From the Times online. Non-UK readers have to jump through hoops (and pay) to read the article online, I believe. Couldn't establish a link to article, but if you search for "Corsica" here, you'll find a hyperlink. Slightly EFL.
As Mohammed surveyed the wreckage of his Middle Eastern grocery store in the Corsican city of Bastia, he found an undamaged couscous maker from Turkey. "We sell a lot of these," he said, holding up the box. Not any more, writes Matthew Campbell. A terrorist bomb has put Mohammed out of business. He and Malika, his wife, were born in Corsica but are preparing to flee a wave of violence against the island's Arabs. "If we reopen the shop," he said, "they will bomb it again." He was referring to Corsican nationalists who have threatened "physically to eliminate" men such as Mohammed. An Arab petrol station manager was murdered by masked gunmen this month and the next day a Moroccan consular official narrowly escaped death in his car when an explosives detonator malfunctioned. "Things here started to get really bad after the bombings in Spain," said Mohammed, referring to the attacks in Madrid on March 11 in which 191 people were killed and several Moroccans were arrested as suspects. "They (the nationalists) think that we are all terrorists."
The violence against Arabs in Corsica is worse than elsewhere in France or in other European countries plagued by racial tensions. There are fears, nevertheless, that the Corsican example may herald what is to come elsewhere in response to immigration. The Corsican bombers allege that traditions are under pressure in the mountainous Mediterranean island popular with British tourists. After an attack on an Arab bank in July they issued a statement claiming the violence had a precise goal: "To stop the immigration that for too many years has gnawed at this island." The statement, by a group calling itself Corsi Clandestini, warned Arabs would be "hit in their homes" and that those who resisted would be "physically eliminated". Police are treating the murder of Mohamed El Gouy at his petrol station on September 17 as another racist attack. Protesters gathered the next day asking the government to intervene but local politicians, fearful of ending up on a hitlist, have avoided the issue.
Corsica has always shown hostility to outsiders and a violent independence campaign has been waged by nationalists against Paris since the 1960s. In the first seven months of this year, however, 10 out of 115 bombings were directed at Arabs and eight of those, say police, were accompanied by racist graffiti and claimed by shadowy racist groups. The Corsican Arab population has grown dramatically in the past three decades and simmering anti-Arab sentiment erupted after September 11. Many Arabs are leaving for southern France. |