The funeral of Yvan Colonna, who died on Monday as a result of his violent attack in prison, was organized this Friday, March 25 in Cargèse, a small village in southwestern Corsica, in the presence of hundreds of people.
In the memory of the inhabitants, there had never been so many people around the small church of Cargèse. Elected officials, residents, nationalist activists: hundreds of people came to say goodbye this Friday to Yvan Colonna, the child of the country, fatally assaulted by a fellow prisoner in Arles prison where he was serving his sentence for the assassination of the prefect Claude Erignac in February 1998 in Ajaccio. A crime he has always denied and of which many believe him innocent.
In the crowd, Stéphanie, from the neighboring town of Piana, speaks ” a special day for the whole of Corsica “. ” We are all in mourning, we have lost a brother. Today we all mourn him “, she confides to the microphone of our special correspondent, Eric Chaurin. Mobilized since March 3, and particularly during the demonstrations of recent days, Stéphanie wanted to accompany the independence activist until ” his final resting place “.
Yvan Colonna, who died Monday evening following his injuries at the age of 61, was buried in the family vault at the end of the afternoon, in this village of 1,300 inhabitants, the cradle of his family. Several hundred people accompanied the coffin, carried by six men, over the four kilometers leading to the vault, in the middle of nature.
Some had not even been born when the activist entered prison. This Friday, they were still there, like Marc-André, 16 years old. ” I always heard about it from my family. He is a very important person and it was normal to come and share this moment with all the Corsican people. “Just before the burial, the crowd gathered on the access road to the vault, a few meters from the family, sang the “Dio vi salvi Regina”, the Corsican anthem, then independence songs.
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Arrived shortly after 2 p.m. in Cargèse, from Ajaccio, the coffin had first passed in front of the Colonna family home, then “ in front of the field of olive trees (which Yvan) had to abandon one day in May 1999 “, before his four years on the run, as announced in the death notice, in the Corsican language, in the daily Corse-Morning.
long ceremony
Then it was a long religious ceremony that followed, in the presence of several personalities from the island: Gilles Simeoni, the autonomist president of the Executive Council, Jean-Guy Talamoni, the former independence president of the assembly of Corsica, or Charles Pieri, presumed former leader of the National Liberation Front of Corsica (FLNC), a movement which recently threatened to resume armed struggle.
Among the 2,000 to 3,000 people gathered at the height of the day, massed in front of the church and in the alleys of the village, many brandished “banderas”, the Corsican flag struck with the head of a Moor. A Breton flag and some Basque flags were also invited. But the blue-white-red was on the other hand invisible.
The assault on Yvan Colonna, by a prisoner convicted of “terrorist criminal association”, while he had been asking for years to serve his sentence in Corsica, had raised a wave of anger on the island. This tragedy also brought up the question of autonomy for this island-region of 340,000 inhabitants.
At the height of the mobilization against the “murderous French state”, the main slogan of the protesters, 7,000 people according to the authorities, 15,000 according to the organizers, demonstrated in Bastia on March 13. Far, however, from the 40,000 who had invaded the Corsican streets to express their shock after the assassination of the prefect Erignac. Gérald Darmanin, who came to Corsica for three days in mid-March, undertook to open discussions ” towards a status of autonomy still to be specified “. An approach that has so far helped to restore calm.
(And with AFP)