Corsica has been in a #metoo whirlwind for a few weeks. Many women have spoken out on sexual assaults against them.
Last Sunday, between 400 people according to the authorities and 600 according to the organizers, notes the agency France-Presse (AFP), who demonstrated in Ajaccio (Corsica) to denounce sexual assaults which are not well enough taken care of by the authorities.
This rise in protest was born following the collective #IwasCorsica on Twitter.
The hashtag #Iwas was born in the United States in early June, and then it spread around the world. The latter is used to testify to rape, sexual assault and sexual harassment by recalling the age of the victims at the time of the events.
Corsica naturally followed this movement. Young women but also boys marched through the streets shouting their demands: “take our complaints”, “no, it's no”, or “rapist, you be afraid”, “we are strong, we are proud, and feminist and radical and angry! ”. The procession could count on the mayor of Ajaccio, Laurent Marcangeli. He wanted to "support this move so that the truth can be revealed," he told AFP.
The activists (Anaïs Mattei, one of the organizers of the two demonstrations, as well as two representatives of associations for the defense of women), were then received by the Prefect of Corsica after the demonstration, at the request of Marlène Schiappa, secretary of 'State of equality for women and men.
They were able to transmit their requests, which are: training for the police “to properly deal with complaints”, an increased presence of psychologists and nurses trained in sexual violence in all high schools and colleges, and the creation of a “patent for non-violence ”in grade 3. A list that Anaïs Mattei was able to explain to AFP.
Anaïs Mattei, said that she had gathered “15 testimonies from people ready to file a complaint” (…) “These will be individual complaints, but we are going to go together, Monday or Tuesday, to the Bastia police station to file these complaints”, a she announced.
Even in the capital, a message collage operation in Corsican and French was carried out in support of victims of sexual violence on the Isle of Beauty. We could thus read “mai piu zitte” (“Never again silent” in Corsica), “un si micca sola” (“You are not alone”) or, in French, “Corse: île des justes, pas des rapists ”.
Open investigations
At the very beginning of June, an investigation was launched following the release of a list of names of potential attackers. These revelations gave rise to “48 complaints for defamation in Haute-Corse”, indicated the prosecutor of Bastia Caroline Tharot. And another defamation complaint was registered in Corse-du-Sud, according to a source close to the investigation, which AFP transmits. A “complaint for a rape allegedly committed last summer in Haute-Corse” was filed by one of the four presenters of the page IwasCorsica Caroline Tharot added to Twitter.