The Human Rights League questioned, on Sunday, the responsibility of the police in the violence that occurred in Sainte-Soline (Deux-Sèvres), where a demonstration against water reservoirs took place on Saturday to violent clashes.
"
In general, we have observed an immoderate and indiscriminate use of force on all the people present on the scene, with a clear objective: to prevent access to the basin, whatever the human cost"
, writes the LDH, which had mandated 22 members of several observatories of public freedoms and police practices on the spot.
At the call of the "
Bassines non merci
" collective, the Confédération paysanne union and the environmental movement Les Uprisings of the Earth, thousands of people - 6,000 according to the authorities, 30,000 according to the organizers - demonstrated on Saturday in Sainte-Soline, where one of these water reservoirs for agricultural irrigation, long disputed in the region, is under construction.
Massive and indiscriminate shots
The gathering had been banned by the prefecture and the authorities had mobilized 3,200 police and gendarmes around the site.
According to the LDH, "
before the arrival of the demonstrators on the site
", gendarmes mounted on 20 quads came into contact with them and "
the processions were therefore the subject of massive and indiscriminate tear gas fire
".
Read alsoIn Sainte-Soline, clashes over a basin
"
As soon as the processions arrived at the site of the basin, the gendarmes fired on them
" with tear gas, sound and explosive grenades "
of the GM2L and GENL type
", as well as LBD 40s, sometimes fired from the quads in motion , she adds in a first summary of the observations made on Saturday.
"
Grenades were thrown very far and indiscriminately in the processions
" and the detonations "
were regularly followed by cries for help
", according to the League, which considers that "
the device seriously endangered the whole of the people present there
”.
The LDH also implicates the firing of tear gas canisters in the direction of elected officials who were protecting the wounded, and "
several cases of obstacles by the security forces to the intervention of the emergency services
", including one in an area "
totally calm for several tens of minutes
.