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Back Cover Letter from Corsica
March 2nd, 2005 -- It’s just a game,” says the caretaker. A thin man in his 40s, he is talking about how local people have occasionally fired gunshots at this hostel for migrant workers on the outskirts of Ajaccio. “I know the mentality. Some young lads are setting off on a hunting trip in the morning, and they might do some unfortunate things. But for them it’s just a game, like taking pot-shots at the French-language signposts.” The hostel is home to 116 men, mainly from the Tunisian town of Ghardimaou but including some Moroccans and West Africans. No one was hurt by the crude device — a bottle filled with acid and wrapped in aluminium foil — which was pushed through the letter-box on 27 December. The hostel’s concierge seems more concerned by an attack on Ajaccio’s other hostel on Christmas Eve. There, a package of 5kg of nitrate and fuel oil left in the car-park was luckily found before it exploded. In Corsica, a home-made bomb is known as a plasticage, because it typically uses plastic explosives. Corsicans sometimes speak of the use of plasticages as though it is a quaint Asterix-style local tradition, along with boar-hunting and communal singing. A plasticage is not intended to kill or maim, it merely communicates a message by damaging property, a Corsican journalist explains. In recent decades, of course, the plasticage has been weapon of choice for the island’s separatist or autonomist movement when it wants to send political messages to Paris or to non-Corsicans with second homes here. For the hostel concierge, who is Corsican himself, Christmas Eve’s attempted plasticage was a step too far. “Before, we just had gunshots. It never went as far as a plasticage against a communal building.” The increase in attacks on Corsica’s North African community began about two years ago but intensified last autumn. A Moroccan-born petrol station manager was shot dead in September (although one local anti-racist group believes this was probably not a racist killing). After gunshots were fired at the home of a Moroccan imam in November, the police arrested a group of youths believed to be linked to a miniscule nationalist splinter group which had claimed responsibility for seven racist attacks. Representatives of the Interior Ministry in Paris joined the island’s seasoned rights campaigners in organizing a “Week for Tolerance”. Graffiti saying “Arabs Out” was erased from walls and tunnels. Around 8% of Corsica’s 260,000 inhabitants are of North African origin. Some reports estimate that 200 families have left the island as a result of such hostility, mainly heading for mainland France. In 2004, some 40 racist attacks were reported to the authorities in Corsica. But Corsican commentators strongly dispute a report written for the Interior Ministry which claimed almost half the racist incidents reported throughout France last year were in Corsica. In Ajaccio, the young sons of Moroccan and Tunisian immigrants explain that they observe a self-imposed curfew: “You won’t find any Arabs on the street after 6pm.” Fellow school students call them “Arabache” (a vague insult which the French press translates as “Dirty Arab”). If you answer back you will only get hit, and sometimes you get hit anyway, explains 15-year-old Hadi Hediri. Portuguese immigrants’ kids come in for similar insults, he adds. Sometimes the insults draw on vivid turns of phrase which local people say are traditionally Corsican. Aziz Doudouche, 14, is no longer surprised when he hears “Pack your bags!” or “Get your coffin ready!” How have their parents reacted? “They want to leave,” says another boy. “If it gets to a plasticage in front of our door, it’ll be the suitcases immediately,” says Aziz, trying to sound older than his years. In Porto Vecchio, Mohammed Seddik, a softly spoken builder from Morocco, has worked in Corsica since 1975. He helped raise funds for the simple neighbourhood mosque, which nowadays is protected by a police patrol each evening at prayer time. Personally, says Seddik, he has never experienced any racism. And in Porto Vecchio things are still calm. But news from other towns has caused alarm. Five or six families left Porto Vecchio in 2004. “If you listen to what people are saying, you would think not a single Moroccan family will stay. After all we too have a large country,” he says. |
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