Conviction on appeal of Bové, Mamère and Lemaire
José Bové and Noël Mamère convicted on appeal
18 February 2006
Sentenced to pay 300,000 euros, Bové, Lemaire, Mamère and others risk having their assets seized.
GMOs: the reapers reaped
by Renaud LECADRE
DAILY: Thursday 16 February 2006
The blue paper arrived in early February at the homes of José Bové, Noël Mamère and Gilles Lemaire, among other "voluntary reapers" of genetically modified corn. Sent by the companies Monsanto and Biogema, manufacturers of GMOs.
It is the strict application of two rulings by the courts of appeal of Toulouse and Riom which jointly sentenced them to pay 300,000 euros in damages to the seed multinationals.
These "orders to pay" are the last step before the "seizure sale" of their property.
The anti-GMO activists have appealed to the Court of Cassation, but this does not suspend the judicial procedure.
Gilles Lemaire, former national secretary of the Greens, was holding a press conference yesterday in his tiny Paris apartment, where he expects a bailiff's visit any day now. One catches oneself taking stock of valuable possessions: a sturdy wooden table, half a clock, a collection of Guide du routard, a refrigerator serving as a wine cellar... Everyone squeezes in as best they can in the dollhouse. "We're a bit cramped, there are still too many pieces of furniture," laughs Lemaire. José Bové, even more swaggering: "There's no question of paying anything, we won't give them a penny." The peasant leader awaits the bailiffs of Monsanto & Co "firmly" at his farm in Larzac: "If they want to seize my goats, they'll first have to manage to get into my home." During a previous procedure, the gendarmerie had had to enter by helicopter to get around the human shield. This time, Bové suggests sending the Clemenceau. Their lawyer, Me Roux, promises a "judicial guerrilla war" to escape the seizures. "We know how to wage them," he says, recalling former battles at Larzac, farms seized by the army successively changing owners during the procedure.
Yet reapers of GMOs, sometimes the same ones, come to benefit from two acquittals pronounced at first instance by the TGIs of Orléans and Versailles, for strictly identical facts (see opposite). Gilles Lemaire ironizes about this judicial lottery: "I took part in the operation sanctioned by the court of Riom because I was then on vacation at Larzac and local peasants dragged me along. If I had stayed in Paris, I would have taken part at the same time in the operation for which the court of Versailles acquitted everyone." Noël Mamère, a Green MP also convicted, takes the opportunity to assert that "the delinquents are the sowers, with the government as accomplice." He attacks the future GMO law, debated in March in Parliament, which will toughen the sanctions against reapers: five years' suspended prison sentence, firm in case of repeat offense. Bové adds: "We're dealing with a mafia with a government in its pay. They attack from every side those who stand in the way of their business."
The company Biogema has thus just filed a criminal complaint in Riom (Puy-de-Dôme) against all the reapers for "criminal association."
An application of the Perben 2 law, originally presented as a new instrument in the fight against suburban mafias, which allows extensive telephone tapping.
At the administrative court, Biogema is also claiming 25 million euros in damages from the French State for having taken too long to sanction the anti-GMO activists. To hear the latter, 2006 will be the year of truth, because "the firms want to force their way through and break the reapers' movement." On one side, the European Union threatens to condemn France if it does not translate its directive on open-air tests into legislative terms by the summer; on the other, the Court of Cassation will have to rule by the end of the year on the contradictory judgments concerning the reapers.
A race against time is underway: last month, Monsanto had the bank accounts of the Confédération paysanne seized
; in return, José Bové's union promises it "new forms of action."
Same offenses... but not the same punishments
Depending on the courts and the circumstances, the sanctions inflicted can differ.
by Renaud LECADRE
DAILY: Thursday 16 February 2006
Little echo in the press
The solution does not consist in transforming José Bové's farm into an entrenched camp, in erecting human barricades facing helmeted CRS officers. It does not consist in transforming Lemaire's tiny apartment into a Fort Chabrol. The solution is to create a support committee very quickly, to gather these 300,000 euros and throw them in the face of power, of justice or of elected officials, demonstrating the power of solidarity, which is far more powerful than that of truncheons. It won't be me who does it, it's you.
Friends are trying to contact the interested parties. I tried to do so, without success. The ideal would be for this sum to be gathered through very numerous small donations, but personally I am ready to put 100 euros of my own money into such an operation. It is nothing other than Gandhi's non-violent technique. I would even have a suggestion. There must be an official place where Bové, Mamère and Lemaire are supposed to send this fine. I suggest they bring it in cash, in transparent plastic bags, transported on wheelbarrows. The money, plus the letters sent by the donors, expressing their disapproval. It could make a nice procession.
If the media don't give it an echo, websites can.
Do you remember when Gandhi had asked his compatriots to make an immense pile of the clothes that the English, after buying their wool at a low price, manufactured for them in their factories in England, to sell back to them at a solid profit. The Indians arrived in silence, took off their Western clothes, replaced them with local outfits. In front of the stunned English policemen the pile of Shetland sweaters, of tweed suits, rose, rose....
I imagine a happening of the same kind where people would deposit, for example, in front of the radio and television building, televisions and radios, like that, in a pile. Thousands of sets....
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