France: Pressrelease by a few owls in Bure about todays eviction.

Submitted to Enough is Enough.

Note: Enough is Enough is not organizing any of these events, we are publishing this text for people across the US and Europe to be able to see what is going on and for documentation only.

France: Cops Started Eviction of Forest Occupation in Bure

This morning at 6:15am the eviction of the Lejuc wood (Bois Lejuc) started with 500 riot cops, reinforced/orchestrated by a communication campaign from the home secretary (ministre de l’interieur), the news channels diffusing shock images of military vehicles gathered next to the Lejuc wood, cabins being invaded, cops in balaclavas armed with chainsaws and cameras…

The operation, supposed to be because of a court decision last year about eviction of the wood from le tribunal de grande instance de Bar-le-Duc, came before all legal cases had finished (especially if Andra owns the wood or not) and before the end of the period of non eviction in winter even though many living/occupation structures had been built in and around the wood. There is even a place where local elected officials changed their headquarters to an address in the wood. Andra can’t legally start any work in the wood, the French environmental authority concluded in October 2017 that Andra had to do an environmental survey of the area before proceeding with any exploration/preparation work. There is a nesting period in the middle of March that prevents any work and Andra does not have the permit to do any forest clearing.

Like in 2012 in Notre-Dames-des-landes, the bulldozers are just behind the riot cops, to destroy as quickly as possible any living areas not even leaving time for people to collect personal belongings. Already following the first eviction of the wood in July 2016 the machines of Andra cleared illegally a large number of trees before opposition forces reoccupied the forest in the middle of August 2016.

now the tress are still occupied by many owls. 20 riot cops are at the base of the trees. Quite a few people were arrested during the operation or are encircled on paths leading to the wood, a lot of ID checks took place. At least one person has been arrested and taken in custody.



Resist everywhere

This eviction decided by Macron’s government come in a context of cracking down on social movements, workers, students, migrants etc It’s putting into place an American social and industrial model that makes people poorer, destroys the environment and is applied by force. The president Macron is walking in the footsteps of Margaret Thatcher: There Is No Alternative. The message is clear.

This spectacular police operation is before everything a political manoeuvre to ensure that resistance doesn’t spring up everywhere after the airport project in Notre-Dame-des-Landes was abandoned.

An operation trying to stop dead in its tracks any national movement, with the symbol of small house created by a group in Dijon that was set to be installed this week. In the orchestrated words of the local prefet ” this construction project showed the determination of opponents to install for a long time”. We say that this was a bad bet. We’ve already been installed in the wood for a long time and everywhere around in villages where we live but also everywhere in France where every police operation gains support from people opposing the project of CIGEO. This morning the state chose to send a strong message that confirmed to us the need to continue resisting and organising all over France and beyond and that CIGEO is a crucial point for the nuclear industry that imposes itself by force but pretends that people can have a say along the way.

When we started occupying the Lejec wood in June 2016 we never thought that one a half years later we would still be here, that Andra had to pull-out of the forest, that dozens of Bure support groups would have been created all over France. The politicians as usual are (on a TV news channel) trying to play the game of those evil nasty squatters vs the pacific citizens, this kind of speech has never worked in Bure and we work together here even if some ways of doing things are different. All the media have been talking about is from the ZAD to Bure, to try to enter this message into the minds of people. We’ve always said that there wasn’t a ZAD in Bure, that it’s the whole territory, everywhere because atomic horrors and the steamroller of ideas that goes with it doesn’t have borders when we’re talking about wiping about existence of people and where they live in the name of profit and control.

The police pornography and media spectacle with their images of destruction this so called “return to a lawful state” won’t let things go out of our minds and hearts, they won’t bury all that has happened in the last few years in Bure and all around us neither will they stop us in the years to come.

To evict the Lejuc wood this morning, was to hit and attack everywhere everyone that has come by in their thousands in the past years and still has a part of Bure inside them.

Every attack will reinforce our determination, we will never be atomised!

Call for gathering at 6:00 pm (18h) in front of prefectures, and a call to converge in Bure for those who can!

Live-Ticker at: http://en.vmc.camp/2018/02/22/expulsion-forest-info-thread/

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