2020 June 08 « nuclear-news

Huge police squadron paid by nuclear industry to monitor residents of Bure

the tens of millions of euros per year disbursed by Andra to pay for the presence of the gendarme squadron represents a significant sum. In 2018, the agency’s net profit amounted to only 11.5 million euros,

Cigeo related expenses are directly funded by the three major nuclear players: EDF and Orano, two private companies, and CEA, a public research establishment. In 2018, they poured 212 million euros into the landfill project.

Large Man Looking At Co-Worker With A Magnifying Glass — Image by © Images.com/Corbis

In Bure, the nuclear waste agency pays the police, À Bure, l’agence des déchets nucléaires se paie des gendarmes, Reporterre, 5 juin 2020 / Marie Barbier (Reporterre) et Jade Lindgaard According to information obtained by Mediapart and Reporterre, an agreement was signed in 2018 between the national gendarmerie and Andra, the agency responsible for the burial of nuclear waste, in this village of the Meuse. Since then, the agency has paid tens of millions of euros to monitor residents through gendarmes. This partnership poses ethical and legal problems.

Around Bure, in the Meuse, where the most dangerous nuclear waste from French power plants must be buried in a gigantic mine 500 meters underground, the villages are only inhabited by a handful of people. And yet, 75 gendarmes patrol there 24 hours a day. For almost a year and a half, according to information collected by Mediapart and Reporterre, these soldiers are paid by Andra, the National Agency for Radioactive Waste Management, which has set up a laboratory at the future landfill.

In October 2018, an agreement was signed between Andra and the General Directorate of the National Gendarmerie (DGGN) “in order to guarantee the safety of personnel and facilities in the long term” the agency confirmed to us, in response to our questions. According to figures given by the agency itself, “ten million euros” are spent each year by Andra, a public industrial and commercial establishment (EPIC), to pay the soldiers engaged and cover related costs, including catering. To date, therefore, at least twenty million euros have been spent – or are in the process of being spent – in this context

The mobile gendarmes are hosted directly on Andra’s site, in a block built for this purpose. They sleep there, store their equipment and their vehicles and take their recovery days there before leaving to patrol. These soldiers, often very young, stay there for three to six weeks before leaving on another assignment. They are immediately replaced by new arrivals. The DGGN refused to communicate the exact content to us The government decision to assign a squadron of mobile gendarmes to this territory dates from the summer of 2017. In June, Le Bindeuil, a hotel-restaurant known to accommodate Andra staff and gendarmes, suffered damage during the anti-nuclear days. And in August, a demonstration ended in confrontations with the police. These facts are today the subject of judicial information, in which ten people are under investigation, and which gives rise to massive and particularly intrusive surveillance, as we detailed in our four-part investigation……..

Is it legal to pay a squadron of gendarmes to protect themselves?….

Long dormant, this system was revived by a decree, signed by Alain Juppé in 1997…..

….. In 2009, an agreement was signed with EDF for the protection of nuclear power plants. “At the national level, the overall workforce is around a thousand gendarmes,” confirms EDF, who specifies that “this specialized platoon is financed by EDF” but that the latter “does not communicate on the cost of this protection” .

This is to prevent a new Zad, like that of Notre-Dame-des-Landes, from forming But Andra’s laboratory cannot, unlike nuclear power plants, be considered a sensitive site. No radioactive waste is present there. Cigeo’s excavation work.

So what is the purpose of the gendarmerie platoon paid by Andra at the Bure site? According to many residents that we were able to contact, these gendarmes are mainly assigned to the surveillance of the territory and its inhabitants. For the police, it is a question of preventing the militants evicted from Lejuc wood – a communal forest once occupied by opponents of Cigeo – from returning. And to prevent a new Zad from forming, he example of Notre-Dame-des-Landes, in Loire-Atlantique

When containment to protect oneself from the coronavirus started last March, “I told myself that we had already been confined since 2017. It is not more, but it is not less”. Michel Labat lives in Mandres-en-Barrois, a village in the Meuse, near Bure. He is known to everyone as an opponent of Cigeo. During the confinement, he was checked when he went to fetch bread a few dozen meters from his home. He remembers that the day the mayor distributed hydroalcoholic gel in the village streets, a woman came to complain aloud about the rumble of the gendarmes’ jeeps at night in the streets of the village. For Jean-Pierre Simon, farmer and anti-Cigeo activist: “During the confinement, it did not weaken at all. Every two hours they pass by my house. At the whim of the teams or perhaps of their leaders, they are cool or not cool. More or less snarling. “He lives in Cirfontaines, another village quite close to the future landfill. According to him, during the confinement, on the local roads, “50% of the traffic was them”.

Jacques Guillemin, opponent and resident of Mandres-en-Barrois, spent much more time at home than usual due to the confinement. One day, he said that he had counted 27 passages of a gendarmes vehicle in front of his house: “A hit in a Kangoo, a hit in a jeep, or in a 4×4. I’m fed up. They are idling. Watch me like that, I don’t like it. According to his accounts, soldiers spend an average of five times a day outside his home. Sometimes it’s ten. “No one comes to our house without their car being photographed,” he adds. All the opponents interviewed by Reporterre and Mediapart for this article gave the same testimony.

One evening, Jacques Guilllemin said that he had installed a camera on the windowsill of his attic to film the incessant passages of military. The next morning, local gendarmes came to ask him to remove the device. Requested by Reporterre and Mediapart, neither the national gendarmerie nor the local gendarmes answered our questions concerning these permanent patrols. ” It is not a life. I live very badly, and my wife too. We no longer feel at home. “

Jean-François Bodenreider is a physiotherapist in Gondrecourt, and he too, a notorious opponent of Cigeo. “We have very cordial relations with the local gendarmes. It is not they who are repressing opponents. Police patrols began before the convention was signed in 2016, according to several residents. But since then, they have never faltered. “At first, they were reservists,” recalls Michel Labat. They were many If my wife sticks her head out and says to them, “This one you already have! They answer:” We are doing our job. “

“It is a political choice. The gendarmes have no control over the matter. The ministry decides. “

Fifteen kilometers are crisscrossed 24 hours a day, as a soldier who participated in these operations confirmed to us: “People are being watched. As the area is very small, there are bound to be many passages ”. Four patrols of three or four gendarmes are circulating at the same time. What are these incessant rounds for? “You have to know who is there and who came. Residents are offended, some are exasperated. But it’s a political choice. The gendarmes have no control over the matter. The ministry decides. The same type of grid pattern and systematic vehicle plate retrieval was reportedly practiced in Notre-Dame-des-Landes before the airport was abandoned.

According to residents interviewed for this article, the patrol vehicles are reformed vehicles, old Range Rovers, or newer models from Kangoo and Transit. A villager saw them move at night with torches bearing the acronym of Andra. What exactly are their prerogatives? The Directorate General of the National Gendarmerie refused to answer our questions.

“Permanent and repeated identity checks infringe on individual freedoms” and can “only lead to incidents”.

Me Matteo Bonaglia, one of the lawyers indicted in the framework of the criminal investigation for association of criminals, says he is “surprised by such means allocated to Andra. This explains, however, the over-militarization that we observe in this territory where the fight against the project to bury nuclear waste is playing out, Andra being able to allocate the assistance of the police force in a proportion three times greater than everywhere elsewhere.

It is already difficult to oppose the Cigeo project and assert its anti-nuclear opinions. Here, the multiplication of controls and the over-representation of gendarmes constitutes a de facto obstacle to freedom of opinion and the free expression of ideas. It also explains the large number of trials that have taken place in recent years for offenses such as contempt and rebellion, not everyone is so willing to be subject to constant scrutiny. ”

This agreement with the gendarmerie is all the more problematic since Andra appears several times in the file currently being examined after the start of the fire at the Hôtel-restaurant du Bindeuil, in which ten anti-nuclear activists are put under review and to which Mediapart and Reporterre had access.

The agency did not bring a civil action, but complained three times. Thus, on February 17, 2017, its director, David Mazoyer, filed a complaint “on behalf of Andra” after “degradations” committed on the site of the eco-library, belonging to the agency. “During the night of February 16 to 17, 2017,” explains the director of gendarmes in Ligny-en-Barrois the opponents damaged, bent or tore down the fence around the site, mainly on the west facade and on a line of about 150 meters. These degradations were the subject of an additional indictment and joined the long list of crimes covered in this sprawling instruction.

A few months later, on June 21, 2017, the day of the fire at the Le Bindeuil hotel and restaurant, David Mazoyer filed a second complaint: “Other members of their movement attacked the code on the pedestrian portal giving access to the Ecothèque site. This device is damaged and out of use. I am filing a complaint on behalf of Andra for the destruction of this device. ”

Finally, on April 24, 2018, it was the head of Andra’s risk protection and prevention service who complained about receiving documents after discovering photos belonging to the Ecoteca during a search.

According to our information, the platoon of gendarmes paid by Andra is not assigned to the “Bure cell”, a cell of gendarmes with their own badge in charge of the current investigation. But what about a complainant who pays gendarmes to go and monitor the people against whom he has complained? By order of the prefecture, Andra gendarmes can also in theory be assigned to the maintenance of order at demonstrations or at the courthouse. The mix of genres would then be total: a complainant who pays the police in a demonstration against him or worse, during trials of opponents of his project …

In addition to this potential conflict of interest, the apparently legal agreement between Andra and the national gendarmerie raises legal questions. In 2018, a circular from the Minister of the Interior Gérard Colomb paved the way for a much wider billing than what had been initially planned. “The circular no longer takes the precaution of limiting it to” organizers of sporting, recreational or cultural events for profit “. We can invoice everyone, regardless of the object and the lucrative purpose or not, “said Mickaël Lavaine.

In 2018, the publication of his article in the review of legal current events in administrative law gave rise to an action brought by the Collectif des Festivals before the Council of State, the organizers denouncing the considerable sums of security which they owed. ” discharge to the State.

This mixture of genres questions the impartiality of police work
In this legal debate, the two paragraphs of article L211-11 of the code of internal security, organized by the Columbus circular, are opposed. The first specifies that these conventions concern only “organizers of sporting, recreational or cultural events for profit”, the second target much more broadly all “natural or legal persons”. “The Council of State will have to rule on this debate: is paragraph 2 linked to paragraph 1? If he decides in this sense, which I defend, that means that Andra cannot be invoiced, nor of the associations which organize the potato festival. This would return to the spirit of the text of the Tour de France, “said Mickaël Lavaine. The Council of State is expected to decide by summer.

For the researcher, this legal debate poses a much broader question: “The internal security code specifies that the police or gendarmerie forces may be charged for law enforcement services which cannot be attached to the normal obligations incumbent on the public authorities’. But what is the obligation normal state? This notion is vague enough to be able to put what you want into it. If we push the logic of the Columbus circular to its end, there is nothing to prohibit charging the organizer of an FO demonstration or the CGT for the police devices of a demonstration. However, the Declaration of Human Rights provides that the public force must be financed by taxes. ”

For Alexandre Faro, lawyer for one of the activist witnesses assisted in the investigation opened after the fire at Bindeuil, “this amounts to privatizing the police in favor of Andra. From a strict legal point of view this is very questionable because in France the police are a monopoly of the state and the Constitution provides that sovereignty is exercised by the people and for the people. ”

These debates also animated Andra employees when the agreement with the DGGN was signed. An internal source tells us that “that posed questions”: “Why is Andra paying when it is a public establishment?

Far from being anecdotal, the tens of millions of euros per year disbursed by Andra to pay for the presence of the gendarme squadron represents a significant sum. In 2018, the agency’s net profit amounted to only 11.5 million euros, mainly made up of research tax credit, as indicated in the establishment’s annual financial report. Cigeo related expenses are directly funded by the three major nuclear players: EDF and Orano, two private companies, and CEA, a public research establishment. In 2018, they poured 212 million euros into the landfill project.

The gendarmes paid by Andra who crisscross the territory are not the same as those who are investigating for justice as part of the judicial information and have listened for months to opponents of Andra. But they belong to the same institution. This mix of genres questions the impartiality of police work. Then does not public power find itself in a situation of insincerity towards the citizens whom it controls with such relentlessness? The gendarmes, Andra, justice, political leaders on one side; opponents of the other. Two tight-knit camps, one facing the other, like in a war situation.

https://reporterre.net/A-Bure-l-agence-des-dechets-nucleaires-se-paie-des-gendarmes

June 8, 2020 Posted by Christina Macpherson | civil liberties, France | Leave a comment