No question of backing down: despite the ban, opponents of the Lyon-Turin high-speed rail line are demonstrating this Saturday in Maurienne (Savoie), despite a strong police presence in the valley. Some 3,000 activists, according to estimates by the authorities, have already flocked, including 300 radicals, reports BFMTV.
The procession moved off calmly in the middle of the day under a strong sun, at the call of a dozen organizations, including the Uprisings of the Earth, threatened with dissolution by the Ministry of the Interior, and the Italian No-Tav, to protest against the “pharaonic” construction site deemed “harmful” for the environment, biodiversity and water resources. In the middle of the afternoon, the first clashes took place between demonstrators and the police, who used tear gas. “Use of tear gas by the security forces to keep hostile demonstrators at a distance following the throwing of projectiles,” the gendarmerie told AFP. Opponents also started marching on the nearby train tracks.
“Citizens also have the power and the duty to protect the environment,” said Maryline Duval, of the local association “Vivre et act en Maurienne” during a press briefing organized on the base camp of the militants. environmentalists, under close surveillance. Hundreds of activists, mostly young, had already arrived on Friday afternoon and in a few hours built a camp of odds and ends in the meadows, on land loaned by the municipality of La Chapelle, outside the area of ban announced the day before by the prefecture of Savoy.
This ban, challenged in court by the organizers, was confirmed by the administrative court of Grenoble which rejected Friday evening a request filed by the Greens (EELV), ATTAC Savoie, and the association Vivre et act en Maurienne, arguing that the “configuration of the route (…) does not guarantee (…) the safety” of the procession. The court also highlighted a “risk of intrusion of particularly sensitive sites” and the possible presence of “radical protesters”. “The demonstration has been banned on a perimeter, we will demonstrate elsewhere”, for his part indicated in a tweet the mayor of Grenoble.
The demonstration, announced for a long time by a dozen organizations including the Uprisings of the Earth and the Italian No-Tav, intends to denounce the ecological impacts, in particular on the water resource, of this “titanic railway site, involving the drilling of 260 km of galleries through the Alpine massifs”. According to them, the work has already dried up several springs and catchments in the valley.
Supported by the European Union, the new line should eventually link Lyon and Turin, with 70% of the tracks in France and 30% in Italy, with a 57.5 km tunnel crossing the Alps between Saint-Jean-de-Maurienne and Susa. Estimated cost: more than 26 billion euros. Some 2,000 police and gendarmes have been deployed in this border valley with Italy, famous for its major ski resorts. A visible presence Friday evening at many crossroads and near railway infrastructure under construction, AFP noted.
In this configuration, the opponents, who initially hoped to demonstrate from Villarodin-Bourget, a village near Modane, more than 50 km from their camp, said they were studying “several options”. For Max Milliex, resident of the valley and member of a local collective of opponents, it is almost secondary: “It’s a success, whatever happens, even if they prevent us from demonstrating it will be a success because the message got through. We’ve been trying to communicate for 20 years, but we can’t,” rejoices this big guy.
“Just to see the state of excitement of the Lyon-Turin pros, we are delighted, we feel a certain anxiety in them. And then we say to ourselves that we may be able to stop Lyon-Turin. Me, I believe in it hard as iron”, smiles the man, expropriated in 2019 from his house and his sawmill in the village of Villargondran, because of the construction site.
For Medef boss Geoffroy Roux de Bézieux, “we are faced with the absolute contradiction of extremist environmental activists. They supposedly want to save the planet but they don’t want to give themselves the means: we won’t save the planet by doing degrowth,” he commented Friday morning on BFM TV / RMC.
“It is all the same quite scandalous, funny that the State and the government decide to attack a movement, environmental activists, peasants, trade unions when today we should really attack to all industries, to all those who destroy the living, who are making us die of heat”, underlined for his part Pina, the spokesperson for the Uprisings of the earth, during the speeches.
“The promoters of these major devastating works can meet as they want, at our expense, eating toast and drinking champagne, while the opponents cannot express their dissatisfaction,” added Lorenzo of No-Tav. The authorities foresee “a little less than 5,000 participants, including many Italian and Swiss nationals”, with “more than 400 radicals likely to cause serious disturbances to public order”.
Some 107 administrative prohibitions of territory – intended to block the access of a foreigner to France when “his presence constitutes a serious danger” – have been taken, according to the Ministry of the Interior. A hundred vehicles were checked Friday in the valley, and 119 sharp and blunt objects confiscated, as well as two fireworks, said the gendarmerie. Five buses of Italian activists, about 250 people, also remained blocked at the border, noted an AFP correspondent on the spot.