adminAjaccio – Several hundred people have marched in Corsica after two days of violent anti-Arab riots, sidestepping a ban on demonstrations in a flashpoint neighbourhood by taking their protests elsewhere in the island capital Ajaccio.
Two people were detained over the rioting on the French Mediterranean island, which saw demonstrators vandalise a Muslim prayer hall and set fire to books, including copies of the Koran.
Corsica’s administrator Christophe Mirmand announced a ban on all protests and gatherings until at least January 4 in the poor Jardins de l’Empereur housing estate, the epicentre of the violence that started on Thursday.
The ban came after hundreds of people had marched for a second straight day through several working-class districts of Ajaccio shouting slogans such as “This is our home!” and “Arabs get out”.
Two men in their 20s were held in custody as part of a probe into the unrest.
Dodging the ban, hundreds of people marched through other neighbourhoods of Ajaccio on Sunday.
“We fight against scum, not against Arabs!” chanted the protesters.
“We aren’t thugs, we aren’t racists,” they cried as they marched to the police station and then through several low-income neighbourhoods, before returning to the entrance to the Jardins de l’Empereur estate.
Police forbade the protesters from entering the estate.
The unrest followed a Christmas Eve clash in which two firefighters and a police officer were injured at the estate, home to about 1,700 people, half of them of non-French origin.
Regional official Francois Lalanne said a fire had been deliberately lit in the neighbourhood in a ruse aimed at “ambushing” the emergency services.
A firefighter told French television that “about 20 people armed with iron bars (and) baseball bats” had tried to attack them but were unable to smash through the windows of their truck. — AFP
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