The government dissolved Les Uprisings of the Earth (SLT) on Wednesday in the Council of Ministers, accusing the collective of “calling” and “participating” in violence, a decision immediately challenged before the Council of State by the environmental group .
“We do not dissolve an uprising”, reacted the collective on Twitter, welcoming the marks of support. “Stocks will resurface everywhere, dissolution or not,” he added.
In the evening, around a thousand people gathered in solidarity in Nantes, not far from Notre-Dame-de-Landes, where the Uprisings of the Earth were born.
“We can’t stop our anger,” said 19-year-old anthropology student Esther Cordier.
In Paris there were several hundred, in the presence in particular of the deputy Mathilde Panot (LFI). Other gatherings brought together around 200 people in Lille, Toulouse, Montpellier and Marseille as well as around 100 in Strasbourg.
Later in the evening, the mayor of Toulouse, Jean-Luc Moudenc, told AFP that he had been attacked by a hundred people, some carrying SLT banners, but also “masked people from the ultra-left “, who threw “projectiles” at him found in garbage cans, slightly injuring a person accompanying him.
At the end of the afternoon, the lawyers of the collective, Mes Raphaël Kempf and Ainoha Pascual, had announced the imminent filing of an appeal with the Council of State, to challenge the dissolution.
The lawyers dispute the legal basis of the measure, the Uprisings not being a declared entity but a “protean movement”, according to them, like the feminist or environmental movements.
Greta Thunberg, present in Paris on the sidelines of the summit for a new global financial pact, gave them her support. “It’s a question of the right to protest and the defense of life,” she said.
“The use of violence is not legitimate in the rule of law and that is what is sanctioned,” said government spokesman Olivier Véran in the morning.
“Under the guise of defending the preservation of the environment”, this movement “incites the commission of sabotage and material damage, including by violence”, writes the government in its decree of dissolution.
But, “no cause justifies the particularly numerous and violent acts” to which it “calls and provokes” and “in which its members and sympathizers participate”, adds the decree.
To support its argument, the government lists a series of actions carried out by SLT which resulted in “material destruction” and “physical attacks on the police”.
The government had initiated the dissolution procedure on March 28, a few days after the violent clashes between gendarmes and opponents of the water reservoirs of Sainte-Soline (Deux-Sèvres) for which it had attributed responsibility to the movement.
The procedure, which remained blocked for more than two months, finally succeeded after a new demonstration supported by SLT this weekend, against the Lyon-Turin rail link, marked by scuffles.
SLT, born in January 2021 in the former ZAD (zone to defend) of Notre-Dame-des-Landes, has also made an appointment on August 18 in Sainte-Soline for the departure of a convoy in tractors and by bike towards Paris.
In parallel, a wave of arrests of environmental activists took place on Tuesday in the investigation into the action carried out at the end of 2022 against a Lafarge cement factory in Provence and supported by SLT.
Sixteen people were in police custody on Wednesday, a source familiar with the matter told AFP, but at least one of them in the Marseille region, an EELV activist, has been released, according to his lawyer, Fabien Perez. The arrests had been made in Loire-Atlantique, in particular in Notre-Dame-des-Landes, and in the Marseille region.
It is “the first time that France has used the means of anti-terrorism against environmental activists”, estimated to AFP Basile Dutertre, one of the spokespersons for the SLT who has lived for a long time in the former ZAD of Notre-Dame-des-Landes.
The dissolution and the arrests were denounced by part of the left.
“I see a real drift and a loss of composure,” said Green MP Julien Bayou. “The President of the Republic continues to criminalize social movements”, “it’s dangerous”, he said.
“You will remain like those who have finally understood nothing of the issues” of the climate, commented on Twitter the deputy EELV Sandrine Rousseau, mentioning Emmanuel Macron, Elisabeth Borne and Gérald Darmanin.
Jean-Luc Mélenchon, leader of La France insoumise, had regretted on Tuesday that the activists were “repressed like terrorists that they are not”.
The League for Human Rights (LDH) denounced a “questioning of the freedoms of association, demonstration, expression, as well as the rights of the defense” and called for “joining the rallies of support” at SLT.
The Uprisings claim an “extremely varied” base. A support evening in April attracted various political, artistic and scientific personalities.
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06/21/2023 23:04:38 – Paris (AFP) – © 2023 AFP
