Communiqué - ZAD - After 3 days of expulsions, are they prepared to kill in order to prevent collective action?

Communiqué - ZAD - After 3 days of expulsions, are they prepared to kill in order to prevent collective action?

Wednesday 11 April: Six more settlements and living spaces in the ZAD were destroyed today: Sécherie, Acatrelle, Isolette, Boîte Noire, Entre Deux, and Gaieté... They are continuing their effort to eradicate our lives, our history.

Hundreds of supporters had come for a protest picnic at noon today. At 2 p.m. a rain of tear-gas canisters and rubber-shrapnel ("sting-ball") grenades began hailing down on a festive, multigenerational crowd that was dancing with a batucada in a field next to Les Fosses Noires. The attack and the extremely brutal ones that followed immediately around the house at La Grée and the La Saulce crossroads caused very numerous injuries. The medical team reports more than 80 injuries. The list issued at 5:45 p.m. (incomplete and under-evaluated due to the difficulties in moving around within the Zone and getting to all the injured) includes 15 injuries due to Flash-Balls, including one serious facial one; 16 injuries from tear-gas grenades fired directly at the head. There were also 22 injuries from grenade explosions: around fifteen from shrapnel balls, including to the throat, and with suspected after-effects on tendons and nerves. There are also hearing problems resulting from explosions of F4 grenades fired indiscriminately into the crowd, as well as 12 other varied head injuries, certain ones involving the eyes. One seriously injured person had to be evacuated by caregivers, whose car was held up for more than 30 minutes before they were allowed access to an emergency team, and the caregivers were not allowed to return to the Medic headquarters afterward. Three members of the press were injured after having been deliberately aimed at. The Prefecture also made the choice of cutting off electricity to the traditional houses that remain standing around the settlements under attack. This left a pregnant woman and two small children without electricity as night fell.

One question is on everyone’s lips this evening, in the settlements that are still standing here in the bocage, and in the homes of the hundreds of thousands of people in this country for whom the ZAD still represents hope: How far will the Macron government go?

This afternoon, to the crowd trapped between cordons of army/police, it was clear that the State is now prepared to kill people in order to finish its operation. These injured bodies and the deaths that could ensue from the relentless army/police assault are the price the Macronian State is prepared to pay in order to leave no possibility for a collective experimental space, to attempt to wipe out solidarity.

We continue to demand an end to the evictions/expulsions and to army/police violence. We have no other choice but to continue to defend our lives and our homes here. It is incomprehensible for the government to pretend, as Prefect Nicole Klein did today, that there is any desire for a return to dialogue while at the same time conducting such an eradication operation.

The ZAD is martyred but the ZAD is still standing.

We call on everyone who can to join us starting tomorrow, and en masse on Sunday. Remember that tomorrow at 9 a.m. at the courthouse in Nantes the Prefect will have to explain her actions involving illegal evictions, and in particular that of 100 Noms, before a court of law.

Also remember the demonstration set for Saturday April 14 in Nantes against the expulsions at the ZAD (meet at 4:30 p.m. on the Place du Cirque) and Sunday April 15 for a major convergence on the ZAD to respond to the expulsion operation on the site.