The battle between supporters and opponents of the A69 project, this toll highway which is to link Toulouse (Haute-Garonne) to Castres (Tarn), will experience a new crucial episode on Saturday October 21. At the call of the La Voie Est Libre collective, Extinction Rebellion Toulouse, the Confédération paysanne and Attac Tarn, and with the support of the Uprisings of the Earth, thousands of people are expected in Saïx (Tarn) to protest against the project to transform the current national road 126 into a 53-kilometer toll road.
In recent weeks, the media coverage of the hunger strike led by Thomas Brail and twelve other opponents has given national resonance to this mobilization. After a pause for a few days, the ministry responsible for transport confirmed, Monday October 16, that the highway project would go ahead “until its end”, and that his work would resume the same day. In the process, the climbing activists, perched in trees to prevent them from being cut down, were mostly dislodged and arrested.
” It’s provocation “, protests Bernard Broussard, 68 years old, an opponent of infrastructure, director of an ecological sanitation company. Despite fatigue, weight loss and unexplained foot pain, the consequences of a three-week hunger strike, he will participate in the march on Saturday. “Now is the time to say what we have to say, whatever the tone. »
Communication battle
The project, thirty years old and formally launched in March 2023 with the
environmental authorizations issued by the prefectures concerned, deeply divides the Tarn department.
The association of mayors of Tarn (ADM81), which brings together 314 municipalities, has chosen to take a position in favor of the A69. “We decided to do it in May when attacks were committed on the pro-motorway mayors of the south of Tarn”, explains Jean-Marc Balaran, its president. The 6 October, the association sent an email to the 4,500 elected officials of the department (mayors, deputies, municipal, departmental and regional councilors) in which it asked them to express their opinion. Result: 1,000 signatories declared themselves in favor of the A69.
“Only 21% of them showed their support following the call from the president of the ADM81”nuance 165 elected officials from Tarn and Haute-Garonne, opposed to the A69 and co-signatories of a column published on October 18 on the website of the Huffpost. “More than 200 local elected officials have already expressed their opposition”they point out, calling on the government to “suspend the work while an independent assessment is carried out”.
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