Interior minister Laurent Nuñez has ordered an inquiry into the conduct of gendarmes during an environmental protest against a controversial crop irrigation reservoir project at Sainte-Soline in western France on March 25th 2023.
The minister's move on Wednesday came just hours after Mediapart and the newspaper Libération published worrying revelations about the behaviour of gendarmes at the demonstration, which ended in brutal clashes.
Unpublished footage, filmed by the gendarmes’ body cameras, shows banned and dangerous instructions being given to the officers by their superiors, the use of bellicose language, and a disturbing satisfaction in wounding the “enemy” (see footage in this report here).
Laurent Nuñez, the former head of the Paris police force, has now asked the director general of the Gendarmerie nationale (DGGN) to open an administrative inquiry to “shed light” on the behaviour of the gendarmes deployed at that protest, which involved nearly 3,000 officers and which left four protestors seriously injured.
The minister’s office has confirmed that an administrative inquiry will be entrusted to the police watchdog body the Inspection générale de la gendarmerie nationale (IGGN), some two and a half years after the events.
However, his officials have not specified the exact scope of the inquiry, nor commented on the substance of what can be seen in the videos: the targeted firing of crowd-control grenades, words showing a desire to wound, and numerous insults aimed at the demonstrators.
Questioned on France Inter radio on Thursday, the day after Mediapart's revelations, Laurent Nuñez said: “I'm not at all happy.” While refusing to describe the gendarmes’ actions as police violence, he admitted to “words and gestures that are clearly not in line with regulations”. He added that “in the majority of cases, the gendarmerie’s action was carried out in response to extremely violent acts” and that “the response was proportionate”.
Enlargement : Illustration 1
The IGGN was already handling the criminal investigation into the four seriously injured demonstrators at the Sainte-Soline protest. Even though it had the same footage, it did not report all the possible offences to prosecutors.
Mediapart and Libération obtained access to more than eighty-four hours of this footage filmed by the gendarmes that day, mainly from the body cameras they wore on their chests.
These images were also examined by the IGGN as part of the preliminary investigation into alleged violence by a person holding public authority and failure to assist a person in danger. This probe, opened by the public prosecutor in Rennes, Brittany, is now nearing completion.
The aim of that investigation was to identify the shooters responsible for seriously injuring four demonstrators. In the end, none was identified. But Mediapart and Libération have obtained extraordinary material that makes it possible to understand, from the inside, the gendarmes' state of mind, their actions and the exchanges between them.
The footage reveals instructions from superiors that are normally banned because they are seen as dangerous. The images also show a disturbing cruelty on the part of some gendarmes, who seem to fire indiscriminately: they repeatedly express delight at seriously injuring demonstrators. In view of this footage, the IGGN could have reported these potential offences to the prosecutor’s office, but it did not do so.
In particular, the videos show numerous targeted shots of tear gas and explosive grenades, a practice which is strictly prohibited. Given the danger these munitions pose if they hit someone at full speed, the rules governing grenade launchers stipulate that they must be fired only at a high angle, with the barrel positioned at a 45-degree angle, and never horizontally.
These targeted shots were not isolated incidents: in more than half of the gendarme units examined, officers ordered their subordinates to proceed in this way.
The videos also record dozens of grossly inappropriate remarks and insults directed at demonstrators, who are called “sons of bitches” and “bastards”, and described as “stinking of piss”. Some gendarmes boast of hitting demonstrators “smack in the head” or “in the balls”, express satisfaction at “hurting them”, and even say they should be “killed”.
Lawyer Chloé Chalot, who represents the four seriously injured demonstrators who have lodged formal complaints, regrets that the IGGN did not record everything in its official report. She is calling for a “new and much more thorough transcription process”, and points out that “investigators did not confront the gendarmes concerned with their behaviour or their words, despite their seriousness and ramifications”.
In fact, the gendarmes’ body camera footage was only reviewed after their commanding officers had been interviewed. No gendarme was questioned about the content of the footage.
'Increasingly violent repression'
Earlier on Wednesday those same four injured men - whose case is being examined as part of the criminal probe - issued a statement in which they called for “investigations to continue”. The four, 'Alix', 'Olivier' - not their real names - Mickaël and Serge described the expert assessments carried out so far as part of the probe as “partial and incomplete” and regretted the fact that “many grey areas” remain.
“We now have the audio and video proof of what we suspected: the acts that caused so many injuries and almost cost the lives of several of us were not the work of particularly violent individuals, but stemmed from orders given by an institution,” they added, referring to a “process that for many years has aimed to normalise ever more violent repression”.
In a similar vein, those demonstrators at Sainte-Soline who had referred the matter to the country's human rights ombudsman, the Défenseur des droits, and who are still waiting for its conclusions, published their own statement after having “learnt with dismay the outcome of the preliminary inquiry” in the press. They said they were “outraged by the casualness with which this inquiry was carried out”, noting in particular the “minor use of the videos even though shocking words and acts are clearly apparent there” and the “almost systematic non-regulatory use of weapons”.
Environmental group Les Soulèvements de la Terre, co-organisers of the demonstration on March 25th 2023, believe that “violence, the deliberate risk of mutilating and even killing, and the satisfaction at the injuries inflicted, was clearly apparent within the forces of law and order”. This collective spoke of an “organised system of impunity, a state system where hatred of demonstrators is not only tolerated but encouraged” and called for the “disarming of this criminal institution”.
The demonstrations in March 2023 were part of a wider and still ongoing protest movement by environmental groups bitterly opposed to the system of creating large artificial reservoirs which are filled with water from natural underground sources in winter and then used to irrigate crops in summer. Mediapart recently revealed how, on top of the environmental damage caused by this practice, it is also struggling to be economically viable.
The Left demands a parliamentary inquiry
On March 25th 2023, seven Members of Parliament from the radical-left La France insoumise (LFI) party were present at Sainte-Soline, including Clémence Guetté. “Extremely shocked by the indiscriminate repression” at the time, the MP had already, in April 2023, called for a parliamentary inquiry into how demonstrations are policed, but in vain. On Wednesday evening, together with her entire parliamentary group, she repeated her demand and also made a formal report to the justice system.
Clémence Guetté said that the footage revealed by Mediapart and Libération “matches exactly what we experienced that day: generalised repression, practices that are clearly not authorised in France, weapons of war that should not be used against demonstrators, targeted fire and also the hostility of some gendarmes”. For her, the issue is “not limited to Sainte-Soline”.
“The government must speak out,” the MP continued. “I can't believe that the ministers concerned have nothing to say about public servants whose role is to maintain order, yet who insult, laugh at the potential wounded or potential dead, and carry out orders for acts that are completely banned.”
Like Clémence Guetté, several LFI MPs have strongly reacted to the revelations about the “disgraceful” behaviour of the gendarmes and called for “sanctions”. “This isn't an accident. It's a doctrine: to punish, to wound, to frighten,” said Bastien Lachaud, while LFI founder Jean-Luc Mélenchon and former presidential candidate promised to “reorganise” the forces of law and order “from top to bottom”.
The leader of the green Écologistes party, Marine Tondelier, who also took part in the Sainte-Soline demonstration and who spent several hours alongside one of the seriously injured, described the events as being of an “unspeakable gravity”. Seven green MPs have written to the interior minister Laurent Nuñez to demand “exemplary sanctions and a full inquiry into the chain of command”. They also announced that they had referred the matter to the public prosecutor.
Mediapart has contacted several MPs from President Emmanuel Macron's centrist camp, who have so far declined to comment.
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- This article was based on an original report in French which can be found here, with additional information from here and here.
English version by Michael Streeter