Fear of violence haunts Corsica as Macron visits

Maureen COFFLARD and Adam PLOWRIGHT -

Bombs at public buildings and holiday villas going up in flames: a spike in attacks on Corsica has led to worries that nationalist violence could return to the tourist destination known as France’s “island of beauty”.

The Mediterranean territory, famed for its beaches and as the birthplace of Napoleon Bonaparte, was once a hotbed of anti-French militancy which led to thousands of bombings from the 1970s to early 2000s.

But since 2014, when local National Liberation Front of Corsica announced a ceasefire, French state infrastructure and the luxury holiday homes owned by wealthy mainlanders — still seen as “colonisers” by some locals — have been largely safe.

After a series of incidents in recent weeks, Gilles Simeoni, the nationalist head of Corsican regional government, warned of a “tense atmosphere” on the island and “the resurgence of the logic of conflict”.

“It’s our common duty, in Corsica and in Paris, to stop this dreadful spiral and to open a real dialogue,” he said on Monday, three days before French President Emmanuel Macron visits.

Improvised explosive devices were found earlier on Monday outside two tax offices in the town of Bastia, leading to evacuations and bomb disposal teams being scrambled in scenes that recalled past attacks on symbols of the French state.

At the weekend, a secondary home in Sagone, a village above a picturesque bay of turquoise water on the west of the island, was attacked, while another partly-built villa went up in flames in Venzolasca on the eastern coast. In early March, on the day Macron’s visit was announced, six homes were bombed, causing no injuries but lots of structural damage. For the moment, no group has claimed the violence and experts warn about drawing conclusions.

“We’re in the dark,” academic Thierry Dominici at the University of Bordeaux in western France said.

“Either it’s violence led by different people and it’s a new form of protest. Or it’s the action of isolated individuals who want a return of the (nationalist) violence,” he said.

Fears of a new cycle of political unrest are linked to a tense standoff between Macron and the island’s nationalist leader Simeoni and his more radical coalition partner in the Corsican assembly, Jean-Guy Talamoni. Their parties — Femu a Corsica (Let’s Make Corsica) and pro-independence Corsica Libera (Free Corsica) — won 45.36 per cent in regional elections in December 2017 and came to power promising greater autonomy. — AFP