Violent clashes erupted between protesters and law enforcement on Saturday around a controversial water reservoir under construction in Sainte-Soline, in west-central France, where thousands of people gathered despite the ban on gatherings.
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About thirty gendarmes and protesters were injured, according to local authorities, but organizers cite a much higher toll that left one person between life and death, information that was not immediately confirmed.
At least 6,000 people, according to the prefecture, up to 30,000 according to the organizers – the unifying collective “Bassines non merci”, the environmental movement of the Earth Uprisings and the left-wing agricultural union Confédération paysanne – flocked to the basin under construction to see the construction of this to “stop” water reservoirs destined for agriculture.
“At least a thousand” violent activists, some from abroad, “ready to fight with the police”, are taking part in the rally, according to the authorities.
They found in front of them more than 3,000 gendarmes and police officers mobilized to defend the site.
Approaching the site, which looks like a medieval bastion with its causeway surrounded by police, violent clashes quickly erupted, turning the site into a war zone with loud detonations and burning vehicles.
The attackers used “firework mortars, Roman candles and high-capacity Molotov cocktails,” among other projectiles, according to the Gendarmerie, who responded by firing 4,000 shells, tear gas and decircling, and deployed LBD.
After an hour, the crowd poured back in a thick plume of smoke while police on quads intervened, Marine Tondelier, national secretary of the environmental party EELV, who was in the squares, told AFP.
According to a report updated by the authorities, seven protesters and 24 gendarmes were injured, with one seriously injured man on each side receiving urgent treatment and being transported by helicopter by the emergency services.
But organizers of the rally report “no less than 200” injured protesters, including 10 in hospital and one in a coma with vital prognosis, and denounced “criminal violence” by the police.
The information was not immediately denied or confirmed by the prefecture.
Witnesses and observers from the Human Rights League interviewed by AFP also deplored the delay in treating one seriously injured person by the authorities; The local prefecture replied that the device provides for an escort of the emergency services by the gendarmes to ensure their safety.
“In Sainte-Soline, the ultra-left and the extreme left are extremely violent against our gendarmes. Unspeakable, unbearable,” Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin tweeted.
France has been living for several weeks at the rhythm of a major mobilization against pension reform, with a series of “wild” demonstrations interspersed with violence.
The majority of the protesters remained peaceful. However, in an interview with AFP, one of them, from northern France, admits that “I have no problem with this violence, even if I don’t take part in it. At the moment there is violence everywhere, starting with this pension reform (…) I understand that people are angry.”
“As the country stands up to defend pensions, we will also stand up to defend water,” organizers announced on Friday.
A project led by a cooperative of 450 farmers with state support will build 16 reservoirs with a total capacity of around 6 million cubic meters, mainly in the Deux-Sèvres department (Centre West).
It aims to store water outdoors, taken from surface aquifers in winter, to irrigate crops in summer when there is little rain.
Its proponents make it a condition for farm survival in the face of the threat of recurring droughts. Opponents denounce it as a “water robbery” by the “agro-industry” in times of climate change.