A gendarmerie vehicle in flames during clashes around a disputed water reserve under construction in Sainte-Soline (Deux-Sèvres), where thousands of people mobilized despite the ban on the gathering, March 25, 2023 (AFP/Thibaud MORITZ)
A new banned protest against basins led to violent clashes on Saturday in Sainte-Soline, Deux-Sèvres, where thousands of people converged, including many radical activists, eclipsing the debate on water sharing .
Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne denounced, on twitter, a “surge of intolerable violence”, questioning “the irresponsibility of the radical speeches which encourage these actions”.
According to a last count provided by the Niort prosecutor’s office, the emergency services took care of seven injured demonstrators, including three treated in absolute urgency and hospitalized; 28 gendarmes were injured, including two hospitalized in absolute emergency. Two journalists were hit.
The organizers evoke a much heavier toll, with 200 demonstrators injured, one of whom is in a coma between life and death, information not confirmed by the authorities.
At least 6,000 people according to the prefecture, up to 30,000 according to the organizers – the collective of associations “Bassines non merci”, the environmental movement of the Uprisings of the Earth and the Peasant Confederation – converged on a basin under construction in Sainte- Soline, with the aim of “stopping” the construction of this open-air reservoir, intended for agricultural irrigation, which has been disputed for a long time.
They found in front of them more than 3,000 gendarmes and police mobilized to defend the site, the authorities denouncing the presence in the procession “of at least a thousand violent activists”, “ready to fight”.
Approaching the site, which looks like a medieval bastion with its embankment surrounded by the police, violent clashes took place for an hour, transforming the place into a scene of war, with loud detonations and vehicles in fire.
Mobile gendarmes on quads during clashes between law enforcement and opponents of the construction of water retention “basins”, in Sainte-Soline in Deux-Sèvres, March 25, 2023 (AFP / Thibaud MORITZ)
The assailants used “fireworks mortars, Roman candles and high-capacity Molotov cocktails” among other projectiles, according to the gendarmerie, which responded with 4,000 grenades of tear gas and de-encirclement, and using LBDs .
No arrests could be made during the demonstration, according to the prosecution. Eleven people had been arrested upstream during checks which led to the seizure of numerous weapons.
– Quads –
Authorities and organizers blame each other for the clashes. Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin denounced the “inexcusable” violence of the “far left”, while the organizers blamed “absolutely criminal violence” by the police.
Clashes between law enforcement and opponents of the construction of water retention “basins”, in Sainte-Soline in Deux-Sèvres, March 25, 2023 (AFP / Yohan Bonnet)
The national secretary of EELV Marine Tondelier, present in the procession, most of which remained peaceful, denounced to AFP the shooting of grenades towards injured people and the intervention of quads, “a kind of BRAV-M des champs”, referring to a controversial motorized police unit.
“Enough of police violence in #SainteSoline! Enough! Without the BRAV-M, without this circus, absolutely nothing would happen but a march in the fields!”, reacted on Twitter the leader of La France insoumise , Jean-Luc Melenchon.
“I have no problem with this violence, even if I do not take part in it. There is violence everywhere at the moment, starting with this pension reform (…) I understand that people have rabies,” a protester from northern France told AFP.
An injured person taken care of on the sidelines of clashes between law enforcement and opponents of the construction of water retention “basins”, in Sainte-Soline in Deux-Sèvres, on March 25, 2023 (AFP / Thibaud MORITZ )
Witnesses interviewed by AFP and observers from the Human Rights League deplored that the treatment of a seriously injured person had been delayed by the authorities; the Deux-Sèvres prefecture replied that the device provided for an escort of the emergency services by the gendarmes to ensure their safety.
However, according to Mr. Darmanin, activists then attacked the police, which disrupted the care of the wounded.
– Moratorium –
Before leaving the scene, the demonstrators claim to have damaged a pump and a pipe in the basin. “We will continue the fight,” organizers said in the nearby village of Melle, where an “international water forum” is being held in parallel until Sunday.
The sixteen “basins” planned for the Sèvre Niortaise (AFP / Cléa PÉCULIER)
As with the banned protest in the fall, the clashes have largely overshadowed the substantive debate over water sharing in the face of climate change.
The Sainte-Soline basin is part of a set of 16 reservoirs, with a total capacity of six million cubic meters, programmed by a cooperative of 450 farmers with state support.
They aim to store water drawn from surface water tables in winter, in order to irrigate crops in summer when rainfall is scarce. Its supporters make it a condition for the survival of farms in the face of the threat of recurring droughts.
Its cost of 70 million euros is 70% financed by public funds in exchange for the adoption of agroecological practices by the beneficiaries, an empty promise according to opponents who denounce a “grabbing” of water by “the agro-industry” and call for a moratorium on the project.
Opponents of water retention basins, in Sainte-Soline, on March 25, 2023, when the first clashes with the police began (AFP / Thibaud MORITZ)
This demonstration, “it’s not the ecologists against the farmers. We need a consultation of society on these subjects”, told AFP Vic, 29, a market gardening technician who came to demonstrate for the first time from Brittany.
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© 2023 AFP
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