© 2022, L’Obs
“We are ready to go as far as autonomy” for Corsica, Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin told the daily on Tuesday, March 15 Corse-Martinon the eve of a two-day visit to the island after two weeks of tension around the aggression of Yvan Colonna.
The last months in prison of Yvan Colonna, a detainee under close surveillance
But the prelude to a discussion between Corsican elected officials and the government on the future of Corsica is a return to calm, the minister insisted, according to an excerpt from the interview published on the site of “Corse-Matin” : “There cannot be sincere dialogue in a democracy under the pressure of agricultural bombs and the presence, or omnipresence, of the forces of order”.
“We are ready to go as far as autonomy. Afterwards, the question is to know what this autonomy is. We need to discuss it”, said the tenant of Place Beauvau in an interview that will be published in full on Wednesday in the paper version of the Corsican newspaper. This institutional issue “will logically be hired during the second term” of President Macron, if he were to be re-elected, he said.
The “responsibility” of the State in the Colonna case
In this interview, Gérald Darmanin also recognizes a share of “responsibility” of the State in the attack on Yvan Colonna on March 2 at the central house in Arles (Bouches-du-Rhône): “There is a responsibility of the State as protector of the people who are under its responsibility, in this case prisoners”.
“The French state is not a murderer,” said the prefect of Corsica after the attack on Yvan Colonna
He also undertakes to “the truth about what happened” to the independence activist in prison where he was serving a life sentence for his participation in the assassination of the prefect Erignac in 1998 in Ajaccio.
Tuesday, with rallies in front of the prefectures, the Corsican nationalists maintained the pressure on the government, in an always explosive context illustrated by a controversy over a supposed partiality of the firefighters. But the evening remained relatively calm, with some 300 people gathered in Ajaccio and around 200 in Bastia, where protesters set fire to a pile of wooden pallets outside the prefecture.
“Extreme Gravity”
Earlier in the day, it was the secretary general of the union of police commissioners (SNCP UNSA), David Le Bars, who set fire to the powder, on Cnews, accusing Corsican firefighters of not having intervened on Sunday to supporting injured police officers, for ideological reasons.
If Yvan Colonna dies because of his attack, the State “will have to be accountable”, says his family
During this demonstration in Bastia in support of Yvan Colonna, who had brought together thousands of people – 7,000 according to the authorities, 15,000 according to the organizers – the scuffles had quickly turned into a riot. To the point of making 102 injured, including 77 members of the police, according to the latest report on Tuesday to AFP by Bastia prosecutor Arnaud Viornery.
“When you have people on the ground, you make an emergency call to several rescue vehicles, only one arrives, after half an hour an hour, and that you are forced to take people in car trunks, it is a refusal of assistance ”
denounced the trade unionist. “Rescuing a police officer or a gendarme is not making a pact with the French state. (…) The rest, politics, must come after”he insisted.
denouncing remarks “extremely serious”Hyacinthe Vanni, chairman of the Haute-Corse Fire and Rescue Board, said he reserved the right to file a defamation suit.
A “real political solution”
The Corsican workers’ union (STC) of the Corse-du-Sud firefighters, close to the nationalist movement, told him in a statement “his full support” at “Corsican society and its youth who are mobilizing to denounce the government’s contempt for the Corsican people”.
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After two weeks of great tension and violencethe visit of the Minister of the Interior is eagerly awaited by nationalist leaders who are finally waiting for a “real political solution” for Corsica.
Yvan Colonna was still in a coma on Tuesday, in a “serious” condition, according to his lawyer Patrice Spinosi. His advice announced Monday their decision to request a suspension of sentence for the Corsican shepherd, still between life and death.