A-Infos (en) France, OCL - Leaflets and Press Releases - It is crucial to shed light on police violence in Sainte-Soline and elsewhere (ca, de, fr, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

On March 25, 2023, during a demonstration in Sainte-Soline (Deux-Sèvres) 
against the mega-reservoirs, law enforcement injured more than 200 
people - including four of us seriously. ---- A complaint has been filed 
by us or by relatives of us, notably for attempted murder and 
obstruction of emergency services. ---- The experts appointed by the 
public prosecutor to investigate the police violence took two years to 
deliver their conclusions, which are both biased and incomplete. 
According to them, the police were merely responding to the violence of 
some demonstrators. In fact, as numerous testimonies, images, and 
journalistic investigations have demonstrated, the 3,200 police officers 
"defending" an empty trench bombarded all the demonstrators with 5,010 
grenades without warning.

According to these experts, the organization of the emergency response 
did not result in a "loss of opportunity" for the victims... because 
they were treated on site "conscientiously and impeccably." In reality, 
it wasn't the quality of this care that was criticized, but rather the 
prohibition against paramedics accessing the injured, even after calm 
had been restored-a prohibition that, again, various testimonies confirm.

The investigation indicates that medical personnel were not authorized 
to arrive at the scene alone, and that "unauthorized" shots were fired 
by law enforcement. However, many questions remain unanswered in its 
conclusions, particularly regarding the explicit orders to carry out 
these "non-regulatory" shots: although included in the file, they were 
not addressed. Furthermore, while "inexplicable malfunctions" were noted 
in the organization of the emergency response (the fire department 
command center did not respond to calls for help, police motorcyclists 
were slow to escort paramedics and abandoned them en route, etc.), no 
opinion was expressed on these points. The way this investigation was 
conducted clearly suggests an intention to dismiss our complaints, and 
we therefore demand that the investigation be continued.

Far from being an isolated incident, the events of March 25, 2023, in 
Sainte-Soline are part of a process that has been underway for many 
years to normalize increasingly violent repression. The State's 
objective that day was not to prevent the protesters from reaching the 
construction site of the mega-reservoir, but to deter anyone from 
demonstrating again against such constructions - which have since been 
deemed unnecessary and illegal by the relevant authorities. The 
anti-reservoir mobilization at Sainte-Soline thus provided the State 
with an opportunity to apply its "doctrine of maintaining order," which 
involves equating social movements with terrorist attacks in order to 
unofficially trigger an emergency response plan (Orsec) allowing for 
their repression by actual military means, but failing to provide 
adequate medical resources to support this repression.

That's what terrorism is: rendering a population passive in the face of 
the actions of a power that has become all-powerful. Today we have audio 
and video evidence of what we suspected: the acts that caused so many 
injuries and brought so many of us to the brink of death were not the 
work of particularly violent individuals, but stemmed from orders given 
by an institution. Similar acts have injured and killed in other 
contexts (the Yellow Vest movement, the protests against pension reform, 
the riots following Nahel's death, etc.). Therefore, we want to hold 
this institution accountable for the legal framework it deliberately 
disregards. Shedding light on this case will obviously not be enough to 
close it, but it will help us find the answers we need and affirm our 
refusal to be paralyzed by terror.

We will nonetheless continue to fight other battles for genuine social 
and environmental justice.

Mickaël, Serge, Alix, Olivier, and loved ones,
November 5, 2025

http://oclibertaire.lautre.net/spip.php?article4556
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