France demonstrates that nuclear and democracy are incompatible

As authorities effectively locked down the French city of Colmar, near the German border, thousands of protesters - from France, Germany, Switzerland, Italy, Spain and elsewhere - gathered on a bright and sunny October 3rd to demand the closure of the nearby Fessenheim reactor and an end to the nuclear age. (Fessenheim is the country’s oldest operation commercial reactor.) Dressed in “solar yellow,” activists had to cross police barricades to enter the city, part of which was completely cordoned off, turning Colmar into a ghost town. German demonstrators were stopped at the border while others were sent on long detours to reach the rallying site.

Just days before the rally, Colmar authorities withdrew permission to hold the demonstration in the larger and more centrally-located Place Rapp and move it to the smaller and more peripheral Place de la Gare. For more pictures of these events, see the Home Page of our Web site. Also, view this collection of news clips about the event. Beyond Nuclear's Linda Gunter was present and spoke at a press conference and at the rally, and attended a two-day conference in Colmar on the many problems surrounding French nuclear power.

The enormous presence of police and gendarmes was an absurd over-reaction on the part of the authorities; an effort to represent anti-nuclear protesters as a threat to public safety; and an attempt to minimize the turnout. As activists pointed out, the police-imposed state of siege in Colmar demonstrated once again that “a nuclear state means a police state.” The state-owned nuclear power and nuclear weapons industries fall under the sole auspices of French president, Nicolas Sarkozy, who is eagerly marketing nuclear energy globally. Consequently, all signs of nuclear opposition in France must be obscured or eliminated.