Message from Anarchists in Sardinia in Solidarity with Yvan Colonna, Corsican Political Prisoner

Solidarity and Support for Yvan Colonna!

HONOUR TO YVAN COLONNA, HOSTAGE OF THE FRENCH STATE, NOW BETWEEN LIFE AND DEATH. SOLIDARITY WITH CORSICA AND THOSE FIGHTING FOR SELF-DETERMINATION OF THEIR LAND

Yvan Colonna is a Corsican [Corsica, an island southeast of mainland France, was first colonized by France in 1789. Armed struggle by revolutionary groups including FLNC, which Yvan Colonna belonged to, began in the mid-’70s against French Armed Forces and police in Corsica.] independence activist, prisoner and deportee, sentenced to life imprisonment because he is accused of being the author of the murder of Prefect Claude Érignac on 6 February 1998 in Ajaccio.

Unfortunately, we have received the bitter news that on 2 March 2022, Yvan was rushed to hospital and is currently in a coma, fighting between life and death, after suffering a violent attack in the Arles prison where he is being held. For us, these are hours of anxiety and hope for his life.

The French state media and the Arles prison management speak of an argument with an Islamic detainee over religious issues while they were in the gymnasium, but most have not been able to accept this narrative, given the DPS (Particularly Supervised Prisoner) regime to which Yvan is subjected.

Immediately the anger of the Corsican people spilled out onto the streets of Aiacciu, Bastìa, Corti, Sartè, Portivechju. Independence organisations, port unions, university and high school students, villagers, immediately gathered under the colonial prefectures to show their support for Yvan and his family, shouting that the French state with its policy of repression, deportation and revenge was solely responsible.

There was also an immediate call for a national Corsican demonstration on Sunday 6 March in Corti, in the heart of Corsica.

The strong determination of the dockers also prevented the Corsica Ferries ferry from Toulon from docking in Aiacciu in the late morning of Friday 4 March, a ferry on which there were hundreds of riot police sent by the Central Directorate of the SRC in view of the demonstration on Sunday. Some forty dock workers physically opposed the docking operations by going up against the motor vessel with the Cagoule in their faces on board some dinghies and throwing flares at it; the same situation was repeated in the port of Bastìa.

The demonstration in Corti on 6 March was attended by more than 20,000 people, practically an exodus if we think that the entire island has around 300,000 residents, young and old alike gave battle for more than three hours, leading to an attack on the town prefecture. The images that reached us from this day of struggle were a blow to the heart, where the immense crowd opened up and proudly applauded the most determined who ran towards the front lines with Molotov cocktails in hand.

At this time, our thoughts turn to a sister island, to its proud people, to its history, because we know what it means to be relegated to the role of colony. Because from master to ruler, from occupier to colonialist, from arrogance to manipulation, the road to our slavery is also paved. They told us that, besides being Phoenicians, Romans, Pisans, Genoese, Byzantines, we were also Aragonese, Piedmontese, Italians. They raped our forests, divided and stole our lands, exploited our mines, imposed new laws, other languages, blood to be shed in wars not our own, a capitalist economy, mountains of waste from a consumerist economy, drugs and prostitution, models alien to our culture, degrading welfare, military servitude, cops, courts and jails, schools of identity manipulation, dis-values as the logo of modernity.

Physical coercion, omission and misrepresentation of history, the desire to build from scratch new subjects and with them a new people functional to the Italian colonial power. A people that internalizes clear and subliminal messages aimed at enslaving its soul. Never in history has there been a more complex and incisive attack on our nation. The project of the powerful international consortiums, aimed at building a single market for the global state-capital system from which to draw ever greater profits at lower costs, is clearly to erase from the face of the earth ethnic and cultural peculiarities, which represent an immense wealth and the very history of mankind, to make room for a crossbreed without soul or roots, guided in its needs and desires by the priests of manipulation. The weakest peoples are the first to succumb. Sardinia, because of its status as a colony, with all that this entails, is at risk of disappearing as a nation, as are Corsica and many other territories, which is why this pain and these days are also our days.

Although the Torquemada epigones of the Italian state and the French state do everything they can to hinder us, they will not stop our path to liberation!

All our solidarity and support to Yvan Colonna, to his family, and to all those who are fighting these days.

Some Sardinian Anarchists

07/03/2022