Like the previous ones, the new demonstration for Yvan Colonna, a Corsican independence activist fatally attacked in prison, degenerated into violent clashes on Sunday in Ajaccio. Started around 4 p.m., immediately after the arrival of the procession at the prefecture, these clashes between 150 to 200 young people, often hooded and equipped with gas masks, and the police, still continued around 11 p.m.
Responding to the throwing of Molotov cocktails and agricultural bombs, the police replied with water lances, tear gas canisters and stun grenades. At the end of the evening, the demonstrators notably used electoral signs as projectiles. According to the prefecture, these clashes left 15 injured, 14 demonstrators and a policeman, including three seriously injured. Among them, a 54-year-old woman affected in one leg.
At the end of the afternoon, while the most virulent clashes took place towards the town hall, the firefighters were mobilized for a long time around a geyser of flames springing from a gas pipe. Faced with the risk of explosion, around thirty inhabitants had to be evacuated, said the prefecture.
Clashes were also noted at the end of the afternoon near the CRS barracks in Furiani, near Bastia, already the target of demonstrators a week ago, as well as in front of the Bastia prefecture in the evening.
At the height of the day, this demonstration brought together 4,000 people according to the prefecture, 14,000 according to the organizers.
Detained in the central house of Arles (Bouches-du-Rhône), where he was assaulted on March 2, Yvan Colonna was sentenced three times to life in prison for the murder of prefect Claude Erignac, shot by several bullets in the head and neck, in 1998, in Ajaccio.
The demonstration had started around 3:00 p.m., on the seafront, behind two large banners bearing the now traditional slogan “French State assassin”. The procession was led by Stéphane Colonna, Yvan’s brother, and his eldest son, surrounded by very young demonstrators, children for some, who repeated in chorus this same cry of “French state assassin”.
Behind him, in the crowd, several local figures: Gilles Simeoni, the autonomous president of the executive council of Corsica, Charles Pieri, alleged former leader of the National Liberation Front of Corsica (FLNC), a movement that recently threatened to resume the armed struggle, or Paul-Félix Benedetti, the leader of the pro-independence party Core in Fronte.
Preventive checks before the event
“I came to honor the memory of Yvan Colonna, to show that we are still there,” Camellu Tomasi, 23, secretary of Ghjuventu Paolina, one of the student unions members of the large nationalist collective, told AFP. origin of the event.
This collective was also behind the two other major demonstrations for Colonna, who died on March 21, March 6 and 13 in Corte and Bastia. They too had ended in violence and chaos.
Faced with the risk of overflows, the police force was more important on Sunday, better organized and more offensive. Preventive checks before the demonstration notably enabled the seizure of several dozen projectiles, including petanque balls, hatchets and iron bars.