Chevènement is “hurt to see that we have forgotten the sacrifice of the prefect Érignac”

Jean-Pierre Chevènement was Minister of the Interior when the prefect Érignac was assassinated by Yvan Colonna in 1998. During his big meeting Europe 1/CNews/The echoes, he spoke of his dismay. “I respect the pain” of the family of the Corsican independence activist, “but at the same time, I am hurt to see the use that is made of this death”, also “obviously regrettable”. “I’m hurt because the Republic needs to have a memory, and someone needs to maintain that memory.” A role that belongs to him according to him.

Shocked to see the assassins of Érignac erected as heroes

“I am hurt to see that we have forgotten the sacrifice of the prefect Érignac, who was the representative of all, the representative of the Republic, who was cowardly assassinated by a commando of six men. Let these men be transformed into heroes, in icons, shocks me deeply”, he declared at the microphone of Sonia Mabrouk.

And to recall that “the day after the assassination of Claude Érignac, there were 100,000 people in the street in Ajaccio to protest against the assassination”. Today, when he sees “the whole bunch of nationalists and elected officials, almost of all hairs, gathered around the coffin of Yvan Colonna”, he says to himself “that a little water has flowed under the bridges “.

“Concession to a violent minority”

Regarding the reaction of the French State to the demonstrations following the aggression of Yvan Colonna, Jean-Pierre Chevènement judges that the government has given in to the streets by launching the word autonomy, and “that’s what a very large majority seems to think. of French”. Indeed, according to an Odoxa survey with Backbone Consulting, for Le Figaro, 73% of French believe that the government gave in to pressure from nationalists in Corsica. “It’s up to the government to rectify, to correct.”

“I think it’s a concession made to a violent minority, which exercises over all Corsicans and all French people, an inadmissible form of blackmail in the name of civil peace”, concluded the ex-minister.