Notre-Dame-des-Landes, France: Activists reinforced by dozens of their supporters clashed with police for a third day in western France on Wednesday to oppose their eviction from an anti-capitalist camp set up 10 years ago to protest a new airport.
The clashes erupted at dawn when protesters began throwing projectiles at officers from behind barricades set up to defend the camp at Notre-Dames-des-Landes near the city of Nantes.
By midday the protesters’ ranks had swollen to some 150 people at the location of the clashes, with police firing tear gas and stun grenades while activists set fire to at least one makeshift barricade and an abandoned car to halt their advance.
A police spokesman told France Info radio that in total about 150-200 people “had come to reinforce” the protesters across the large camp in the wooded area.
Many were equipped with gas masks, molotov cocktails, makeshift shields and racquets they used to knock back tear gas cannisters.
The clashes have escalated since the expulsion operation began on Monday with the deployment of about 2,500 officers to the site, 28 of whom have been injured.
According to a medical team set up at the activists’ camp, about 20 protesters had been hurt on Wednesday, with one hospitalised, after about 30 were hurt on Tuesday.
“If the police do not pull back their troops tonight, we’ll call a general mobilisation,” said Julien Durand, spokesman for one of the main associations opposed to building the airport.
Activists opposed to plans to build a new airport near the city of Nantes first began squatting on the farmland in 2008, and the camp grew into a sprawling 1,600-hectare settlement billed as a utopian leftist farming community.
But the government announced in January that it was calling off plans for the airport and warned the squatters that they must clear off the land by spring. — AFP
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