Despite the ban, opponents of the Lyon-Turin rail line camped out all afternoon on a road in the Maurienne valley. When their demonstration ended, they retreated to their base camp. The day was marked by a brief occupation of the A43 motorway and scuffles at Saint-Rémy-de-Maurienne.
“96 foreign nationals, known to the services, were turned back at the border. More than 400 dangerous objects were seized during preflight checks. Support for the 12 injured gendarmes”, sums up a tweet from Gérald Darmanin.
The organizers, themselves, evoke “several wounded” in their ranks during the rally at the call of a dozen movements, including the Uprisings of the Earth, threatened with dissolution by the Ministry of the Interior, and the No-Tav Italians, mobilized against a “pharaonic” and “harmful” construction site for the environment, biodiversity and water resources of the valley.
“The safety of people and property, which was our main objective, has been generally ensured,” Savoy prefect François Ravier said during a press briefing at the end of the day.
The organizers of the demonstration protested against the fact that the procession “was blocked at the level of a bridge over the Arc river in an area without prohibition, therefore not respecting the orders filed by the prefecture herself “.
“The current report shows about fifty serious injuries, 6 hospitalizations, including 2 functional prognoses engaged”, they said in a press release overnight from Saturday to Sunday.
Present in the procession, a group of elected EELV and LFI tried to negotiate with the authorities to “go a little further” in their journey, while the demonstrators waited under a scorching sun on a small road near Saint- Rémy-de-Maurienne, about thirty kilometers from the Italian border.
It was then that “a group of radicals”, made up of around 300 people, provoked the clashes with the police after “forming themselves into black blocks” and then “tried to block the highway A43 “which was temporarily closed because of their intrusion, detailed the prefect.
After this last incident, the procession gradually returned calmly to its base camp. In the afternoon, protesters also briefly invaded the railway and train traffic was stopped in the early afternoon due to the situation, according to the SNCF.
The departure of this undeclared demonstration bringing together more than 4,000 people, according to the latest report from the organizers, more than 3,000 according to the authorities, took place from land loaned by the municipality of La Chapelle, outside the area of prefectural ban.
Some 2,000 police and gendarmes had been deployed in the valley. Five buses of Italian activists – around 250 passengers – were stuck at the border for several hours before turning back to their home towns, with people subject to administrative exclusions “spotted” on board, specified the prefect of Savoy.
“Macron, Darmanin and the prefect provoke the confrontation”, tweeted the parliamentary leader LFI Mathilde Panot, present on the spot with several elected Greens and LFI.
“Today is a historic moment in this valley […] there are a lot of people from all over France, Italy, and even Switzerland”, rejoiced Philippe Delhomme, former local elected official who has been active for years in the association Living and acting in Maurienne (VAM).
Supported by the European Union, the new line should eventually link Lyon and Turin, with 70% of the tracks in France and 30% in Italy, and a 57.5 km tunnel crossing the Alps between Saint-Jean-de-Maurienne and Susa. Estimated cost: more than 26 billion euros.
Proponents of the project highlight the need to reduce the flow of heavy goods vehicles, which is constantly increasing, to limit greenhouse gas emissions. They also point to the economic development that they believe a faster rail line will allow.
Opponents argue that a line already exists and that rail freight has been falling steadily in recent years. They also denounce the ecological impacts of this “titanic railway project, involving the drilling of 260 kilometers of galleries through the Alpine massifs”. According to them, the work has already dried up several springs and catchments in the valley.
“From the dissolution of the Earth Uprisings, which is likely to be pronounced in the Council of Ministers this Wednesday, to the militarization of Val Susa, the State is trying everywhere to prevent popular uprisings. But in Italy as in France, failure is inevitable: we do not dissolve what grows back everywhere”, warn the organizers in their press release.
