 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. Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin 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.
SLT is a motley collective of associations, unions, groups created in January 2021 in the former ZAD (zone to defend) of Notre-Dame-des-Landes.
The left immediately denounced this dissolution. The activists of this association are “repressed like terrorists that they are not”, denounced on Twitter Jean-Luc Mélenchon, leader of La France insoumise. They “must be listened to […] The ecological emergency must be understood”.
Earth Uprising activists must be listened to. Not suppressed like the terrorists they are not. The ecological emergency must be understood.https://t.co/XnwJNxCdsz
LFI coordinator Manuel Bompard defended “peaceful citizens worried about the terrible consequences of climate inaction”. Also on Twitter, Green MP Sandrine Rousseau went so far as to use a historical comparison, a few days after Emmanuel Macron’s announcement of the entry into the Hall of Resistance fighter Missak Manouchian: “During the call of June 18 , the resistance movement was considered terrorist. It’s June 20, and tomorrow, an Earth defense movement is going to be considered terrorist,” she said.
MEP David Cormand, ex-head of EELV, for his part denounced “the repressive relentlessness and criminalization of environmental activists symptomatic of this government’s denial and blindness”.
This Tuesday, fourteen people, close to the SLT, were taken into police custody in the investigation into an action carried out in December 2022 against the Lafarge cement factory in Bouc-Bel-Air (Bouches-du-Rhône) by climate activists . These arrests were quickly denounced by the leader of the LFI deputies, Mathilde Panot. “This power is a danger to democracy!” “She got carried away, recalling that the Lafarge group is suspected of having paid, in 2013 and 2014, via its Syrian subsidiary, several million euros to terrorist groups, including the Islamic State group.
