Around Castres (Tarn): Demonstration, fires, occupation (and eviction) against the freeway project

via: attaque. Translated by Act for freedom now!

Excerpts from Reporterre / Saturday, October 21, 2023

[…] On October 21, on the outskirts of Saïx, in the Tarn countryside, over 10,500 people – 5,000 according to the prefect’s office – took part in the large-scale mobilization. The aim was to call for an immediate halt to work on the A69, a controversial motorway project linking Toulouse and Castres. […]

At around 1pm, not one, not two, but six separate processions formed at the base camp – one for each A69 “lie”. Small leaflets had been distributed beforehand detailing the missions of each of them. Once dispatched under the colorful banners, participants left the site along different routes.

The golden team then headed for the Pierre Fabre laboratory, the main defender of the disputed project. On the way, dozens of hooded people entered the site of the Bardou public works company – “involved in the project” according to the activists – tearing down the metal barriers protecting the site. A few rocks ended up flying into the windows of the building, whose immaculate walls were soon strewn with graffiti.

“A welcoming committee is waiting for us a little further on,” says one of the participants. At his fingertips, pointing to the horizon, is an impressive roadblock erected by the police. “So let’s stick together, and whatever happens… No macadam!”

A few minutes later, faced with the scale of the police presence and the rain of tear gas, the black-clad activists abandoned their initial objective. One person, lying on a stretcher, was brought back to the camp by street medics.

At the same time, the red team invaded a cement plant belonging to the Carayou company. The individuals set fire to the site,” says the Tarn prefecture. Material damage included an algeco, three mixer trucks and a construction machine. Supported by a helicopter, the 400 police officers and 1,200 gendarmes mobilized seem to have concentrated a good part of their forces in the face of these two rapid attacks. […]

Meanwhile, a short distance from the camp, a third operation was taking place. The purple-banded procession took advantage of this diversion to carry out its mission with the utmost discretion. Wearing rabbit ears as ornaments, one woman recounted the irruption at La Crémade, an old farmhouse in the middle of fields: “The developer of the A69, NGE, had walled off all access to these beautiful buildings. They had also dumped tons of liquid manure so that no one would want to come back. But we cleaned it up.

According to La Depeche du Midi (same date):

[…] As the official procession set off, several hundred demonstrators took a different route from the one validated by the Prefecture. Starting out from Crémade, they crossed the regional nature reserve and ended up on the RN126 at Cambounet-le-Sor, where several companies are based.

There, the demonstrators succeeded in taking over two sites, around 900 m apart: the Carayon cement works and the Bardou Promotion property developer. At the former, a fire broke out, causing damage to an algeco, three mixer trucks and a public works machine. In the second, the building was damaged and the fences torn down. The demonstrators then immediately retreated to the camp.

Both the route taken and the modus operandi suggest a deliberately planned raid. In addition, the two companies are both involved in the A69 freeway project, as subcontractors to Atosca. In fact, they were recently held up as an example by the concessionaire: “Today, across all trades, some forty companies are working on the A69, representing more than 700 people. More than twenty of these are local companies (Bardou, Cazal, Chausson-Carayon, GPT Gannac…)”, explained Atosca in its October 17 press release.

Founded in 1938 in Viane, the Carayon cement works has several concrete plants, mainly in the Tarn region. It operates quarries and supplies ready-to-use concrete and concrete blocks. Bardou Promotion is an offshoot of Bardou Travaux Publics, a family business with 25 employees that carries out development work, networks, housing developments and demolitions.

Sunday: Cremzad expulsion

France3 Occitanie / Sunday, October 22, 2023

Since yesterday, Saturday October 21, some of the anti-A69 demonstrators have set up camp at La Crémade (Tarn), on the A69 construction site, to create a Zone à Défendre (ZAD). The police decided to intervene at around 1pm on Sunday October 22.

[The occupants confronted the police and tear gas was fired […]. The barricades blocking access to the site were also destroyed with the help of armored gendarmerie vehicles. The “zadists” responded to the tear gas with stones and bottles. […]
According to our journalists, the area was evacuated at 1:15pm.

[…] Around thirty demonstrators are reported to have been injured. The repression is quite violent,” says the Extinction Rebellion movement in one of its publications on social networks. The cops are gassing right up to the camp, right up to the tractor and the tent, which almost caught fire. Take care of yourselves, all vulnerable people can join the red flag to be safe!” There have also been reports of fires started by tear gas.

[…] At a press conference at the end of the day, the Prefect of the Tarn department, Michel Vibois, announced that the evacuation had been carried out as part of a judicial operation, for occupation of premises with assault, and that 9 people had been apprehended.