Emmanuel Macron and his Government have made new enemies. The dissolution by decree of the Council of Ministers, on Wednesday, of Soulèvements de la Terre (Insurrections of the Earth), a radical environmental group, has created unrest in sectors of the left, criticism from civil rights organizations such as Human Rights Watch and an appeal before the Council of State.
It is the first time that an ecological civil disobedience movement has been banned in France. According to the newspaper Libération, forum for left-wing thought, the measure is disproportionate and “illustrates the repressive turn of the Government”. According to the newspaper, using “heavy artillery” against an environmental group, no matter how extreme methods it uses, is not smart on the part of the Executive, because it means putting them almost on the same level as terrorists.
The Government justified its harshness in the very violent events that took place in several environmental struggles this year, including the pitched battle of March 28 in Sainte-Soline, in the department of Deux-Sèvres (centre-west) , to avoid the installation of large irrigation ponds, or in the most recent demonstrations against the Lyon-Turin high-speed rail line.
A few years earlier there were also very serious riots against the construction of an airport near Nantes. In some cases there were injuries among law enforcement and considerable material damage. Probably elements of the black blocs (anti-system) infiltrated among the ecologists.
During the last few days there have been protests in more than a hundred cities against the dissolution of Insurrections de la Terra. Some were violent, like the one in Toulouse, where a councilor was injured.
The lawyers of the proscribed movement presented an appeal to the Council of State in which they argue that the decree amounts to “a contempt for fundamental freedoms”. There are doubts about the effectiveness of dissolving a loosely organized group through social networks. The same Insurrections of the Earth, with a premonition of the measure they would take against them, issued a statement days before to inform their supporters that “far from being intimidated by the repression, we have maintained all the actions planned this season”.
The parliamentary group of La França Insubmisa (LFI, radical left) and the New Popular Ecologist and Social Union (Nupes) accused the Minister of the Interior, Gérald Darmanin, of continuing “his logic of criminalizing political ecology” . In a statement, LFI-Nupes expressed its perplexity at the fact that the Government is so harsh with environmentalists and, instead, “agrees impunity to the true friends of terrorism, such as the Lafarge company (cement), condemned in 2022 for having financed the Islamic State in Syria”.
Amnesty International warned that “current French law on the dissolution of organizations raises problems”. “It authorizes the Government to dissolve an organization for vague reasons and without prior control of justice – added the humanitarian oenagé-. It is not in accordance with international law”.
The Minister of the Interior did not waver, in other times, when he banned right-wing extremist groups or associations suspected of links with radical Islam, as well as mosques that carried out incendiary sermons.
Darmanin, a man from the right and close to former president Nicolas Sarkozy, belongs to the most conservative sector of Macronism. He is only 40 years old but has a considerable political career behind him. He is considered a potential candidate in the presidential elections of 2027, in which Macron will not be able to run for re-election.
