Several thousand people flocked to Bastia (Haute-Corse), Sunday, March 13 in the afternoon, during a demonstration in support of Yvan Colonna. The Corsican independence activist, sentenced to life imprisonment for the assassination of the prefect Erignac, was the victim of an attack in prison at the beginning of March which left him in a coma. Clashes between activists and the police erupted on the sidelines of the rally late Sunday afternoon, and the tax center was set on fire, reports France 3 Corse.
>> Find all the information on the event in Bastia in the live broadcast of France 3 Corse
The police responded with tear gas. According to the prefecture, 7,000 demonstrators took part in the mobilization. The organizers mentioned 10,000 participants. The scuffles began outside the prefecture shortly after 4 p.m., when 200 to 300 hooded demonstrators threw Molotov cocktails at the building. Thirty-eight people were injured, including 24 among the police, according to a report from the prefecture at 8 p.m.
The first incidents started in front of the prefecture of Bastia. https://t.co/MvdtjwMC7z pic.twitter.com/n2Z3Imwnl0
– France 3 Corsica (@FTViaStella) March 13, 2022
The first incidents started in front of the prefecture of Bastia. https://t.co/MvdtjwMC7z pic.twitter.com/n2Z3Imwnl0
– France 3 Corsica (@FTViaStella) March 13, 2022
Around the Bastia courthouse, the starting point of the procession, the streets had been closed before the demonstration on Sunday, for fear of possible violence. The banks had also been secured, the distributors protected by wooden panels and the garbage containers, regularly used to light fires, removed. Just before the start of the demonstration, the prosecutor of Bastia had announced that“about 300 Molotov cocktails [avaient] been discovered” in the city, while clashes had opposed activists and police in several Corsican localities in recent days.
The demonstration in Bastia was initiated by nationalist student unions, joined by all the nationalist parties on the island. On the weekend of March 5, a similar rally had mobilized 4,200 people in Corte, according to the authorities, and 15,000 according to the organizers. Demonstrations had taken place in Corsica the day after the attack on Yvan Colonna, who had been demanding for several years his transfer to a prison on the island. The radicalized detainee suspected of having hit and strangled him was indicted as part of a judicial investigation for “attempted assassination in connection with a terrorist enterprise”, entrusted to the National Anti-Terrorist Prosecutor’s Office.