Communiqué: The Press is Being Barred from Notre-Dame-des-Landes (SNJ-CGT)

Wednesday 11 April 2018

Since yesterday morning, and just as promised by the Macron government, 2,500 gendarmes have been mobilised to evacuate the ZAD (Zone à Défendre) of Notre-Dame-des-Landes. Three months after the abandonment of the airport project, the “forceful, brutal, violent” operation, as the Zadistes describe it, has been conducted without the presence of reporters. The media have been expressly forbidden to film the confrontations. According to Cédric Pietralunga, journalist for the daily Le Monde, the Ministry of Interior has told press on the ground “not to hamper the operations being conducted by the Gendarmerie and to go to the space reserved for the reporters” and that they must settle for the official footage supplied “without charge” by the police. Antoine Denéchère, a reporter for France Bleu Radio, says “the Gendarmerie was sending videos and photos of the operation in progress by e-mail.” The correspondent for France 2 Television said that he had never seen anything like it in twenty years as a professional journalist. According to the spokesman for the Ministry of Interior, who expressed satisfaction with the progress of the operations, the confrontations were “of low intensity.” The press conference held by residents of the ZAD at NDDL spoke of “strong emotion after this brutal operation which erases the dialogue that had begun with the Prefecture. We are deeply shocked.” The SNJ-CGT protests vigorously against being banned in this way and against this control over information, which is aimed at preventing the dissemination of independent information about the powers in place and demands the immediate establishment of free circulation of the press and media in the ZAD at Notre-Dame-Des-Landes. Montreuil, 10 April 2018 SNJ-CGT