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PARIS - The threats of violence, the mise-en-scene, the balaclavas were all horribly familiar. So was the deadline that expired yesterday.
Except this was not an ultimatum from al Qaeda but from a group of radical winegrowers in the south of France.
In a tape sent anonymously to French TV a month ago, the shadowy militants known as CRAV (Comite Regional d'Action Viticole or regional winegrowers' action committee) threatened violent action if new President Nicolas Sarkozy did not take measures to help wine growers in the vast Languedoc-Roussillon area.
"If Sarkozy does not support the interests of the wine industry, he will be entirely responsible for what happens," a spokesman in the video said. "We are at the point of no return."
Now, with no word from the President, France, or at least police in the southern towns such as Montpellier, Nimes and Beziers are bracing themselves for violence.
Experts warn against taking the group too lightly. "They are influenced by Corsican and Basque separatists, both of whom have ruined many lives and caused major economic disruption," said one senior police source.
"They sound amusing and colourful in a typically local sort of way but they are not. They have killed people in the past."
One policeman in Montpellier told the Figaro newspaper that, after threatening violence, CRAV could not back down without losing face.
In one wave of violence two years ago, winegrowers protesting about economic conditions that meant they were forced to sell their production at a loss clashed with police and two public buildings were targeted with makeshift bombs.
Last year, the wine tanks of distributors in the southwest, blamed for forcing local prices down by importing cheap wine from Spain, were destroyed.
Though the French wine industry as a whole is suffering from over-production and foreign competition, growers in the southwest are suffering most. The prestige wines of Bordeaux have escaped the crisis, boosted by markets overseas and their branding, but the cheaper wines have been hit badly.
Languedoc-Roussillon, one of the biggest single wine-making areas in the world, produces some good bottles, but huge quantities of vin de table.
Many growers now scrape a poor living from the land. Most condemn the violence but understand the anger of the militants. "The despair has reached such a level that I am afraid of genuinely violent and dramatic acts," said Jean Huillet, a local wine producer.
Others detect motivations that are not economic.
"It is about money, yes, but equally it is about provincial independence, about resisting the central state whether that's Paris or Brussels, about resisting globalisation and capitalism," one Montpellier journalist said.
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