ANNIVERSARY Several hundred people celebrated on Saturday the tenth anniversary of the failure of the famous Caesar operation launched by the police
Party the tenth anniversary of the failure of Operation Caesar at Notre-Dame-des-Landes. — S.Salom-Gomis/AFP
The resistance of the bocage had undoubtedly marked the a decisive turning point in the fight against the airport project, which was finally cancelled; by the State in January 2018. This Saturday, several hundred people strolled; on the paths and in the woods of the ZAD of Notre-Dame-des-Landes (Loire-Atlantique) to celebrate the 10th anniversary of the failure of the operation “C”C”sar ”, the first police attempt to evacuate the area, before that of April and May 2018.
“A month and a half of daily clashes on a territory as ça, where the peasants of the corner come to put in play their tool of work, where & ugrave; people meet on the barricades, of course çhas produced somewhat unexpected effects” Jean, 37 years old, at; About the months of October and November 2012.
On November 17, 2012, a large demonstration brought together between 13,500 and 40,000 people in support of opponents of the airport project near Nantes, defeating the “operation C”sar” This had mobilized to From October 2012 more than a thousand police and gendarmes with the aim of evicting anti-airport activists installed in squatted farms.
« It’s because everyone united that çit worked. »
“The encounters that came out of that moment, they allowed many people to say to themselves: “here, we hold something, and in particular the capacity to mobilize many more people than what we have done up to now. This fight is becoming straightaway. matic, so we can go to victory,”” Jean, who has been living there since 2012.
The parade on Saturday, led by a marching band, lasted until all afternoon and was the opportunity to stop in several places that have been the scene of clashes in 2012. In a clearing, the demonstrators symbolically threw mud on a gendarme’s helmet stretched between two trees, then in a chestnut grove, they reconstructed a human chain, as they did in 2012 to bring supplies and construction materials to this place.
“ I think, if there hadn’t been this amalgam between the locals [ of the surroundings] and the zadists, well the zadists would have been crushed, and it’s precisely because everyone united, that çit worked;” Geneviève, 75 years old. “There were people who were bringing eat, who brought clothes, boots, etc. There was a solidarity that the prefect had absolutely not anticipated,” this retiree, explaining that she, for her part, helped in the kitchen.
The airport project at Notre-Dame-des-Landes had started in the 1970s and was abandoned on January 17, 2018.