On New Year’s Eve, 2,500 people took part in a wild rave party south of Rennes in Lieuron
- The rave party which brought together 2,500 people on New Year’s Eve received considerable media attention.
- The regulars in the field are surprised at the extent of this party and consider the imprisonment measures taken against a suspected organizer to be disproportionate.
- The organizers have expressed themselves in an open letter and know that they are being closely watched.
Hundreds of press articles in France but also internationally. A surge of reactions, often indignant, even downright insulting. The rave party organized on New Year’s Eve in Lieuron, a quiet town of 800 inhabitants hidden south of Rennes, took on an unexpected dimension. By welcoming around 2,500 people in a hangar for a giant party in the midst of the coronavirus Covid-19 epidemic, the organisers have become “highly sought after people” by the gendarmerie services. A status that they seem to have difficulty accepting. And especially that they struggle to understand.
The instruction had been given not to speak. In order not to “endanger” the organizers but also to avoid discrediting a movement that is already openly criticized. Some regulars in the industry have however agreed to testify anonymously (the first names have been changed) about their view of this event. “A 22-year-old guy with no record faces ten years in prison for making people dance on New Year’s Eve. This is delirium! And it’s very serious, ”regrets Emilie, a Breton teufeuse.
Je tiens en ce moment une réunion pour faire le point sur la situation à #Lieuron en Ille-et-Vilaine.
Dès 22H hier soir sur mon instruction, les gendarmes ont coupé l’entrée des véhicules qui se rendaient à cette rave-party.— Gérald DARMANIN (@GDarmanin) January 1, 2021
The sudden interest of the media in their movement also gently makes regulars laugh. Little known, often misunderstood and assimilated to the boom-boom and drug consumption, the party has yet invited to Gerald Darmanin’s New Year’s Eve table. The Minister of the Interior had even had to convene an emergency meeting on January 1st with the prefects and his cabinet members. “The guys staged a coup. We are sure to be frowned upon, but it was already the case before. We are just going to be even more monitored, ”testifies a member of a collective.
“Society doesn’t understand us because it doesn’t know us”
Silent since the end of the party on Saturday morning, the organisers spoke in a long forum addressed to Liberation on Tuesday. “Our gesture is political, we offered a free decompression valve. To be together for a moment, together, alive, ”say the organizers in their letter. The latter believe that the two people placed in police custody on Saturday ( one was released, the other imprisoned pending trial) were “humiliated and terrorized for a simple communication operation”. “We, the organizers, are therefore actively sought after, terms usually reserved for the worst criminals.”
“We are already not credible”
Monday evening, one of the participants agreed to speak by video on the ‘Touche pas à mon poste’. Stricken by Cyril Hanouna and his chroniclers, the young woman, who called herself Camille, probably did not convince many people, on the contrary. “It was ridiculous. We are already not credible in the eyes of society, but this hurts us even more. Either way, society doesn’t accept us. She doesn’t understand us because she doesn’t know us, ”summarizes a regular in the industry. If it was legitimately shocking, the Lieuron rave party will have had the merit of bringing to light an invisible world, which has never disappeared.
