WORLD WORLDWIDE EUROPE ITALY - news journal UPDATE - (en) Italy, FAI: It is crucial to shed light on police violence in Sainte-Soline and elsewhere. (ca, de, fr, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

 The External Relations Department of the Anarchist Federation is sharing

this statement to ensure its widest possible dissemination. We stand in
solidarity with all victims of police violence, whether in Sainte-Soline
or elsewhere, and reaffirm our full support. ---- 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
those close to 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 certain 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" use of grenades
was made 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 matters. 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

https://federation-anarchiste.org/?g=Lien_Permanent&b=1_266
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