Medical Team communiqué 24th of november 2012

From Notre-Dame-des-Landes

After weeks of occupation and weeks of police and military harassment, while we are still defending the area from the scheduled pouring of concrete, we have reached today, saturday the 24th of november, a peak of violence with hundred of people harmed within whom thirty severely injured. They have been treated by the medical team established at la Vache rit, being one of the numerous medical team on the area.

We have counted around twenty people hit by splinter from stun grenade in legs, arms, lips and lower belly. Theses bits of metals or plastics penetrate the flesh, we can only rarely being extracted, and stayed for life into the flesh.

These stun grenades are supposed to be used in a precise way: particularly in case of surrounding by the law forces, they are supposed to be shoot in direction of the sky, it has clearly not been the case today. The mobile gendarme (military policemen) use them in a way such that they exploded near or on the demonstrators, leading the serious wounds.

One person has been hit in the lower belly by such an offensive grenade splinter, provoking a big hematoma and internal lesions. We also notice two persons with ten impacts on the legs. Someone is at risk of loosing is right eye. We also have someone with a temple injury due to a shit of stun grenade, that provokes a brutal deafening. Following direct flashball shot, we are counting four chest injuries, with broken rib and state of shocks, multiple wounds on legs and hands, a facial bleeding and many more injured people.

It is difficult to evacuate the most serious injured people by an ambulance or by personal car because of the police roadblocks. These kind of scenes with a back and forth of injured people reminds us vividly what during the mass action againt the very high tension masts in june 24th 2012 in la Manche during which the law forces have demonstrated an excessive use of the same weapons, leading at the time to about twenty people injured in one hour.

The usual strategy of hard striking those who resist to the plan of destruction shows no results here at Notre-Dame-des-Landes. The strength and determination is visible on the people faces. We won’t give up.