Protests are planned and a legal battle is taking shape after the French government outlawed a climate activist group that it accuses of instigating violence and vandalism at demonstrations around France.
Environmentalists and human rights watchdogs have called it an attack on freedom of association and the right to protest.
France's Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin, who first announced plans to shut down the eco-protest group Les Soulèvements de la Terre (Uprisings of the Earth, SLT) in March, presented a decree officially disbanding it at a cabinet meeting on Wednesday.
He accuses SLT of inciting violence and sabotage at some 20 protests against large infrastructure projects in France, saying it has played "a major role in planning, spreading and legitimising violent methods of operation".
Darmanin invoked public security legislation designed to contain extremism, which allows the government to dissolve groups "causing armed demonstrations or violent acts at against persons or property".
But lawyers for the group said they would appeal and other environmentalists, left-wing parties and rights groups denounced the move, which they say threatens fundamental liberties.
Protests have been called outside government offices in Paris and across France on Wednesday evening.
"We will oppose this dissolution by all legal means," said Marine Tondelier, national secretary of the environmentalist political party Europe Ecology – The Greens (EELV), speaking on French politics channel Public Sénat.
'Unstoppable'
In a statement, SLT – which defines itself as a coalition of dozens of activist collectives, rather than an organised group – greeted the news with defiance, urging the public to join its "supposedly banned but collectively unstoppable movement".
Several of its supporters were arrested on Tuesday, it said, some of them by anti-terrorism police. According to prosecutors, 14 people were detained for questioning over vandalism at a protest against a cement plant near Marseille in December.
The group maintains that its activists are simply exercising their right to civil disobedience and accuses the police of heavy-handed tactics.
Neither arrests or the ban will stop the "more than 100,000 people" who make up the movement, SLT activist Basile Dutertre told RFI, warning of "a slide towards authoritarianism and the destruction of freedom".
On a practical level, the group's supporters have pointed out the difficulty of outlawing a loose coalition that has no formal leadership. "What are they going to do? Ban us from working together?" asked the EELV's Tondelier.
Civil liberties at stake
"They're using a minority of people who are seeking clashes to discredit an entire movement that's much more than that," said Cyrielle Chatelain, an MP for EELV, who noted that the group also counts politicians and academics among its members.
She told RFI that banning SLT was the government's attempt to draw attention away from its record on tackling climate change.
"More and more organisations in France that defend the environment and the climate are being targeted by authorities," Amnesty International France warned on Wednesday.
"Calling them 'eco-terrorists' or using stigmatising rhetoric serves to discredit their essential cause."
Peaceful protest is a human right.
— Amnesty International (@amnesty) June 21, 2023
Peaceful protest is a human right.
Peaceful protest is a human right.
Peaceful protest is a human right.
According to the rights group, it follows "other excessive measures against associations" by the interior ministry, which has outlawed several groups in recent years ranging from far-right organisations to antifascist groups and a league against Islamophobia.
'Systematic recourse to violence'
On Wednesday, government spokesperson Olivier Véran defended the right to protest, but said that "systematic recourse to violence" would not be allowed.
In its decree, the interior ministry argues that SLT has repeatedly instructed its supporters to damage property and resist forces of order, that these instructions have produced violence, and that the group has subsequently boasted of its actions online.
Formed in 2021, the group has been present at protests against various large infrastructure projects in France that critics say will harm the environment, most recently the high-speed train line linking Lyon with Turin in Italy.
An estimated 2,000 to 3,000 protesters turned out at a construction site in the French Alps last weekend despite a ban on the demonstration by local authorities.
Darmanin told the French parliament on Tuesday that hundreds of police checks had led to the seizure of dozens of potential weapons, "and despite that, unfortunately, we saw two days of clashes, a motorway blockaded, a train line cut off, and many members of the public services faced with hatred and violence".
"No cause justifies injuring police officers," he told MPs.
Protest policing criticised
The interior minister has previously accused SLT of vandalism at protests near the town of Sainte-Soline in western France, where there are plans to build a giant reservoir for water pumped up from underground.
In late March, two protesters were left in a coma and around 30 police officers injured when some 5,000 demonstrators clashed with more than 3,000 police, violence that Darmanin blamed on SLT. He first announced his plan to disband the group a few days later.
But the French government has been criticised for its use of force against protesters, which human rights experts for the UN last week said should be thoroughly reviewed.
The UN's special rapporteurs also drew attention to the government's use of rhetoric "criminalising" human rights and environmental activists.
Appeal planned
SLT has received high-profile support from a number of public figures in recent months, from left-wing political leader Jean-Luc Melenchon to Nobel prize-winning author Annie Ernaux.
Greenpeace France said on Wednesday that it would support SLT if it contested the ban before the State Council, which rules on the legality of French laws.
Last year the council suspended another decree by Darmanin that sought to outlaw an antifascist group, ruling that the interior minister had not presented sufficient evidence that it posed a threat to public safety.
SLT spokesperson Dutertre told RFI that it would "file the necessary appeals" against the decision. Lawyers for the group later confirmed that they would go to the State Council.
On Twitter, the group declared: "What pops back up everywhere cannot be dissolved."
