Source AFP
Published on
Subscriber-only audio playback
Un camp of a dozen opponents of the A69 Toulouse-Castres motorway, installed since Sunday in Vendine in Haute-Garonne, is under surveillance by the gendarmes and one of the leaders, Thomas Brail, was taken to custody on Wednesday. view, noted an AFP correspondent.
Thomas Brail, founder of the National Tree Monitoring Group (GNSA) who had participated in a previous camp in April and then set up tents in plane trees threatened with uprooting, was taken away by the gendarmes for “obstruction of the site”, according to the prosecutor of Toulouse, Samuel Vuelta-Simon.
“Everything will stop one day. I think we will realize (…) that we greatly need trees (…) If it is hot on the planet, it is because we have a deficit of trees”, he declared, before leaving with the police.
Meanwhile, the other activists, who said they received a visit from the prosecutor on Tuesday, moved their camp a few meters to avoid placing themselves in a situation of obstruction.
“This morning, we were surprised to see a few vehicles from the gendarmerie and NGE, which is working on the highway (…) We learned that they intended to make ditches along the route (…) So we cannot stay on the ground and they are asking us to move everything,” said Laurent Prost, activist from the local collective “La voix est libre”.
“We have to pull the ditches and strip the ground”, indicated on condition of anonymity an employee of the public works company NGE, in reference to the trenches for “dust recovery” to be dug along the route of the motorway. .
The opponents, who have undertaken to cultivate a vegetable garden on the site, asked for the work schedule “to check what they are doing”, added another opponent, Geoffrey Tarroux. He specified that a summary appeal for suspension of the work was going to be filed, as well as an appeal on the merits for cancellation of the environmental authorization.
Laurent Prost added that the opponents were invited to a videoconference Thursday with the Ministry of Transport.
On April 22, during a festive mobilization, but under close surveillance, several thousand opponents of the construction of this 53 km section of motorway, as well as elected officials from LFI and EELV, demonstrated not far away, in Saïx in the Tarn, to denounce this project which they consider contradictory with the climatic emergency.
Several local elected officials, however, support the project, which would reduce the Castres-Toulouse journey by around twenty minutes in 2025, which is a little over an hour today.
24/05/2023 14:14:39 – Vendine (France) (AFP) – © 2023 AFP
2023-05-24 13:08:56
#ToulouseCastres #motorway #camp #opponents #surveillance #activist #police #custody
