The green grouping was created in 2021 to protest big infrastructure projects and has engaged in violent clashes with police.
The French government on Wednesday delegalized a movement of climate activists following violent clashes with police that left hundreds injured.
“No cause can justify the especially numerous and violent acts called for and provoked by this grouping,” said Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin. A day earlier, French police arrested 18 members of Les Soulèvements de la Terre (Earth Uprising) across the country.
The group, which has no clear leadership structure, vowed to battle the decision in court. It was set up in 2021 and counts more than 115,000 supporters, some of whom take radical action to raise awareness about climate change and environmental protection, targeting projects such as reservoirs, highways, and industrial agriculture.
Last weekend, it tried to block the construction of the Lyon-Turin railway tunnel — with a dozen police officers injured in clashes. In June, it demonstrated against sand mines; in May against a motorway interchange near Rouen that would destroy a forest; in April against a new highway between Castres and Toulouse in the south of the country that would damage farmland. More such actions are planned for this summer.
The highest-profile protest was against a dam in Sainte-Soline in western France in March, which led to violent clashes with police, leaving hundreds injured and two in comas. The interior ministry at the time accused the movement of “inciting and participating in sabotage and material destruction.” Darmanin called the activists “eco-terrorists” and threatened to disband the group.
Michel Forst, the U.N. special rapporteur for environmental defenders, warned at the time against making such comparisons, saying he found that the violent response by police to be “largely disproportionate.”
Les Soulèvements de la Terre is part of a broader radicalization by some climate campaigners frustrated by the slow pace of action against climate change. Groups like Extinction Rebellion have blocked traffic, while other activists have splashed soup or paint on artworks or undertaken actions like deflating car tires.
Disbanding Les Soulèvements de la Terre has proven difficult because the movement isn’t officially registered as an association or an NGO and as such has no legal existence.
However, the movement did put out a statement calling the move “politically motivated” and “an unacceptable attempt to muzzle freedom of expression.”
French government spokesperson Olivier Véran countered: “It’s not freedom of expression or of demonstration that’s in question” but “the repeated use of violence against property and people.”
Véran added that “the use of violence is not legitimate in a state governed by the rule of law.”
Green and left-wing politicians denounced the government’s decision.
French Green MEP Marie Toussaint called it “a democratic absurdity.”
“In the midst of an ecological crisis, the government has chosen to criminalize those who fight for life on Earth,” she said, but “it’s the climate that must be saved, not the revolt against it!”
The leader of the far-left France Unbowed party, Jean-Luc Mélenchon, also called for listening to the activists and not to “repress [them] like the terrorists that they are not.”
The French government has delegalized 33 associations since President Emmanuel Macron came to power in 2017, but it’s a first when it comes to climate activism. So far, the government has targeted far-right and nationalist groupings, as well as Islamist movements.
Source: Politico
