Press release following the Prime Minister’s statements: The threats must stop!

Thursday 26 April 2018

The logic of the government’s revenge and repression of the ZAD after the abandonment of the [Notre Dame des Landes] airport project was extremely brutal, with the destruction of a large number of living spaces, farming areas, gardens and hedgerows. The police operation has left hundreds of people injured. It has also generated hundreds of actions of support and resistance, both in the local community and around the world.

The movement decided to make a gesture of dialogue, once it became obvious that the government was planning to continue the operation with a total eradication of the remaining living spaces in the ZAD. Last week we collectively compiled and submitted a batch of formal applications related to various projects, living spaces, activities and land usages currently under way in the movement. The Prefecture [trans: local representative of the state] then appeared to take a step forward, towards the possibility of not destroying all ZAD activities and living spaces, and towards the prospect of more constructive exchanges in the months to come.

But what the government is announcing today is not a real truce. It is a new impossible ultimatum, with the same blackmail threats of new destructions, expulsions, segregations and divisions. At the same time as apparently offering time to discuss the maintenance of the various projects that have been submitted, we are presented with a sudden and unjustified speeding-up of the schedule, with the work of the steering committee being brought forward. This will lead to an over-hasty review of the projects submitted, with the ever-present threat that the bulldozers are going to return. Note that the timescale that has been offerred for the consideration of our projects is ridiculous, compared to the time usually granted for consideration of agricultural projects etc.

The future of the ZAD is still not assured. We shall have to continue to mobilise so that these lands remain common. We call on all those for whom the ZAD experience represents a beacon of hope to remain extremely vigilant in the weeks to come.

We shall fight to oppose all new operations of destruction and division. Our activities and our lives cannot be judged by the simplistic criteria of economic profitability, by the classic norms of productivist agriculture and by the values of liberal individualism.

We shall continue to defend our vision of what is being lived and built on the ZAD – a vision that is collective, eco-conscious and based on solidarity .

In immediate terms, the police operation has to be lifted, and the roads must be opened again, for our neighbours and for the resumption of farming work.