Dear comrades,
our solidarity with climate activists has to be international. We are therefore shocked by the treatment of our comrades in France. Due to the lack of information in the German media about the situation in France, this text is particularly important to us.
To prevent the planned expansion of the A69 highway between the French cities of Toulouse and Castres by the ATOSCA company, climate activists occupied a forest. The expansion would destroy a healthy mixed forest with old deciduous trees and nesting sites for important bird species and thus a stable ecosystem.
As a result, the forest was declared as ZAD (zone à défendre = zone to be defended). There was already a major wave of protest against the project last spring.
But once again we see what we have seen all too often
The state is responding to the occupation with hard repression, playing off interests of the local people against the interests of capital.
The repression against the activists, who call themselves les écureuils (the squirrels), ranges from physical violence and tear gas attacks to siege strategies on the part of the French police.
In one day, 103 tear gas grenades were fired into the forest and parts of the occupation were encircled for several weeks. With this tactic, the cops deliberately disrupted the activists’ supply of food, drinking water and diabetes medication. As a result, the involuntary hunger strike led to health problems.
The perfidy and ignorance of the French state towards human dignity and climate protection is all too evident here. This did not go unheard internationally. An employee of the United Nationas was already on site and criticized the French state’s actions towards its own citizens and protected habitats.
What sounds so unimaginable and inhumane is happening very close to us and we are not even aware of it.
We must also clearly criticize the media coverage in Germany. Nowhere, we can find articles about the current situation of the occupation, even though information about it is highly relevant. This also shows its hypocrisy by talking about the importance of climate protection and human rights but simply keeping quiet about the violations of fundamental rights and interference in the ecosystem in one neighbouring country.
The French state’s inability to find adequate solutions is evident in its use of inhumane means to break the resistance. It thus exposes itself as similarly corrupt and violent, as the world already knows from autocracies.
The violence inflicted on progressive movements in liberal democracies such as Germany and France and autocracies such as Russia or Iran differs only in terms of its quality. The act of attacking progressive movements remains the same. That is why we need a world without hierarchies and authoritarian constraints.
Forest occupations are one way trying to claim free spaces. The structures of most forest occupations test precisely this coexistence without violent and questioned hierarchies. This struggle for free spaces is therefore also antagonistic to existing power structures of the state and the economy.
It is significant that no matter what form of climate activism you look at, if it actively harms the enforcement of profit interests, the state strikes. We saw this with the eviction of Lützerath, the Heibo, the Fecher and, for example, with the completely disproportionate accusation of criminal association against the “Last Generation”.
Standing up for consistent climate protection means taking on environmentally destructive large companies and capital and defending ourselves against the attacks of the state (as a monopoly of force enforcing capital interests). If we have to fight against such strong opponents, we have to fight together. This means standing in solidarity with all people worldwide who are committed to protecting our planet and the ecosystem and forming alliances!
For more information check out @labo_des_terres on Instagram.
Also support the forest occupation near Grünheide (@teslastoppen on Instagram), which is fighting against the expansion of the Tesla factory in Brandenburg.
Solidarity forever! Protèger le climat n‘est pas un crime! Klima schützen ist kein Verbrechen!
Solidarity avec les eceureiles!