Since the announcement of the death of the assassin of prefect Erignac and on the eve of his funeral, Corsica is in mourning. If the time is now to meditation, many actors and observers fear that youth back down the street.
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Nineteen years after his arrest and transfer to the mainland, Yvan Colonna returned to Corsica. The assassin of prefect Erignac died and a legend was born. Following the attack on March 2 in the prison of Arles (Bouches-du-Rhône), where he was serving his sentence, and his death on March 21, Yvan Colonna (61) became a double symbol: that of a hero of the Corsican question, and – in a sort of inversion of values – that of a victim of the french state remains though the killer of one of its senior officials. The shepherd Cargèse now embodies an emblematic figure of nationalism and it’s a safe bet that his memory occupies a special place in the story of the gesture “patriotic” Corsican. Yvan Colonna enters the island mythology. The “bandits of honor” which in previous centuries fled into the bush to escape justice
It is a little more than 22 hours, Wednesday, March 23, and thousands of people formed a guard of honor on the road out of the airport Campo dell’Oro in Ajaccio. Fallen Yvan Colonna has just landed the plane that transported from Marseille to Ajaccio. Flags at the head of Moor floats in the cold wind. Candle flames tearing night. The hearse advances slowly in the middle of a compact and silent crowd that tilts in its path. Near the funeral, eight men, including Gilles Simeoni, President of the Community of Corsica and former lawyer of Yvan Colonna, finally sentenced in 2011 to life imprisonment for the murder of Prefect Claude Erignac, seize the coffin covered with the Bandera Corsican – that already used for the coffin of Edmond Simeoni, Gilles father and founding figure of nationalism – and carry it over several tens of meters
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The day before, the Community of Corsica had put his half-mast, as it would for a formal personality. An initiative that the head of state Emmanuel Macon has called a “mistake”. Late Wednesday afternoon, activists hung banners at the head of Moor tight with black crepe mourning on Lantivy palace gates which houses the Ajaccio Prefecture – the same one where Claude Érignac has held office from February 5, 1996 to February 6, 1998, the date of his murder – and a white cloth with the inscription “gloria in te Yvan” (glory to Yvan you) on the portal. The policemen on duty were unchanged.
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The death of militant nationalist arouses intense emotion and intense anger. But it also has de facto declared a truce that pupils, students and all those who have been protesting for three weeks watching without haggling. These days in Corsica, the weather is pain and meditation. In Ajaccio, Bastia, Calvi, Corte, Porto-Vecchio and other localities of the island, hundreds of women and men, nationalist or not, gathered on the steps of churches and Masses were celebrated . This time of mourning devoted a kind of break after the violence that engulfed recent weeks various parts of the island. A time that, according to many players and observers, may not extend, once past the funeral of Yvan Colonna, Friday, March 25 in the village of Cargèse (Corse-du-Sud). “I fear for the future,” he told the World, the mayor (Horizons) Ajaccio, Laurent Marcangeli.
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