In Corsica, it was time for meditation on Tuesday and calls for calm, in particular from the French president, the day after the death of Yvan Colonna, an independence activist sentenced for the assassination of a prefect, in order to avoid a new outbreak. of anger on the island.
In the streets, Gloria see you! » inscribed in black set the tone of the emotion aroused by the death, after three weeks of coma, of the most famous Corsican prisoner in France, who was serving a life sentence for the assassination in 1998 of the prefect Claude Érignac. Facts he has always denied.
In newsstands, the front page of Corsica Morning shows a woman’s hand, with painted fingernails, stroking a poster of the nationalist activist’s face.
For Gilles Simeoni, autonomist president of the Executive Council of Corsica, the death of Yvan Colonna “is an injustice and a tragedy, which will mark the contemporary history of Corsica and its people”. “Corsica is going through an identity crisis, and with Yvan Colonna, it has found its incarnation, its martyr,” explains Dominique, 60. “I fear, I fear that after the mourning, it will burst”, continues this Corsican from the diaspora who came to settle on the island 20 years ago.
“At some point, the Corsican people will show their anger”, because “the days we have just passed call for a profound change”, thinks Gérôme Bouda, 41 years old.
The attack on Yvan Colonna on March 2 in Arles prison, in the south of France, by a jihadist prisoner had aroused almost unanimous anger on the island. Many Corsicans believe that the tragedy would never have taken place if the activist had been transferred to the island, as he had long demanded.
In this context, the President of the Republic, Emmanuel Macron, estimated on Tuesday on France Bleu radio that “the most important thing is that calm is maintained”. The government spokesman, Gabriel Attal, had called on Tuesday morning for “dialogue” on Europe 1 radio. “All light will be shed on the sequence that led to this situation”, he again said. promised.
Tuesday morning, the mayor of Ajaccio, Laurent Marcangeli, leader of the right-wing opposition on the island, also called for respect for the family’s mourning, “as she asks with dignity and sobriety”.
between calm and anger
Sulidarità, one of the associations for the defense of Corsican political prisoners, was however in a different register. “Woe to the murderous French state”, promised on Twitter its general secretary, Katty Bartoli.
“If the law had been applied and Colonna brought closer, this tragedy would not have happened”, repeated Tuesday morning Michel Castellani, Corsican nationalist deputy, on franceinfo radio.
In an attempt to calm the situation, the French Minister of the Interior, Gérald Darmanin, spent three days on the island at the end of last week, lifting the taboo of a possible autonomy for the island. He had announced that the conclusions of the administrative investigation into the attack on the former Cargèse shepherd should be made public by the end of this week.
The hearing at the French National Assembly of the head of the Arles prison, initially scheduled for Wednesday, has been postponed for a week, “in order to respect the mourning of the family”.