Exclusive: 5G antenna sabotage map

[1/3] This investigation into acts of sabotage against telecommunications infrastructure and against the deployment of 5G has three parts. Tomorrow, we will publish the interview of three saboteurs: what political meaning do they give to their action?

It is a movement that is advancing underground, far from the spotlight, a deep revolt that is spreading in France. For two years, acts of sabotage against telecommunications infrastructure and against the deployment of 5G have multiplied. Relay antennas are set on fire, fiber optic cables severed, pylons unbolted. During the night, people burn construction machinery, attack telephone relays with grinders or destroy electrical cabinets with a sledgehammer. Last November alone, three antennas went up in smoke in Saint-Héand in the Loire department. A few days earlier, in Toulouse, four vans from a fiber optic installation company were on fire. In the Gard, between Salindres and Barjac, thousands of people were deprived of the internet after cables were cut with axes.

Discover on our map the sabotages listed by Reporterre:

Taken in isolation, each of these cases could be likened to a simple news item. Placed end to end, they weave, on the contrary, the fabric of a common narrative. These actions appear in their demands as so many refusals to live in a hyperconnected society, so many frontal resistances to the digitization of the world.

Hundreds of sabotages have been carried out in recent years. For several months, Reporterre has been listing them one by one, according to their appearance in articles in the regional daily press or on anarchist claims and information sites such as Attaque or Sansnom. Between January 2020 and December 2021, we counted, sourced and analyzed 140 across the country. They are probably more numerous. In May 2021, an internal report from the Ministry of the Interior already listed 174 acts of sabotage in one year. This document, of which France Inter was able to obtain a copy, has not been made public. Despite our requests, the Ministry of the Interior did not wish to communicate it to us.

For their part, Telecom operators are also keeping track. " At Orange, about one antenna per week is the target of vandalism ", confided in September to La Tribune Cyril Luneau, the director of relations with local communities. In total, in two years, Orange would have suffered 130 attacks including 61 on mobile phone sites.

5G sellers have not hesitated to advertise it massively, as here in the capital. © Laury-Anne Cholez / Reporterre

It is difficult to have an exhaustive view of the overall number of sabotages. Both operators and authorities remain cautious about their communication. " It's even a question of not divulging these elements too much in order to avoid giving ideas to certain people ", explains to us by email Ariel Turpin, the delegate general of Avicca (the Association of towns and communities for electronic communications and audiovisual). Their fear is well founded: in an IFOP poll, published in September 2020, no less than 20 % of those questioned said they were in favor of the destruction of 5G relay antennas.

For twenty years and the mowing of GMOs (genetically modified organisms), France had not experienced such a massive campaign of sabotage. Phone professionals are more than worried. They evoke, in the press, a " scourge against vital construction sites of the nation ". The boss of Orange Stéphane Richard even invites to " purge " the debate to avoid a " Afghanistan of mobile telephony, where it will be necessary to beat pylon by pylon, commune by commune to try to put 5G ”. Vincent Cuvillier, the president of Ofitem (French association of mobile telephony infrastructure operators) does not hesitate to speak of “ digital terrorism ”. One-upmanship is in order. In Le Figaro, a journalist describes the saboteurs as “ a secret pseudo-army raised against 5G with possible connections abroad ”.

€200,000 per pylon

The damage caused is indeed enough to scare them. According to the calculations of Reporterre, the total damage of these sabotages exceeds tens of millions of euros. “ A relay antenna tower costs around 200,000 euros, confirmed to Reporterre Michel Combot of the French Telecoms Federation. If it is destroyed, the cost of removal must be added. For transformers and electrical equipment, it will depend on the degree of degradation, it is not the same thing if it is an electrical cabinet that is burned or just a cable that is cut. » In some cases, the damage can reach several million euros. This is the case in particular, in Grenoble in January 2020, when an Enedis site was set on fire with a dozen vehicles or, in May 2020, when two antennas in the Jura were burned. The site could not be put back into service.

In general, operators are reluctant to disclose the actual amount of the invoice. Vincent Cuvillier turns out to be a little more prolix all the same. “ If you take an average of 200,000 euros per site and multiply by the 174 acts of degradation [from the report of the Ministry of the Interior], we will not dispute the figure ”, he told Reporterre. Or 34.8 million euros.

Millions of people affected

Beyond these costs, the consequences of these acts are also significant. Last September, part of the Tarn was cut off from the networks after the fire of several relay antennas. 52,000 Bouygues and SFR subscribers were deprived of telephone service for several days. In January 2021, the fire of a transmitter near Limoges by a mysterious " committee for the abolition of 5G and its world " deprived 1.5 million television and radio people. A month earlier, near Marseille, another fire had prevented 3.5 million people from accessing television. Sabotage also affects large companies. In Saint-Héand, in the Loire, a Thales factory could not function properly for several days after the fire of a relay antenna.

Our columnist Corinne Morel Darleux, told in Reporterre how a series of coordinated sabotages paralyzed the Drôme valley where she lives. The telephone network no longer worked, the ATMs and credit card payments either. This gigantic breakdown is “ food for thought ,” she wrote. “ For a moment, the digital cogs that govern our lives were seized up. The tobacconist was sorry that he could no longer sell scratch cards. Smokers nervously searched for coins in the bottom of their pockets to buy themselves a pack. Restaurateurs, already closed due to Covid, no longer received orders for delivery. Market traders wrote IOUs on slips of paper. We navigated between exasperation and happy mess. All it took was one fire to shut down much of the activity. ”

“ Replace the five Gs with the point G ” on a poster in the streets of Paris. © lw

For several years, saboteurs have identified cell towers as the nerve centers through which economic flows pass and technocapitalism develops. Anarchist bulletins speak of “ umbilical cord ”, other sites of “ Achilles heels ”.

The first large-scale attacks began as early as 2017, with a series of sabotages in Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes, claimed by a group defined as " libertarian " by the press. The movement continued in 2019 with numerous sabotages carried out by yellow vests, particularly in Alsace and Nièvre. " The question of fiber and relay antennas was already discussed quite a bit in the assemblies of Yellow Vests ", confides to Reporterre a former member of the movement. “ Many tutorials circulated on social networks and in demos to explain how to destroy radars, sabotage Linky counters or antennas. At the time, it was already seen as a way to loosen the grip of the state, to break surveillance and to block economic flows ”, he says.

In France, there are no less than 50,000 4G antennas and 18,994 active 5G antennas. The majority are located on isolated sites which are difficult to monitor and are therefore, by their own admission, easily attacked: " It is not realistic today to say that we are going to install 66,000 video surveillance cameras on all branches. And let's be clear: someone who wants to enter and destroy an isolated site will be able to do so ”, says Vincent Cuvillier. And the instructions for use are multiplying on specialized sites, based on rags, kerosene cans, fire starters and lighters.

A dynamic stimulated by the pandemic

But it was really during the Covid-19 pandemic that this sabotage took on importance and began to worry the authorities. An article in Le Parisien published in May 2020 revealed a confidential note from the Central Territorial Intelligence Service (SCRT) which recorded around twenty attacks during the month of April. “ The ultra-left has the experience, said a police officer to the newspaper. They don't leave a trace, are difficult to pull up, but everything leads to them. »

Several calls from the anarchist milieu invite us to take action. " At a time when almost everyone lives confined in a home automation bubble connected to the matrix like an ersatz life, what would happen if an easily accessible high voltage pylon came to fall to the ground ”, ask activists.

Others called for " reconnecting with direct action " in view of the failures of the latest mobilizations in the street, in particular, against 5G. After having evoked an unprecedented repressive context and an impossibility of being heard by traditional means, several texts commit those who want to create a movement of " concrete resistance, and not just symbolic < /small>”, to “ regain the advantage in the current social war ”, through actions of sabotage and degradation.

The political context is indeed conducive to the return of direct action: on the one hand, the government has moved into force on 5G, on the other, the citizen opposition movement has been slipping since the start of the protest against this imposed technology. Legal remedies such as moratorium requests have not obtained the slightest inflection in the implementation of 5G.

Contacted by Reporterre, the general delegate of the association Agir pour l’environnement Stephen Kerckhove observes: “ I am not surprised to see people take their adjustable wrench. At the moment when the traditional legal and institutional channels of associations are struggling to obtain results, it necessarily shifts to sabotage. It is a photograph of our collective inability and government irresponsibility. This legitimately generates mad rage, I understand that people can mobilize like this. »

Within the environmental community, the observation is quite similar. Director Cyril Dion, former guarantor of the Citizen's Climate Convention – who had also called for a moratorium on 5G – also ensures “ understanding that people come to these extremes < /small>”. Sabotage “ can be used as a last resort, to create a balance of power, even if the ideal is obviously the democratic way. What matters is to articulate the strategies ”, he confided to Reporterre. For the historian of science François Jarrige, this situation is, in fact, nothing surprising. “ Sabotage increases when more institutional forms of negotiation are in crisis ,” he told Reporterre. “ It is precisely when the technical choices are still uncertain and not totally rooted in imaginations and institutions that it is possible to act. The same thing happened with GMOs, nuclear power, but also with the car in its infancy, and industrial mechanization in the 19th century. Today, it is the turn of digital communication infrastructures. »

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