Since Monday, the police have begun their operation to dislodge the “squirrels”, a nickname given to the activists perched in the trees on the Zad de Saïx (Tarn).
Several meters above the ground, they have set up their aerial camp for several days now. The activists, firmly opposed to the construction of the A69 motorway between Toulouse (Haute-Garonne) and Castres (Tarn), do not intend to review their position, judiciously chosen to avoid any felling of trees. Faced with them, since Monday February 19 in the morning, the police are determined to dismantle the Zad de Saïx (Tarn). “No ZAD will be tolerated”, stormed the Minister of the Interior on Sunday afternoon Gérald Darmanin on X (ex-Twitter), regretting that “the police [doivent faire] faced for several days with great violence from those who seek to reconstitute a new ZAD on the site of the A69 works.
According to The Dispatch, around ten “squirrels” were counted Monday afternoon in different trees on the Cremade site. At the start of the evening, the regional daily reported that no demonstrator had been dislodged. However, a structure was able to be dismantled. Present on the scene, the prefect of Tarn, Michel Vilbois, summed up the scale of the task facing the gendarmes: “Get the eight people still present down safely.” However, he recognized, among our colleagues in The Dispatch, “an operation which requires time, because we do not take people by force. We are in a time of negotiation”. Tuesday afternoon, the local daily reported that one of the demonstrators had been forced to descend, bringing the number of “squirrels” still perched high to seven. While the operation could extend throughout the week, The Dispatch recalls that the last operation of this kind lasted three days.