PARIS (Reuters) – Covered with a flag with the head of a Moor, the coffin of Corsican independence activist Yvan Colonna was carried on the backs of men to the church of his native village of Cargèse, in the west of the Corsica, Friday, for a funeral in the form of a “national tribute” which raises fears of new violence on the island at the end of the period of mourning desired by the family.
Yvan Colonna died Monday evening at the age of 61 in a Marseille hospital, almost three weeks after being violently attacked by a radicalized fellow prisoner in Arles prison (Bouches-du-Rhône), where he was serving a prison sentence at life sentence for the assassination of the prefect Claude Erignac in 1998.
This attack, which had left Yvan Colonna in a coma, and whose circumstances remain difficult to explain given his theoretically protected status as a “particularly reported detainee”, caused an outbreak of violence on the island.
Several dozen police and gendarmes were injured during violent riots, mostly bringing together very young demonstrators and encouraged by certain Corsican nationalist activists with cries of “French state assassin”.
In an attempt to restore calm with the approach of the French presidential election, the Minister of the Interior, Gérald Darmanin, visited the island ten days ago, saying he was ready to begin discussions with a view to autonomy for Corsica.
NO AUTONOMY WITHOUT CALM, SAYS MACRON
President Emmanuel Macron confirmed that a debate on autonomy was “not taboo”, since he himself had mentioned it at the start of his mandate, but he conditioned his outfit at the end of the violence.
To ease tensions, the French authorities have also acceded to a long-standing request from two other members of the “Erignac commando”, Pierre Alessandri and Pascal Ferrandi, who asked to be able to benefit from a reconciliation measure to finish their sentences at the Borgo remand center (Haute-Corse).
If the announcement of the death of Yvan Colonna did not provoke new violence, the repatriation of his coffin to Corsica, where he had already been welcomed Wednesday evening in Ajaccio by a guard of honor of hundreds of nationalist militants wearing Corsican flags, aroused tensions.
Emmanuel Macron thus qualified as a “fault” the decision in his eyes “inappropriate” of the Collectivity of Corsica, whose autonomist Gilles Simeoni heads the executive council, to lower the flags hung on its pediment.
Gilles Simeoni had also decreed a minute of silence throughout Corsica this Friday at 3:00 p.m., the time at which the funeral mass was to begin.
Many French politicians have deemed inappropriate the tribute paid to the assassin of the prefect Erignac, Gérald Darmanin speaking Thursday of a “kind of insult to the French state”, even if the former shepherd of Cargèse, arrested in term of a long run, never ceased to proclaim his innocence.
Faced with the risk of a new conflagration at the end of the period of meditation requested by the family of Yvan Colonna, Emmanuel Macron repeated Tuesday on radio France Bleu that there could be no discussions on the autonomy of Corsica. only if calm is maintained on the island.
The funeral procession, followed by an imposing crowd in the narrow streets of the village of Cargèse, north of Ajaccio, and the funeral took place on Friday in calm and silence, as the family of the former shepherd wished.
(Written by Tangi Salaün, edited by Jean-Michel Bélot)