France: Gérald Darmanin will dissolve the collective Les Soulèvements de la Terre

French Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin announced in the National Assembly on Tuesday, June 20 during the session of questions to the government, that the environmental group Les Soulèvements de la Terre (SLT) would be dissolved by decree.

French Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin, in front of Prime Minister Élisabeth Borne, Deputy Minister for Relations with Parliament Franck Riester and Justice Minister Éric Dupond-Moretti, at the National Assembly in Paris on Tuesday, June 20, 2023. AFP - LUDOVIC MARIN

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Responding to a question from Renaissance MP (relative majority) Thomas Rudigoz, about the clashes between police and environmental activists during the demonstration against the Lyon-Turin HSL project, Gérald Darmanin announced the dissolution of a group, Les Soulèvements de la Terre.

« 

There is no cause for injuring police officers or gendarmes. Despite this prohibited demonstration, 2,000 to 3,000 people, including unfortunately elected officials of the Republic, defied this ban, "defended the tenant of the Place Beauvau.

At the request of the President of the Republic and the Prime Minister, tomorrow morning, I will present to the Council of Ministers the decree dissolving the Earth Uprisings.

Gérald Darmanin announces the dissolution of the Earth Uprisings

RFI

The decree mentioned by Mr. Darmanin had remained blocked for more than two months. But last Wednesday, President Macron had urged, in the Council of Ministers, the head of government, Elisabeth Borne, to give the green light. Just after, in front of the senators, the spokesman of the government Olivier Véran had engaged, ensuring that the text would be validated without delay.

The Earth Uprisings is a heterogeneous collective. He became known to the general public in France in the case of the basins of Sainte-Soline, in the Deux-Sèvres, in the fall of 2022 and then in March 2023, when a prohibited demonstration had already given rise to clashes between gendarmes and opponents of this water retention project.

New wave of arrests throughout the France, on the eve of the decree dissolving the Earth Uprisings.

We denounce a new communication operation to try to silence a popular movement.

➡️ Press release on the website: https://t.co/wcrKajwNjG pic.twitter.com/ndTeDoAIsN

— Earth Uprisings (@lessoulevements) June 20, 2023

The SLT had been implicated a few days ago, already, on the sidelines of a demonstration in Loire-Atlantique against the extension of a sand quarry. A few days after these "punch" actions, the Minister of the Interior announced the launch of this dissolution procedure.

The government's restraint to date is explained by the legal complexity of this file. The Earth Uprisings are a gathering of associations and groups not formally declared to the public authorities.

>> Read also: Lyon-Turin railway line: thirty years of political and citizen mobilization also on the Italian side

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