The Macron Administration Lashes Out at Environmental Activists

On Tuesday, Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin announced that he has initiated proceedings to dissolve the environmental group Earth Uprisings (Les Soulèvements de la Terre).

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President Emmanuel Macron's administration accuses environmental activists of having provoked violent actions on Saturday during a demonstration in Saint-Souline against artificial dams for agricultural irrigation.

Citing intelligence reports, Darmanin asserted that the Earth Uprisings members are far-left activists who are responsible for corporate invasions, actions against law enforcement, destruction of property, and calls for insurrection.

In the protests on Saturday, however, Les Soulèvements de la Terre activists were the ones who denounced the actions of the police against the French citizens.

"Police violence has been terrifying due to its brutality. We have registered no less than 200 people injured," they said, denying what the Macron administration maintains.

The tweet reads, "Call to meet in front of the country's prefectures on Thursday, March 30. In support of two comatose protesters who were injured in Sainte Soline and the movement against pension reform, and for an end to police brutality".

"Chaos is trying to set in," the Interior Minister said, accusing environmental activists of trying to "bring the Republic to its knees" because their enemy "is not pension reform or the government but the institutions."

The verbal attack against the French environmental activists, however, comes amid a display of police brutality that the Macron administration is normalizing as part of daily life.

"Darmanin's speech calling us 'eco-terrorists' shocked and massified the movement. After that... we have created strong links with struggles in neighboring countries," activist Lena Lazare she said in an interview published in Rapports de Force, a social outlet which denounced that two people were seriously injured as a result of police actions.