The police intervened at midday on Sunday to dislodge opponents of the A69 motorway construction site in the locality of Crémade, east of Castres, where they were organizing themselves into a Zone to be defended (ZAD ), noted an AFP journalist on site.
Several dozen mobile gendarmes in anti-riot gear began shortly before 1:00 p.m. to surround a group of expropriated houses near the route of the future highway, invested the day before at the end of the afternoon by around a hundred activists to create a ZAD, there image of what had been organized against the Notre-Dame-des-Landes airport project near Nantes.
I am going to be very simple, very clear, very firm: there cannot be a ZAD and there will be no ZAD on the A69, declared at the same time the Minister of Transport Clément Beaune, guest on Political Questions (France inter, France TV, Le Monde).
I do not want a country where we have zero infrastructure, zero projects and where, even with valid arguments, a minority would impose its law on the elected and the elected majority, he insisted, boasting of having launched an unpublished review of highway projects, some of which will continue and others will be abandoned, and the results of which will be given in a few weeks.
The ZAD is not a festive and friendly element, it is a violation of the elementary rules of property and public space, so no!, he said, reproaching the opponents for the presence in Saturday’s demonstration of 2,500 radical, hooded, violent elements.
On site, the mobile gendarmes chased the demonstrators from the group of houses occupied since late Saturday afternoon where they had begun to barricade themselves with concrete blocks, stones, old tires, tree trunks and planned to hold a general assembly 1:00 p.m., noted AFP.
Anti-riot forces also used tear gas to disperse demonstrators in a meadow adjacent to the group of houses.
Two armored vehicles, which came to support the police, faced the demonstrators chanting No macadam, no macadam and some of whom threw projectiles.