“Around 1 a.m., I heard
boom boom boom
. It was impressive. I could see the flames through the trees from my house. » This Wednesday, April 17 in the morning, Ms. Mau walks her dog in front of the wreckage of the four machines set on fire last night on a portion of the A69 construction site which will link Castres (Tarn) to Toulouse (Haute-Garonne). This resident of Saïx (Tarn) lives between the old ZAD (Crem'arbre) and the new one (Cal'arbre), where around thirty opponents of the highway have taken up residence in wooden cabins and tents perched in trees. The retiree is at the forefront of increasingly intense tensions between opponents and builders of the project, already “60%” underway, according to the Atosca concessionaire.
On March 24, after thirty-nine days of siege, the activists nestled in the oaks of Crem'arbre — nicknamed
squirrels
— declared victory: they had succeeded in preventing the felling of trees threatened by the project, thus disrupting the organization of the site. A victory not without violence, with 43 legal proceedings and 19 Zadists on trial,
according to activists' figures
.
The United Nations special rapporteur on environmental defenders, Michel Forst, visited the site at the end of February, concerned by several failings on the part of law enforcement, including sleep and food deprivation.