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Born in 1950, René Riesel is a veteran of 1968 and a
sometime anarchist, enragé, and situationist. Since
1973 he has lived in the country, and for a dozen or
so years he has been a sheepfarmer. Invited to join
the Confédération Paysanne (Farmers' Confederation) in
1991, he was on its national secretariat from 1995 and
resigned from all his functions in March 1999. For
his role (along with José Bové and Francis Roux) in
the sabotage of transgenic maize in Nérac
(Lot-et-Garonne) in January 1998, he received a
suspended eight-month jail sentence. This suspension may be annulled, however, for on 20 December
2001, Riesel and codefendants
José Bové and Dominique Soullier, charged with
destroying experimental transgenic rice plants in
Montpellier in June 1999, were sentenced on appeal to further prison terms and heavy fines. Appeals to a higher court are pending.

See also Why Should soldiers Bové and Riesel be rescued? by Herve KEMPF (le Monde Diplomatique) and Biotechnology Public and Private by René Riesel.

Donald Nicholson-Smith writes:

SUPPORT RENÉ RIESEL!

Assuming failure of the very last remaining judicial recourse, namely a request that the Nérac suspended sentence not be revoked, then the decision handed down on 19 December 2002 by the Appeals Court means that Joseph Bové and René Riesel will each, as expected, serve fourteen-month prison terms. In addition, they must each pay a fine of 7,622 euros and damages, interest and costs of 12,103 euros. The sentence is in accord with Articles 475-1 and 618-1 of the Code of Legal Procedure and Article 1018A of the General Tax Code. The crime was the organizing, on 5 June 1999, of the destruction of experimental transgenic rice at a state-run agronomic research facility, the CIRAD of Montpellier.

As was likewise to be expected, the only reaction of which the Confédération Paysanne [Farmers' Confederation] and its citizenist allies proved capable was to appeal for pardon to the President of the Republic, for consideration from the European Court of Justice, for solidarity from the moribund left, and for compassion from public opinion. What we can now see is the real alignment of forces, and the real worth of the "strategy" of watering down our critique in the mistaken belief that it would thus become more acceptable to progressives. At the end of the day nothing is left of the rejection of the technologies of death, and it becomes possible to cast aside every trace of shame and insult the sabotage we engaged in by characterizing it as nothing more than a legitimate exercise of "trade-union rights". This is yet another demonstration of the rule according to which the media will always hand the microphone to those who have nothing to say (and now that Bové has passed his sell-by date, it is the media people themselves who delight in telling us how he fell into the trap of media exposure).

We are witness to the ignominious collapse of the noisy sideshow that has been going on since August 1999 (beginning with the dismantling of the Millau McDonald's). That pantomime is over, but it has fulfilled its function, successfully obscuring the meaning of the practical critique that had begun to take shape thanks to the destruction of genetic monstrosities. Consumerist verbiage and "antiglobalist" rhetoric have managed to block any effective challenge to the universal artificialization of life and its irreversible subordination to industrial despotism (i.e. to capitalism in its reality, not to the fantasy capitalism portrayed by the simplistic image of a predatory and metanational financial globalization).

As René Riesel has made clear in a rectification printed (though in a much abbreviated form) by Le Monde of 24 November, he forbids anyone [and notably the Confédération Paysanne--Trans.] to promote the idea that he would be so lacking in firmness as to ask for any kind of pardon or allow one to be sought in his name by the citizenist crew or by the gravediggers of the old workers' movement.

It is precisely because René Riesel has compromised himself with no demagogic strategy, no mass campaign devoid of principle, that he is not alone today. It behoves us to prove this by mobilizing in solidarity with the actions Risel has taken and defended in his writings. This solidarity may be expressed immediately by helping him confront the devastating expenses that he is bound to incur, whatever the outcome concerning his last possibility of obtaining a reduced gaol term. (By law, it should be noted, the fines themselves must be shouldered by the guilty party alone.)

Paris, 26 November 2002

Association contre l'Obscurantisme Scientiste et le Despotisme Industriel

Boîte 19

52 Damrémont

75018 Paris

France

Checks should be made payable to the Association."