NIORT: A protester with trauma to the head was fighting for his life on Sunday following clashes with police during a demonstration over water storage facilities in France, a prosecutor said.
The 30-year-old man was among three protesters admitted for emergency treatment after the protest in the village of Sainte-Soline on Saturday, prosecutor Julien Wattebled said.
The other two were a 19-year-old woman with a facial trauma and a 27-year-old man with a broken foot.
A special inquiry had been opened “to determine the exact nature” of their injuries and “the circumstances” leading to them, Wattebled said. Four more protesters were injured but not hospitalised, while 29 policemen also sustained injuries, two of whom had to be taken to hospital, the prosecutor’s office said.
Campaigners in Sainte-Soline were trying to stop the construction of giant water “basins” to irrigate crops, which they say will distort access to water amid drought conditions.
The authorities said 6,000 protesters took part, while organisers said there were up to 30,000 people.
Once they arrived at the construction site, which was defended by around 3,000 members of the security forces, clashes quickly broke out between the more radical activists and police.
Protesters threw projectiles including improvised explosives, while police responded with tear gas, water cannon and rubber bullets. The Human Rights League, a French watchdog, on Sunday accused the police of resorting to “unrestrained and indiscriminate use of force on all people present”.
Its 22 observers on site recorded “massive and indiscriminate firing of tear gas” by police at the crowds, it added.
This included tear gas fired at elected officials protecting injured people and “several cases of the force impeding the intervention of rescue services”, it said.
The police responded that its members had faced “extremely violent individuals” and had applied “proportionate use of force, massively using tear gas”.
Officers had not seen any officials, and were “attacked by people armed with incendiary devices” as the injured were to be evacuated, police added.
Published in Dawn, March 27th, 2023
