United with the environmental movement of the Earth Uprisings, opponents of the future high-speed railway line (LGV) of the southwest, which should bring Toulouse closer to Paris in 2032, demonstrated on Saturday, October 12 in Gironde, with the desire to ‘“amplify” its movement.
According to the gendarmerie, between eight hundred and one thousand people, including one “high proportion” Hooded radical activists gathered around 8 a.m. Saturday at a camp set up on private land in the small town of Lerm-et-Musset, 75 kilometers south of Bordeaux. Less than two hundred people were present on Friday night, according to a source close to law enforcement cited by Agence France-Presse (AFP).
“Tonight several shots were heard in the direction of the gendarmerie helicopter that was carrying out a reconnaissance flight over the site occupied in the south of Gironde by opponents of the project”The prefecture also announced on Saturday X, specifying that an investigation had been opened. “Neither the crew nor the aircraft were affected”affirms the prefect, Etienne Guyot, that “Denounce these intolerable actions”.
“The objective is not to allow a ZAD to be established”
It was there, on the edge of the Landes forest, that the demonstration, not declared to the prefecture, took the form of a series of “games” against the upcoming connection between Bordeaux, Toulouse and Dax – “big useless project” around fifteen billion euros, denounce the organizers, who have 1,500 participants.
A wooden tower, intended to serve as “Be attentive” For the future, it was built in particular in the Ciron valley, a tributary of the Garonne, and in its ancestral beech forest, a place classified Natura 2000 and threatened by the LGV, according to opponents.
Authorities expected between 3,000 and 5,000 protesters this week, including “several hundred very violent individuals”. “Weapons by destination, crossbows, rifles, petanque balls, balaclavas” They were seized during upstream checks, said Gironde prefect Etienne Guyot. According to the gendarmes, around twenty “S files” and people already controlled are present during the demonstrations against the A69 in Occitania. The prefect, who has banned all demonstrations in several municipalities of the Bordeaux metropolis, calls for calm and rejects the idea that an opposition camp or ZAD (“zone to defend”) could be created in the future layout. “The objective is not to allow a ZAD to be established”warned on Friday.
While the LGV has broad support from the communities of Occitania and New Aquitaine, the opposition is long-standing and heterogeneous, mixing local elected officials and parliamentarians, residents, foresters and winegrowers. After the first mobilizations of recent years, the groups called for the Earth Uprisings to “get off the radar nationally” trusting in him “previous fights” of the movement known in particular for its opposition to “basins”disputed irrigation reserves in Poitou.
“Today, the challenge is to generalize the mobilization to not let this crazy and ruinous high-speed line, destructive to territories and natural resources, pass.”Jean Olivier, member of the LGV coordination, declared to the press on Saturday morning, no thanks. “We really need to make ourselves known, we want to make this day a lever to amplify communication about all the problems linked to this project”Marie-Christine Hergle, from the LGV NiNa (Neither Here nor Anywhere Else) collective, told AFP.
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Others are in favor of a fight for “legal channels”such as the initiatives of the Girondist parliamentarians (from La France insoumise to the Republicans, through Europe Ecologie-Les Verts and the MoDem) who ask the government for a moratorium and/or a local referendum on the LGV.
“Deadly” project, “pharaonic” work, according to its opponents
This should connect, in 2032, Toulouse with Paris in three hours and ten minutes, saving more than an hour on the current route and diverting plane users. A branch line through the eastern Landes forest should connect Dax with Bordeaux in twenty minutes less and, one day, allow direct connections with Spain. Although works have begun north of Toulouse, at the end of November the necessary authorization has not yet been granted for the railway works south of Bordeaux (AFSB), prior to the siting of the LGV, scheduled for 2028.
The president (PS) of Nouvelle-Aquitaine, Alain Rousset, defends a “Investment for at least a century” which would allow, freeing up existing lines for the transport of goods, “go out” off the road the 10,000 trucks that return from Spain every day.
But opponents denounce a project “mortal” which would lead, according to them, to the artificialization of some 5,000 hectares, due in particular to the crossing of the Ciron valley, a tributary of the Garonne, where there is an ancient beech forest. They advocate a renewal of existing lines to develop “daily trains” and they criticize the imposition of a special tax on 2,340 municipalities near the layout of this project “pharaonic”co-financed by the State, local authorities and the European Union.
