The dissolution of the Earth Uprisings presented by Gérald Darmanin this Wednesday in the Council of Ministers

In recent months, they have been the target of the government. THE Earth Uprisings, a group created in early 2021 and still confidential a year ago, is emblematic of the radical shift now taken by a fringe of the environmental struggle. The demonstration against the Sainte-Soline mega-basins, which had degenerated into violent clashesleft traces: since this event, the executive wishes dissolve the movement.

A project that will be implemented this Wednesday, during the Council of Ministers by the Minister of the Interior, as mentioned this Tuesday morning in our columns. “At the request of the President of the Republic and the Prime Minister, tomorrow morning I will present to the Council of Ministers the decree dissolving the Earth Uprisings”, declared Gérald Darmanin during questions to the government in the embly this Tuesday.

Like an ociation, the dissolution of a “de facto grouping”, a term which designates these collectives not formally endowed with legal personality, cannot in fact be decided only by decree in the Council of Ministers.

In a press release published early Tuesday afternoon, the environmental collective denounced “a very political and particularly worrying dissolution demanded directly from the Head of State by the agro-industry and the FNSEA (National Federation of farmers, note)”.

Lawyers for the movement dispute the legal basis for the dissolution

Before that, the ministry must “explain its grievances to the representatives of the movement”, we explain to the Ministry of the Interior. In their response, that the site Reporterre was able to consult, the movement’s lawyers disputed the legal basis for the dissolution.

“If the Earth Uprisings advocate a diversity of modes of action and praise the disarmament and civil disobedience, they have neither by their speeches nor by their publications, incited the provocation of violence against persons or damage to property and especially not the carrying out of acts of sabotage affecting the fundamental interests of the nation”, they justified.

Gérald Darmanin, the Minister of the Interior, had hired on March 28 the dissolution of the collective. He considers it “violent”, “threatening”, imilates it to “ecoterrorism”, because of their sabotage operations and their muscular demonstrations, in contact with the police.

Thousands of environmental demonstrators, including members of the Uprisings of the Earth, gathered this weekend in the Maurienne valley against the project for a new Lyon-Turin railway line.

The gathering was marked by a brief occupation of the A43 motorway and clashes between opponents and law enforcement. A fifty demonstrators were injured and six were hospitalized, according to Earth Uprisings. Gérald Darmanin, he had reported 12 wounded gendarmes.