LA ROCHELLE, France: Protesters clashed with police in France’s western port of La Rochelle Saturday, as conservationists and small farmers mobilized against massive irrigation reservoirs under construction.
Local government officials had banned demonstrations in the city, which is a popular tourist site in summer.
A 2,000-strong march, one of two through the city, was charged by police at around 1:30 p.m. (1130 GMT).
Running battles erupted around barricades and burning rubbish bins as some protesters threw projectiles and police fired tear gas grenades.
“We were in the demo, they started blocking ahead and behind,” said Lilia, a 25-year-old who declined to give her full name. “They isolated us off to one side to charge everyone else.”
Police said around 500 participants in the march were so-called “black bloc” far-left radicals.
Prosecutors in La Rochelle said four members of the police and five demonstrators received medical care for minor injuries.
Several shops were damaged or looted, along with bus shelters and advertising hoardings. A building site was ransacked for cinder blocks and wood to construct barricades.
Police arrested seven people, mostly for trespassing.
The second, more peaceful march, made up of around 3,000 people family groups, moved from the city center toward the commercial port. Many wore costume disguises.
Some used kayaks or inflatable boats to approach the La Pallice agricultural export terminal, singled out by organizers as the target for the demonstrations.
The two marches joined up mid-afternoon along the waterfront before turning back and dispersing calmly.
Police had used tear gas earlier Saturday to clear around 200 people who entered the terminal at dawn, including farmers with old tractors.
That confrontation broke up mostly peacefully.
The protests in the city on France’s Atlantic coast were intended to show that new “reservoirs aren’t being built to grow food locally, but to feed international markets,” said Julien Le Guet, a spokesman for the “Reservoirs, No Thanks” movement.
Activists say the reservoirs, set to be filled from aquifers in winter to provide summer irrigation, benefit only large farmers at the expense of smaller operations and the environment.
Several dozen are under construction in western France, their supporters arguing that without them farms risk vanishing as they suffer through repeated droughts.
Last year, clashes between thousands of demonstrators and police in Sainte-Soline, around 90 kilometers (56 miles) inland from La Rochelle, left two protesters in a coma and injured 30 officers.
Further scuffles broke out Saturday as demonstrators returned to La Rochelle’s center from the agricultural port, some launching fireworks at the police, who responded with tear gas and water cannons.
“Cease fire, there are children in the march,” Le Guet shouted. “Don’t make the same mistake as at Sainte-Soline.”
Fears of clashes had been high all week. More than 3,000 police deployed around a “Water Village” protest camp in Melle, a few kilometers from Sainte-Soline, as authorities warned of a risk of “great violence.”
The prefecture banned the demonstrations in popular summer tourist destination La Rochelle, but organizers went ahead with them.
On Saturday, “our aim wasn’t to clash with law enforcement, it’s often law enforcement who aim to clash with us,” said Juliette Riviere, an SLT member.
Prosecutors said that six people had been taken into custody by mid-afternoon Saturday.
French police clash with water demonstrators after port blockade
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French police clash with water demonstrators after port blockade
- Running battles erupted around barricades and burning rubbish bins as some protesters threw projectiles and police fired tear gas grenades
Starmer, Macron agree on need for new deterrent against boat crossings, UK says
LONDON: British Prime Minister Keir Starmer and French President Emmanuel Macron agreed on Wednesday on the need to go further and develop a new deterrent to tackle irregular migration and small boat crossings across the Channel.
“The leaders agreed tackling the threat of irregular migration and small boat crossings is a shared priority that requires shared solutions,” a British readout of a meeting between the two in London said.
“The two leaders agreed on the need to go further and make progress on new and innovative solutions, including a new deterrent to break the business model of these gangs.”
Dozens of sites vie for UNESCO world heritage list spot
PARIS: The United Nation’s cultural organization announces its choice of sites for inclusion in its world heritage list this week, with pre-historic caves, former centers of repression, forests, marine bio-systems and others vying for the coveted spots.
Making the UNESCO’s heritage list often sparks a lucrative tourism drive, and can unlock funding for the preservation of sites that can face threats including pollution, war and negligence.
Climate change is another growing problem for world heritage sites, UNESCO Director-General Audrey Azoulay told Monday’s opening session of the body’s World Heritage Committee.
“Close to three quarters of world heritage sites are already faced with serious water-related risks, lack of water or floods,” she said.
Governments failing to ensure adequate protection of their sites risk them being added to UNESCO’s endangered sites list — which currently contains over 50 names — or dropped from the list altogether.
Armed conflict is the reason for about half of the downgrades to the endangered sites list, Azoulay said. Many of such problem areas are located in the Middle East.
The current world heritage list contains 1,223 cultural, natural or mixed sites. Of the organization’s 196 member states, 27 are absent from the list, including several African nations.
Two of them — Guinea-Bissau and Sierra Leone — hope this will change this year, as they pitch the Bijagos islands and Gola-Tiwai wildlife reserves, respectively, to UNESCO. UNESCO has been seeking to boost Africa’s presence on the heritage list, officials say.
“Since her arrival in 2018, Audrey Azoulay has made Africa not just her own priority, but one of UNESCO’s overall priorities,” said Lazare Eloundou Assomo, who heads up the organization’s world heritage center.
Syria’s government and Kurds still at odds over merging forces after latest talks, US envoy says
- Tom Barrack met with Mazloum Abdi, head of the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces, and interim President Ahmad Al-Sharaa in the Syrian capital
DAMASCUS: A US envoy said on Wednesday that Syria’s central government and the Kurds remain at odds over plans on merging forces after the latest round of talks.
US Ambassador to Turkiye Tom Barrack, who is also a special envoy to Syria, told The Associated Press after meetings in Damascus that differences between the two sides remain. Barrack spoke after meeting with Mazloum Abdi, head of the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces, and Syria’s interim President Ahmad Al-Sharaa in the Syrian capital.
In early March, the new authorities in Damascus signed a landmark deal with the US-backed, Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces.
Under that deal, the SDF forces would be merged with the new national army. The agreement, which is supposed to be implemented by the end of the year, would also bring all border crossings with Iraq and Turkiye, airports, and oil fields in the northeast under the central government’s control.
Detention centers housing thousands of suspected members of the Daesh group would also come under government control.
However, the agreement left the details vague, and progress on implementation has been slow. A major sticking point has been whether the SDF would remain as a cohesive unit in the new army — which the Kurds have pushed for — or whether it would be dissolved and its members absorbed into the new military as individuals.
Barrack said that question remains “a big issue” between the two sides.
French police raid far-right party HQ over campaign financing
- The Paris prosecutor’s office said police had raided the National Rally’s offices as part of an investigation launched in July last year into alleged illegal campaign financing for the 2022 presidential and parliamentary elections
- It is the latest legal trouble for the party of Marine Le Pen, the longtime standard bearer of the French far right
PARIS: The leader of France’s National Rally (RN) said police seized documents from the far-right party’s headquarters Wednesday, a raid prosecutors said was linked to a French probe into alleged illegal campaign financing.
It is the latest legal trouble for the party of Marine Le Pen, the longtime standard bearer of the French far right, which has come under increasing scrutiny in recent years.
The 56-year-old politician, who has three times run for president, suffered a stunning blow in March when a French court convicted her and other party officials over an EU parliament fake jobs scam.
The ruling, which Le Pen has appealed, banned her from standing for office for five years, effectively scuppering her ambition of running in France’s 2027 presidential elections.
Le Pen has asked her top lieutenant, 29-year-old party leader and European Parliament member Jordan Bardella, to prepare to campaign in her place.
“RN headquarters — including the offices of its leaders — are being searched by around 20 police officers from the financial brigade,” Bardella said on X on Wednesday morning.
Police accompanied by two investigating magistrates had seized “all emails, documents and accounting” records of the party, he added.
They included “all files related to the last regional, presidential, parliamentary and European (election) campaigns,” Bardella said, denouncing what he called “a new harassment operation.”
The Paris prosecutor’s office said police had raided the party’s offices as part of an investigation launched in July last year into alleged illegal campaign financing for the 2022 presidential and parliamentary elections, as well as the European Parliament elections last year.
The investigation seeks to “determine whether these campaigns were notably funded through illegal loans from individuals to the party or RN candidates,” the prosecutor’s office added.
It said it would also look into allegations the party had included inflated or fake invoices in its claims for the state to reimburse campaign expenses.
Police also searched the offices and homes of several company bosses on Wednesday as part of the investigation, which covers the period from January 2020 to July 2024, it said.
Under French law, a person can give a maximum of 7,500 euros ($8,800) per year to a political party.
Loans are allowed, but only within certain conditions and limits, according to a national commission in charge of scrutinizing campaign financing called the CNCCFP.
They should not be “a disguised donation,” for example.
By the end of 2023, the RN had racked up 20 million euros in loans from individuals, with the earliest dating back to 2007, the CNCCFP says.
In a separate case, the European Union’s prosecutor said Tuesday it has launched a formal investigation into a defunct far-right group, which included France’s RN, over the alleged misuse of European Parliament funds.
According to the reports by a consortium of European media, most of the allegedly misused funds benefited companies belonging to a former adviser to Le Pen and his wife.
Le Pen has challenged her May conviction at the Paris Appeals Court, which has said it will examine the case to allow a decision to be reached in the summer of 2026.
This means she could still stand in the 2027 elections — if the verdict is reversed or amended.
She also sought an urgent ruling from the European Court for Human Rights to lift her ban on standing for public office.
The court threw out the request on Wednesday, stating it saw no “imminent risk of irreparable harm to a right” protected by the European human rights convention.
Bob Vylan and Kneecap perform in London and Glasgow despite festivals axing them for criticizing Israeli actions in Gaza
- Bob Vylan announced they will perform on Wednesday evening at the 100 Club in London
- Irish rap group Kneecap sold out their show at the O2 in Glasgow in just 80 seconds
LONDON: The rap-punk duo Bob Vylan announced a last-minute gig in London on Wednesday, and the Irish rap group Kneecap sold out their show at the O2 in Glasgow in just 80 seconds, despite being axed by festivals after using performances to publicly criticizing Israel’s actions in Gaza.
Avon and Somerset Police are investigating Bob Vylan over their Glastonbury performance in June, when frontman Bobby Vylan, 34, led crowds in chants of “death, death to the IDF”, an acronym for Israel Defence Forces, during a livestreamed show.
The Metropolitan Police are also investigating the duo from Ipswich over alleged comments made during a concert in London in May, during which Vylan, reportedly, said: “Death to every single IDF soldier out there as an agent of terror for Israel. Death to the IDF.”
The duo announced to their followers on Instagram that they will be performing a gig on Wednesday evening at the 100 Club, a venue on Oxford Street in central London.
After their Glastonbury performance, the band had their US visas revoked and were removed from their headline slot at Radar festival in Manchester, as well as an upcoming German venue. Their agency, United Talent Agency, has reportedly dropped them as well.
Bob Vylan, formed in 2017, is known for addressing issues such as racism, masculinity, and class; they have said they are “targeted for speaking up.” They are scheduled to perform at the Boardmasters surfing and music festival in Newquay, Cornwall, in August.
‘They can’t stop us’
The Irish rap trio Kneecap responded to Scotland’s first minister during their Tuesday night performance at Glasgow’s O2 Academy, which reportedly sold out in 80 seconds. However, the TRNSMT festival in Glasgow canceled the trio’s performance this weekend after concerns were raised by the police.
John Swinney called for the TRNSMT festival to disinvite the band, describing their participation as “unacceptable” due to comments he deemed “beyond the pale”.
Mo Chara, a member of Kneecap, was charged with a terrorism-related offense in June but has been released on unconditional bail after footage showed him holding a Hezbollah flag.
Chara addressed Swinney’s comments during the gig at the O2 Academy on Tuesday, asking the crowd: “What’s your first minister’s name?” and adding: “They stopped us playing TRNSMT but they can’t stop us playing Glasgow.” The trio chanted against Prime Minister Keir Starmer, who had called for their removal from festivals in England.
Kneecap wrote later on social media: “Hats off to the dozens of Palestine activists who’ve been here all day. Buzzing to play one of our favourite cities for a show that sold out in seconds.”
The band said that their criticism target the Israeli government and that their actions, including displaying the Hezbollah flag during a performance, were taken out of context.
In April, they concluded a performance at Coachella’s California desert music festival by projecting three screens of pro-Palestinian messages.
The first text said: “Israel is committing genocide against the Palestinian people,” followed by: “It is being enabled by the US government who arm and fund Israel despite their war crimes,” while the final message said: “F*** Israel. Free Palestine.”
Since October 2023, Israeli military operations in Gaza have killed more than 56,000 Palestinians, mostly women and children, while more than 100,000 others have been injured. On Oct. 7, 2023, the Hamas group raided Israeli towns, killing about 1,200 people and taking 251 hostages to Gaza.
