France to shut down climate NGO after protest violence
The French government said Tuesday that it would shut down an activist climate group over a series of recent demonstrations including one that led to fierce clashes with police over a controversial irrigation project.
Government spokesman Olivier Veran accused the Uprisings of the Earth (SLT) coalition of encouraging violence at protests in March against an irrigation reservoir near Sainte-Soline in western France, AFP reported.
“You don’t dissolve an association because of its ideas. You dissolve it because there is violence or a risk for public safety,” Veran told CNews television. SLT denounced “a very political and extremely worrying dissolution that was demanded from the head of state by the agriculture industry and the FNSEA” farmers’ union.
“This is a vain attempt to break the thermometer instead of worrying about the temperature,” it said.
President Emmanuel Macron, who has defended reservoir projects like the one at Sainte-Soline, said in March that while many of the protesters at the site were peaceful, “you had thousands of people who simply came to wage war”.
Veran said SLT “whipped up violence at Sainte Soline by inviting rioters, who came from across Europe with metal bars and petanque balls to try and kill police officers”.
“The climate question does not justify throwing rocks at police in a field,” he said.
SLT is a coalition of several activist associations, which was also behind a recent protest against a sand quarry in western France where protesters tore up fields and equipment at a farm.
The group was also one of several organisers of a banned demonstration at the weekend against a new rail link between the eastern city of Lyon and Turin in Italy. It is part of a new wave of more radical climate activist groups, including Extinction Rebellion, which use direct action to underline their warnings about the dangers to the planet.
On Tuesday, prosecutors also said they had detained 14 people for questioning over vandalism at a protest supported by SLT, against a Lafarge cement plant near the southern city of Marseille. Protesters called the company “one of the most destructive in the world”.