Protesters and police staged violent clashes on Saturday over a disputed water dam under construction in Sainte-Soline, in west-central France, where thousands of people have mobilized despite a ban on gatherings.
The French authorities mobilized 3,200 security agents to supervise the unauthorized demonstration against a project of basins – water reserves destined for agriculture – for fear of acts of violence in a context inflammable by the tension caused by the new legislation on age retirement.
A long demonstration – made up of at least 6,000 people, according to the local authority, some 25,000, according to the organizers – brought together members of environmental associations and unions.
“The objective is to fence off the basin, stop the work,” admitted a member of the environmental organization Revoltas da Terra, at the beginning of the demonstration, which was intended to be peaceful, according to the organizers.
However, shortly thereafter violent clashes broke out in which radical activists used fireworks against police officers.
For about an hour, the surroundings of the basin became the scene of a violent conflict, with numerous explosions, observed from a distance by the majority of the protesters who remained peaceful.
Several police vehicles were set on fire, until the attackers withdrew and the demonstration returned to relative calm.
The authorities reported injuries to several police officers, who were taken to hospitals in the region.
“In Sainte-Soline, the ultra-left and the extreme left are extremely violent against our agents,” Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin said, reacting to the incidents, in a message on the social network Twitter.
During the demonstration, dangerous objects and weapons were seized – petanque balls, incendiary products, knives and axes – and 11 people were arrested.
In the project that is the subject of this demonstration, 16 reservoirs will be built, with a total capacity of about six million cubic meters, mainly in Deux-Sèvres, as part of a project led by a cooperative of 450 farmers with the support of the state.
The objective is to store the water in the open air, after extracting it from the superficial aquifers in winter, to irrigate crops in summer, when rainfall is scarce.
Opponents of the initiative denounce the appropriation of water by agribusiness in times of climate change.
France has been experiencing for several weeks a huge mobilization against the social security reform, whose approval without a vote in the National Assembly led to a succession of violent demonstrations in many French cities.
Source: TSF
