Clashes broke out in Corsica on Saturday March 2, in the afternoon, between around ten hooded people and the police, on the sidelines of a demonstration in Bastia called for independence movements, two years later the fatal attack on independence activist Yvan Colonna in his cell.
The demonstration brought together 650 people, according to the Haute-Corse prefecture. Young men, dressed in house painter’s outfits or hooded, threw several Molotov cocktails at the police, positioned in large numbers near the Haute-Corse prefecture, in the city center of Bastia.
The police responded with tear gas grenades, during incidents which lasted around two hours in two streets adjacent to the prefecture. One of the demonstrators was treated by firefighters and transported to the Bastia hospital center for second-degree burns, according to the Haute-Corse fire and rescue service.
“Stop the repression”
The demonstration, part of the courthouse, had been organized at the call of the Patriotti collective and the Associu Sulidarità, which campaigns for the “Corsican political prisoners”, or the independence party Nazione, which has an elected member of the Assembly of Corsica. “Basta a repressione” (Stop the repression) and “Per i diritti di u populu corsu” (For the rights of the Corsican people) were the two watchwords of the demonstration.
This gathering was organized on the second anniversary of the attack on Yvan Colonna in the Arles detention center (Bouches-du-Rhône), where he was serving a sentence for his role in the assassination of prefect Claude Erignac, in 1998 in Ajaccio. The independence activist died twenty days later; an event which caused violence in Corsica.
During a speech in front of the prefecture, Jean-Philippe Antolini, spokesperson for the Nazione movement, asked for “the end of arbitrary arrests stigmatizing independence activists”, but also “the recognition of the Corsican people on their land” : “On this earth, there is only one people, it is the Corsican people. » The speech also denounced “the murderous French state, responsible for the death of Yvan Colonna”.
A banner brandished by several young demonstrators also targeted Corsican elected officials who are participating in the Beauvau process, the Ministry of the Interior, on possible autonomy for the island: “We ate tear gas, to see you gorge yourself in Beauvau . »
During a dinner on Monday, a delegation of Corsican elected officials and Gérald Darmanin, the Minister of the Interior, agreed on five proposals to move towards autonomy for Corsica, as part of discussions started since two years. The next update will take place in mid-March, in a similar format.
