PARIS: The French government said on Tuesday that it would shut down an activist climate group over a series of recent demonstrations including one that led to fierce clashes with police over a controversial irrigation project.

Government spokesman Olivier Veran accused the Uprisings of the Earth (SLT) coalition of encouraging violence at protests in March against an irrigation reservoir near Sainte-Soline in western France.

“You don’t dissolve an association because of its ideas. You dissolve it because there is violence or a risk for public safety,” Veran told CNews television.

SLT denounced “a very political and extremely worrying dissolution that was demanded from the head of state by the agriculture industry and the FNSEA” farmers’ union.

“This is a vain attempt to break the thermometer instead of worrying about the temperature,” it said.

President Emmanuel Macron, who has defended reservoir projects like the one at Sainte-Soline, said in March that while many of the protesters at the site were peaceful, “you had thousands of people who simply came to wage war”.

Published in Dawn, June 21st, 2023