Toulouse (AFP) – Ten years later, the memory of <a href="http://www.world-today-news.com/sivens-dam-the-state-ordered-to-compensate-two-associations/" title="Sivens dam: the State ordered to compensate two associations”>Rémi Fraisse – killed by a grenade shot from a gendarme during a demonstration against a dam in Tarn – remains alive among other ecologists who, like him, oppose to “useless projects”, like the Toulouse-Castres motorway.
On October 26, 2014, during violent clashes between demonstrators and police on the Sivens dam construction site, the explosion of an “offensive” grenade killed this 21-year-old botanist. A few days later, the government suspended the use of this type of grenade, then banned it in 2017.
According to his father, Jean-Pierre Fraisse, Rémi was not part of the radicals of the movement: “He went there with his bare hands, apparently, in the middle of all that, while people are normally helmeted (…) even the demonstrators” .
Since September 1, 2014, when clearing of the site began, opponents have been trying to prevent the destruction of 13 hectares of wetlands. For them, irrigation needs were overestimated and the dam would benefit few farmers.
Experts commissioned by the government also judged this project to be oversized, which will ultimately be abandoned.
While the perpetrator of the shooting, a gendarme in his thirties, benefited from a dismissal of the case in 2018, confirmed on appeal, administrative justice recognized in 2021 the “no-fault responsibility” of the State, convicted to pay 46,400 euros to the Fraisse family.
Emblematic
The death of Rémi Fraisse, which occurred 37 years after that of Vital Michalon, killed by a grenade shot from a police officer during an anti-nuclear demonstration, will have a lasting impact on the minds of activists opposed to other “useless projects”.
The national secretary of the Ecologists, Marine Tondelier, made a point of paying tribute to the memory of the young activist, during a campaign meeting for the European elections on June 9 in Aubervilliers (Seine-Saint-Denis).
In Occitania, the tenth anniversary of this emblematic death will give rise on Saturday to rallies in the Sivens forest, at the call of the Sivens 10 years collective, or in Foix, at the call of the Volunteer Reapers and the League of Human Rights. Man (LDH) from Ariège.
In line with the 2014 mobilization, these organizations welcome the presence, “not far from Sivens”, of “resistance against the construction of the A69” between Toulouse and Castres.
And anti-A69 activists also see a strong link between the two mobilizations.
“Rémi Fraisse will always stay in my head. Even comrades who have not experienced this struggle feel the same thing as me,” assures Nanoux, 40 years old. Present in Sivens in 2014, he will camp at the top of a tree in the final Zone to Defend (ZAD) on the route of the A69, last September, in Verfeil, in Haute-Garonne, finally dismantled at the beginning of October.
Sivens, “it’s an important landmark”, agrees Reva Viard Seifert, 37, who confides having lived in fear of a comparable accident during the 39 days when he remained perched in February-March in a tree of a another anti-A69 ZAD, in Tarn.
Ethics
For Gaël, in his thirties, “the death of Rémi Fraisse was a bit omnipresent in our memories every time there was police violence against us”.
“We are not safe from new deaths, including among the police (…) They even put themselves in danger over things they do not control,” criticizes Jean-François for his part. Mignard, from LDH Toulouse, who emphasizes that anti-A69 activists were injured.
A point of view radically different from that of the gendarmes who dismantled the ZAD of Verfeil.
Colonel Stéphane Dlongeville, head of operations, was pleased to have been able to “bring the squirrels down safely”.
“Our two key words for intervention are safety and ethics. We absolutely want to avoid any injuries” among the opponents as well as among the police, explained Lieutenant-Colonel Thibault Llosa.
“And also ethics,” he insisted: “we do not allow ourselves to judge their struggle, we do not allow ourselves to behave inappropriately towards them, we are really in dialogue and we try to maintain this dialogue so that safety and communication prevail.”
