A brutal prison assault on prominent Corsican nationalist Yvan Colonna has brought thousands of people onto the streets to protest against the French state. Students, but also schoolkids as young as 12, are driving the angry, and sometimes violent, demonstrations.
Between 7,000 and 10,000 people marched in the northern town of Bastia on Sunday, answering a call by nationalists for the immediate release of political prisoners, more autonomy for the island and better recognition for Corsican people and their language.
But once again the protest turned violent when several hundred balaclava-wearing youngsters attacked the prefecture, set fire to a public tax office, torched the national tricolour flag and threw projectiles at police.
It's the latest in a series of clashes between islanders and the police, prompting France’s Interior Minister to announce he would travel to Corsica on Wednesday and Thursday this week.
“Calm must be restored immediately,” the minister said in a statement.
But it will take more than instructions from Paris to quell the rage which has been mounting since 2 March when jailed nationalist Yvan Colonna was brutally attacked by a fellow inmate serving time for terror offences.
Colonna is serving life for the 1998 murder of Claude Erignac, who as prefect of Corsica embodied the power of the French state on an island with a history of separatist violence.
The former shepherd, seen by some as a symbol of resistance to the French state, is still in a coma.
Resisting colonialism
The protests, organised by nationalist groups and student unions, have drawn a broad section of Corsican society.
“Corsican nationalism has become much more popular and has gone beyond politics, pulling in all social classes and ages,” political scientist Thierry Dominici told RFI.
Those who are rioting, however, are mainly young people: middle school, high school and university students.
“This social category did not live through the armed violence [from the 70s to turn of the century] but they’re involved in a struggle – resisting France as a colonial state,” Dominici said.
The majority were not even born at the time of Erignac’s murder.
"I was only one year old in 1998, but the Yvan Colonna affair lasted for years: the trial, the demonstrations in Ajaccio and Bastia, it marked our childhood”, says 24-year-old Pierre-Joseph Paganelli, president of the nationalist student union Cunsulta di a Ghjuventu Corsa (CGC).
“Our militancy was built through that, we learned about political prisoners, we grew up with it.”
Last Monday, nearly 50 high schools and colleges, as well as the university, were affected by blockades.
Truth and justice
Recent protests have crystallised around the fact Colonna was being held in a prison on the mainland due to his “special status” known as DPS.
For years, nationalists had called for his transfer to a prison in Corsica to be near family and friends – a request the French authorities refused on the grounds the island’s only prison could not provide sufficient surveillance.
In December 2020, the national commission in charge of renewing DPS status recommended it be lifted, but Prime Minister Jean Castex overruled the decision.
“If he had been transferred, the attack would not have happened,” Paganelli told RFI on the line from Corte – home to Corsica University’s main campus.
The circumstances of the attack have also shocked many islanders: Colonna was beaten, choked and strangled for more than eight minutes in the gym of what was supposed to be a high security unit.
“How could they be alone together for so long and how could such an act have happened without prison guards intervening?” Paganelli asks, echoing the sentiments of many Corsicans.
“We demand truth and justice.”
Statu Francese Assassinu
Protestors are brandishing the nationalist slogan “Statu Francese Assassinu” (The French state is an assassin).
“We’re expressing our indignation and anger,” Paganelli explains. “The state meddled in justice by blocking Colonna's transfer and that of other political prisoners. So we consider the state is jointly responsible for what happened.”
France’s anti-terrorist prosecutor has announced an official enquiry into what has been labelled a "terrorist crime".
And on Tuesday last week PM Castex said Colonna’s DPS status would be lifted, paving the way for his transfer to the island.
Castex has yet to visit the island as PM and his act was seen as a provprovocation.
“They lifted the status because in effect Colonna can no longer be considered a danger, he’s in a coma; it’s not a political act," says Paganelli. "It’s poured oil on the fire and made people even angrier.”
On Wednesday evening, protestors set fire to the courtroom in the capital Ajaccio.
Dominici says the islanders feel the government has behaved “with disdain”.
Appeasement
On Friday, PM Castex made a further gesture, announcing that the DPS status of the two other detainees of the "Érignac commando" – Pierre Alessandri and Alain Ferrandi – would also be lifted, allowing for their return to the island.
Paganelli welcomed the announcement but said it was far from sufficient.
“We are calling for political prisoners to be released on bail – which the law provides for – and that the Corsican question be put on the table.”
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With presidential elections just a month away, “we’re at a crucial moment,” he says. “It’s time to bring the Corsican question into the debate because we have the impression we don’t count and whatever we do serves no purpose.”
President Macron has said he is open to adding a specific mention of Corsica in the French Constitution, but has rejected wider demands for autonomy.
Feeling of abandonment
Since 2015, nationalists have made major gains through the ballot box and now hold around 70 percent of the island's regional assembly.
But young people haven’t noticed much change.
Recent data suggests a quarter of the 16 to 29 age group is either unemployed or without activity, and have fewer opportunities than on the mainland.
For Armand Occhiolini, president of the Ghjuventu Paolina student union, “the nationalists, and the Corsican people as a whole, are not sufficiently considered by the state".
"We want to be able to develop our island. Young people have seen nationalists winning elections, but they don't bring us anything," the 20-year-old told La Croix newspaper. “So what's the point of protesting via institutions? There is a risk that violence will escalate.”
Paganelli agrees change needs to come quicker and that means upping the pressure on Paris.
“We supported the nationalists in 2015 and 2017, but there's been little response to our demands, so necessarily there’s a feeling of abandonment.”
Nationalism has historically been expressed in three ways: through struggles at the institutional level, grassroots level and through the armed struggle – which was dropped for good in 2014 when the FLNC put down arms.
“When the nationalists came to power the struggle on the ground was dropped too,” Paganelli says, “but if we limit ourselves to the institutional struggle, violence will return. That’s obviously not desirable.”
Molotov cocktails
Violence has returned: young protestors have been using Molotov cocktails, metal pétanque balls, iron bars and dumbbells, according to the police.
There have been dozens of injuries on both sides.
Local media has reported on children as young as 10 taking part in the riots.
“I’m in favour of violence,” Antoine, 14, told Corse net infos on Sunday’s protest in Bastia. “It’s better to bait the riot police than leave them to drink coffee in their vans.”
For others, the violence is unacceptable.
“Not everyone is here to support Yvan and his family, some don’t even know who he is, they’re here to hit the cops, it’s like a video game for them,” regrets high school student Julie, also on Sunday’s march.
Explosive situation
Pierre-Ange, an activist within the nationalist youth movement in Bastia, told RFI the police were inflaming the situation.
“A youngster in Ajaccio was shot in the head with an LBD rubber bullet, he’s scarred ear to ear, his life is ruined,” railed the 22-year-old.
“Another youth was shot in the neck. And yet they say we’re the ones at fault, that we shouldn’t be demonstrating because we’re not in the [Colonna] family or whatever. It’s not true, everyone feels concerned,” he said.
“The struggle’s been going on for 50 years. Our parents, grandparents and ancestors fought to defend our land and we can’t let that go to waste.”
Gilles Simeoni, the autonomist president of Corsica’s executive council, has called for calm and asked young people not to put themselves at risk.
While he welcomed the change in the prisoners’ status he argued it won’t be enough to calm “the explosive situation” on the island.
He called on Paris to make further strong and immediate gestures, notably a commission of parliamentary enquiry to investigate the Yvan Colonna assault with “guarantees of impartiality and independence”.
