A prison assault last week that left prominent Corsican nationalist Yvan Colonna in a coma has triggered days of angry protests and whipped up resentment against the French state on an island with a history of separatist violence.
Yvan Colonna, once France’s most wanted man, remained in a coma on Friday at a hospital in Marseille after he was brutally attacked on March 2 by a fellow detainee serving time for terror offences. The assault has stoked anger in Corsica, where some still see Colonna as an icon of the island’s resistance against the French state.
The 61-year-old is serving a life sentence for the 1998 assassination of Corsica’s prefect Claude Érignac, the French state’s top official on the island. He was arrested after an almost five-year manhunt that took French investigators across the globe – only to find him living as a shepherd in the Corsican scrubland long romanticised as a hideout for patriots and bandits.
The Mediterranean island has been swept by angry protests since news of Colonna’s hospitalisation first broke a week ago, with a number of media outlets mistakenly reporting his death. Several protests have degenerated into clashes with security forces, fanning fears of a return to the violence and bloodshed that scarred the “île de Beauté” (Island of Beauty) from the 1970s to the turn of the century.
‘Martyr' for the nationalist cause
Those decades of violence culminated with Érignac’s assassination near a concert hall in Ajaccio, the regional capital, in February 1998. The shocking murder marked the first time a French prefect was killed since the post was created two centuries before by the most famous of Corsicans, Napoleon Bonaparte.
“The assassination of the state’s representative in Corsica is a barbaric act, of extreme gravity and without precedent in our history,” said Jacques Chirac, French president at the time.
In retrospect, Érignac’s killing “marked the swan song of Corsica’s violent and clandestine nationalist movement”, said Hélène Constanty, an investigative journalist and author of the graphic novel, “Une histoire du nationalisme corse” ( A history of Corsican nationalism).
“The armed separatist movement was in decline by the late 1990s, decimated by infighting,” she explained in an interview with FRANCE 24. “The fringe group that carried out Érignac’s assassination believed it would rekindle the flame – but the opposite happened.”
The prefect’s murder sparked widespread opprobrium and was followed by a fierce crackdown. Colonna’s accomplices were swiftly arrested and soon spilled the beans, naming the shepherd from Cargèse, a small seaside town north of Ajaccio, as the gunman. Failure to apprehend him, however, would turn Colonna into a hero for many fellow islanders, who covered the walls of Corsican towns and cities with the slogan, “Gloria a te, Yvan” (Glory to you, Yvan).
“He became a symbol of resistance to the French state as he eluded capture for 1,503 days,” said Constanty. “To this day, he maintains the aura of a martyr for the nationalist cause among a segment of the Corsican population.”
‘I Francesi fora’
Alarmingly for officials in Paris, slogans hailing Colonna have resurfaced in the wake of his prison assault – along with other throwbacks to the past century, such as “I Francesi fora” (Out with the French).
In the largest protest so far, thousands of demonstrators marched on Sunday through the old town of Corte, Corsica’s former mountain capital, under the rallying cry of “Statu Francese Assassinu” (The French state is an assassin). Some clashed with police and targeted French symbols, torching the national tricolour flag and a car with a number plate from mainland France.
Two days earlier, a ferry transporting French gendarmes was blocked for hours at sea as port workers in Ajaccio vowed “prevent the forces of repression from landing on the island”.
Government buildings were the main targets of continuing unrest overnight on Wednesday, with demonstrators breaking into the main justice building in Ajaccio and setting fire to scrap papers. Protesters then went on to ransack a bank situated on a square named after Érignac.
Local authorities said Thursday that 14 people were wounded in Ajaccio alone, including a journalist for France's TF1 TV channel who was hurt in the leg. In Bastia, the island’s second-largest city, 23 anti-riot police and three civilians were injured, officials said. There was further unrest in Calvi, where dozens of demonstrators threw petrol bombs at government buildings and smashed windows with rocks.
Repatriating prisoners
At the heart of the anger voiced by protesters is the French state’s longstanding refusal to transfer Colonna and his accomplices in the Érignac murder from Arles in southern France to a jail in Corsica, closer to their families. French officials say the gravity of the offence means they are classified as “special status” detainees, and that Corsica’s only jail is not equipped to provide adequate surveillance.
Colonna’s lawyers have scoffed at the claim, pointing out that their client’s special surveillance did not prevent another detainee from pulling a bag over his head and attempting to strangle him in the gym of their high-security prison.
“This would not have happened in Borgo (home to Corsica’s only jail) because he would not have been in contact with this type of individual,” his lawyer Patrice Spinosi told French media after anti-terror prosecutors said the man who attacked Colonna, a convicted Islamist terrorist, had told investigators he was angered by the Corsican’s “blasphemous comments”.
In a bid to ease tensions on the Mediterranean island, Prime Minister Jean Castex announced on Tuesday that Colonna’s special status would be lifted. But the move failed to placate protesters, for whom the belated announcement added insult to injury.
“The government’s timing was seen as a provocation by many Corsicans,” said Constanty. “People in mainland France may be surprised at the scale of the unrest. But this feeling of injustice – that Corsicans are being denied the right to be close to their families – is widely shared on the island.”
Speaking to Public Sénat, Corsican Senator Paulu Santu Parigi accused the authorities of repeatedly ignoring warnings about the safety of Colonna and two others convicted over the Érignac murder – whose special status was also lifted by Castex on Friday.
“We’re not here to dispute Colonna’s conviction; he’s serving his sentence. But how is it possible that a detainee under special surveillance ends up face to face with a fanatic in a gym and this kind of thing happens?” he asked. “We’ve been calling for years for [Érignac’s assassins] to be transferred to Corsica. We knew they were in danger.”
Democratic aspirations thwarted
As the first Corsican nationalist to sit in the French Senate, Santu Parigi is representative of the nationalist camp’s recent success in engaging with the democratic process – and moving away from the armed struggle. He says it’s now time the French state keeps its part of the bargain.
“Corsica has chosen the democratic path for some time now,” he told Public Sénat, adding that “the nationalist camp has proven it wants to turn the page on Corsica’s violent past”. He also noted, however, that “the state has not lived up to expectations”.
Aside from the return of Corsican prisoners, nationalists have long insisted on two other major demands: autonomy for the island and recognition of Corsican as an official language. But such demands remain taboo for many in France, a highly centralised state with a single official language and politicians who routinely tout the need to protect the country’s national identity.
“After decades of violent struggle, Corsican nationalists are playing by democratic rules and are now the region’s dominant force,” said Constanty, referring to the nationalists’ recent victories in regional elections. “They want more autonomy for the island, but the French authorities don’t like the idea.”
President Emmanuel Macron has said he is open to adding a specific mention of Corsica in the French Constitution, while rejecting more substantial demands for autonomy made by the island's nationalist leaders.
Constanty warned of a potential backlash if Corsicans feel their democratic aspirations are being thwarted. She pointed to youths reviving old anti-French slogans at recent protests as a worrying sign.
“Many youths feel disappointed, saying, ‘We elected the nationalists but nothing changes’,” she observed. “The radicalised ones may be a small minority – but they can blow on embers that are already smouldering.”
