“murderous french state“: the tone was immediately set on Sunday in Bastia during the demonstration in support of Yvan Colonnaeleven days after the aggression in prison of this independence activist condemned for his participation in the assassination of the prefect Erignac.
Taken up by the crowd of a few thousand people who left under a fine and cold rain from the Bastia courthouse, this slogan reflected the tension on the island since March 2 and theaggression of the shepherd of Cargèse in the prison of Arleswhich plunged him into a coma.
And the anger quickly grew when the procession arrived at the Prefecture, with scuffles between the police and 200 to 300 hooded demonstrators, dressed in black and some equipped with gas masks, the first responding with tear gas to Molotov cocktails. The official call for the demonstration was however sober, asking “truth and justice for Yvan, freedom for patriots and the recognition of the Corsican people“.
But for Gilles Simeoni, autonomist president of the executive council of Corsica and former lawyer of Yvan Colonna, present in the procession, “today we must go beyond slogans“: “Anger and indignation are expressed”he conceded to AFP, at the start of this march, “but what matters is that the entire Corsican people are mobilized against injustice, the demand for truth and beyond for a real political solution“between the State and Corsica.
If the mobilization on Sunday was “huge“, according to Gilles Simeoni, the figures were 7,000 demonstrators for the prefecture, against 10,000 according to the organizers of the rally. For the Corte demonstration a week ago the figures were 4,200 and 15,000 people respectively.