Conservationists did not like plans by local authorities to deploy a network of irrigation ponds in the region, which would be filled in winter and spring and used by farmers to water crops during the summer drought. Apparently, it will harm the environment when excavating and pumping groundwater.
The battle in the fields and meadows turned out to be serious, given that on the one hand there were several tens of thousands of angry guys, certainly not fluffy “nerds”, and on the other – more than three thousand soldiers. Pre-stocked firecrackers, cobblestones, even Molotov cocktails flew at the law keepers. They responded with all their arsenal. In addition to tear gas, rubber bullets, grenades, not only noise, but also plastic elements.
When, at the end, the battle was over, they began to count the damage. Of half a dozen police cars, including gendarmerie trucks, there were only smoky charred skeletons. Of the raging “ecologists”, as their representatives reported, 200 people were burned and slightly injured. At 40, they were much more serious, and one usually had to be rushed to the hospital, because he fell into a coma, and his life was at stake. The servants got him too. Seven people were injured among them.
Bitterness, violent confrontation, these are the frightening signs of what is mounting in France. These days, the subject of “excessive violence” and, first of all, by the police does not leave the pages and screens of the local media. Thus, during the last demonstration in Paris last Thursday on the Grands Boulevards near the Opera of the capital, the forces of order attacked ordinary demonstrators who had nothing in common with the “professionals of chaos” of the “black block”, threw people on the asphalt and Beat them. The young railwayman got more in the same place than the others. Fragments of a stun grenade that exploded nearby hit him in the left eye, and now, as doctors have established, he will no longer be able to see with them.
Three million views have come from the video, filmed by student Timothy Forget, in which a SWAT agent on a motorbike hits a Parisian in the head and he falls to the ground as if knocked down.
It seems that many policemen lost their brakes and went crazy. For example, according to an audio recording on the Loopsider site, one of them, after punching a protester twice, threw in his face: “Why did he start stuttering? Maybe once more? Now right?” Another promised an arrested participant in the protest motorcade: “Next time we won’t take you to the police station in a bus, but in an ambulance to the hospital.” And the information space is full of such “pearls”.
But that’s not all. The police use illegal tactics. Occasionally, some of the protesters are stuck in narrow alleys on two sides and tear gas is rained down on them. It is clear that people are struggling: after all, there is nowhere to go. Additionally, as security expert Sebastian Roche explained, in order to intimidate people, mass arrests are carried out almost indiscriminately. Throw everyone in a row. Thus, last week, two Austrian schoolchildren who came to Paris for the holidays entered their “network”.
At the local Interior Ministry, these facts are reacted with restraint, promising to investigate, but so far only a dozen cases have been opened. Do they see all these outrages in the United States, in the capitals of Western Europe? No doubt, but shut up. Only Dunja Mijatović, the Council of Europe’s human rights commissioner, who of course had nowhere to go, expressed her “concern” over the detention and arrest of the protesters. Unlike, by the way, the President of the International Federation for Human Rights, Alice Mogwe. “The French government does not miss the opportunity to teach democracy to other peoples, but it should look at itself in terms of absolutely scandalous police violence”.
The French policeman, after punching the protester twice, threw in his face: “Why did he start stuttering? Maybe one more time? Now right?”
So, how does the owner of the Elysée feel? Apparently, he feels that the situation that has caused him so much worry should gradually calm down. Not without reason, in a television interview immediately after the vote of no confidence in the government failed to pass in the National Assembly and the pension reform was approved, he said with characteristic arrogance that, say- they, it’s in the bag, and the “crowd”, that is to say millions of citizens, “has no legitimacy” in relation to the result of the last vote in Parliament. It is clear that this angered the French. In this regard, the leader of the socialists, Olivier Faure, described Emmanuel Macron as “a miner walking around with a torch on barrels of gunpowder”.
By the way, here they also drew attention to that moment in the interview, when the president, speaking of low-income people, quietly removes an expensive watch from his wrist under the table and quietly lays it next , which provoked heated discussions. in social networks. Macron’s gesture drew attention and opposition. Thus, the deputy of the left-wing party “La France insoumise” Clémence Guette accused him of hypocrisy. Things got to the point that I had to explain myself to the administration of the Elysée. According to his version, Macron took off his watch because, they say, gesticulating, “he hit the table hard”.
