Fourteen people were taken into custody on Tuesday, June 20, in the investigation into the action carried out in 2022 against a Lafarge cement factory in Provence by environmental activists, when the government confirms the imminent dissolution of the movement Les Uprisings of Earth. These arrests were made in Loire-Atlantique, and in particular in Notre-Dame-des-Landes, where various environmental activists have taken refuge in the former ZAD (zone to defend), according to the Aix-en prosecutor’s office. -Provence, but also “in the Marseille region”, according to a source familiar with the matter.

Those arrested are suspected of “degradation in gang organized by dangerous means”, “degradation in meeting” and “criminal association”, explained the prosecution. However, he did not want to specify the identity or the profile of the people arrested who are all, with the exception of one, currently in police custody in Levallois-Perret (Hauts-de-Seine).

These arrests, carried out by police officers from the Anti-Terrorist Sub-Directorate (Sdat), in conjunction with the Gendarmerie’s research section, follow others carried out at the beginning of the month during which around fifteen people were arrested in the framework of this investigation carried out by two investigating judges. All these people had however been “released at the end of their hearing” and without legal action, said the Aix-en-Provence prosecutor’s office.

Last December, several dozen climate activists targeted a cement plant located in Bouc-Bel-Air, in the Bouches-du-Rhône, of the Lafarge group, accused of being a big “polluter” at the global level, causing significant damage.

In a video of this operation, posted at the time on several sites, we saw dozens of people dressed in white hooded coveralls walking on a path. In other shots, activists dressed in the same coveralls attacked a surveillance camera with a hammer or a pipe with hatchets. A graffiti “Who are the turkeys of La Farge?” had been sprayed on a wall.

An anonymous text accompanying this video had claimed responsibility for the action against the “cement-polluter”, specifying that it had been carried out by “200 people [who] invaded and disarmed by surprise the Lafarge factory in La Malle in Bouc -Bel Air”.

The informal movement the Uprisings of the Earth (SLT) had welcomed this action “against the ecocidal giant of concrete”, without claiming it. “We have decided to relay this press release, the video now […], hoping that this determined action, which calls on others, finds the echo it is due”, could we read on their site.

On the other hand, the prosecution of Aix-en-Provence did not want to establish a link between these arrests and The Uprisings of the Earth, in the crosshairs of the government which will pronounce, this Wednesday, its dissolution.

In October, during a first demonstration against the “mega-basins” in Sainte-Soline, in the Deux-Sèvres, the Minister of the Interior Gérald Darmanin had castigated “ecoterrorism” of the perpetrators of violence by pointing the finger this group, presented as belonging to the ultra-left movement.

SLT is a “de facto” group, that is to say not formally declared as an association with the public authorities, born in January 2021 in the former ZAD of Notre-Dame-des-Landes and has become one of the main players in the “radical” environmental protest. It claims actions of occupation or sometimes of sabotage in the name of the defense of the environment.

Since last fall in Sainte-Soline, the collective has multiplied its actions: in March once again in Deux-Sèvres, in May in Rouen against a motorway bypass of the city, in Saint-Colomban, in Loire-Atlantique, the June 11 against sand mining, and last weekend against the Lyon-Turin rail link.

Earth Uprising activists are “repressed like terrorists they are not,” Jean-Luc Mélenchon, leader of La France insoumise, denounced on Twitter on Tuesday.