Tents, canteens and banners … Several hundred opponents of the A69 motorway were gathered in peace at the end of the afternoon in the Tarn on Friday in the site of a dilapidated castle very close to the route, where a general assembly was to decide on the continuation of the mobilization, AFP journalists found.
By car or on foot, with backpacks, tents and sleeping bags, activists opposed to the Castres-Toulouse motorway arrived in small groups in the park of the Château de Scopont, a secular building in poor condition, surrounded by two sharp laps, where the owner granted them the right to settle the time of the turbotuf, weekend of mobilization against the A69.
The A69 “is always illegal”
“The Château de Scopont welcomed us from [jeudi] To start deploying the camp, so there are bars, capitals to party, canteens to continue to oppose the highway, “said Martin, one of the weekend organizers. The A69 “is still illegal, it has been declared illegal by the decision of the administrative court on February 27 and it will still be until the appeal in November,” he said, evoking the presence of around 300 people around 4 p.m.
On the outskirts of the castle park, the police were deployed, in particular a few hundred meters, on a basis of Atosca, the future concessionaire of the highway and project manager, where a dozen construction machines are parked, while a gendarmerie helicopter hired the perimeter by intermittent. At the entrance to the park, gendarmes carried out vehicle checks, which sporadically aroused tensions with the militants already present, often masked, but without confrontation.
Arrive at a “consensus on the methods of action”
Under a large white and red marquee at the entrance to the site that wore a banner with the message “Stop the A69 and its world”, a general assembly discussed the next stages of the mobilization and organization of the rally. “The objective is to achieve a consensus on the continuation of the methods of action for this weekend and for the future of this struggle,” said Arthur Grimon, member of the uprising of the Earth.
“The organization did not plan a surprise, there is no demonstration, contrary to what the prefecture says with its repressive story which highlights the fact that we would be violent people, who came to break, destroy or type the police,” completed the young man. In the program broadcast on Telegram, the organizers of the event provide for a rally on Saturday on the castle site at 2 p.m.
