:00:02. > :00:12.Tom Esslemont discovers how the French authorities are struggling
:00:12. > :00:14.
:00:14. > :00:21.to deal with a rising tide of assassinations. They call Corsica
:00:21. > :00:29.the Island of beauty. Every summer, the tourists flock in their
:00:29. > :00:36.millions. The dazzling sun disguises a disturbing reality, the
:00:36. > :00:46.highest murder rate in Europe per- capita. On his French island,
:00:46. > :00:55.assassinations go unpunished. is a real sense of impunity here.
:00:55. > :01:04.People can kill and get away with it. The Government blames the
:01:04. > :01:09.Corsican Mafia but the islanders say the authorities need to do more.
:01:09. > :01:15.If you're a citizen of Corsica, you are protected against criminality
:01:15. > :01:25.but I do not think so. I will investigate why the French
:01:25. > :01:28.
:01:28. > :01:38.government is unable to stop the linked to o linked to ocrime. It's an
:01:38. > :01:59.
:01:59. > :02:09.illegal business. Today the priority is to find out.
:02:09. > :02:17.
:02:17. > :02:27.Corsican capital, one morning last October. The best known lawyer was
:02:27. > :02:29.
:02:30. > :02:37.driving to work. He took the same route every day. This time he was
:02:37. > :02:47.being followed. On his way there he stopped at a petrol station to get
:02:47. > :03:00.
:03:00. > :03:10.a newspaper. TRANSLATION:. garage owner was on duty. Gunshot
:03:10. > :03:26.
:03:26. > :03:31.He died on the spot. He was the 50th person to be assassinated in
:03:31. > :03:41.Corsica last year. His debt was different. He was a well-known and
:03:41. > :04:06.
:04:06. > :04:12.He was considered one of the top 100 people in Corsica. A newly-
:04:12. > :04:20.qualified lawyer, she has now taken up her father's Office and the
:04:20. > :04:30.quest for justice. Did you ever think that he, such a high-profile
:04:30. > :04:48.
:04:48. > :04:52.lawyer, would be the target of Then, one month later, there was
:04:52. > :04:58.another high-profile murder. The victim was a shopkeeper. He was the
:04:58. > :05:04.chairman of the local chamber of commerce. At around 7pm he was
:05:04. > :05:10.closing his menswear shop when BSS an eight-year assassin entered and
:05:10. > :05:19.shot him several times. The gunman disappear down the alleyway. He got
:05:19. > :05:23.onto were motorbike. The attack was audacious, in full public view.
:05:24. > :05:27.Another killer got away. Such high- profile more debt murders in quick
:05:27. > :05:33.succession made the French government admit that the Corsican
:05:33. > :05:39.Mafia may be responsible. With a population of just 300,000, the
:05:39. > :05:44.Corsica murder rate is very high. Since 2004 there has been more than
:05:44. > :05:49.250 assassinations and attempted killings. Last year there were at
:05:49. > :05:57.20 assassinations across this silent. That included a triple
:05:57. > :06:05.murder in a small village. All those a unsolved. There's a culture
:06:05. > :06:15.here of impunity. Organised crime bosses literally get away with
:06:15. > :06:53.
:06:53. > :07:02.Corsicans are used to morning the dead. It's a place of community.
:07:02. > :07:07.Families and friends used polyphonic songs at funerals. This
:07:07. > :07:16.ritual is a part of the course can solve the same as Catholicism, the
:07:16. > :07:20.main religion. This is just a small weekday congregation here. Every
:07:20. > :07:27.time there's an assassination, Corsicans flock in their hundreds
:07:27. > :07:35.or thousands to the local church. They pay their respects. It's an
:07:35. > :07:45.island steeped in tradition. The priests like these, they bury the
:07:45. > :07:45.
:07:45. > :08:53.Apology for the loss of subtitles for 67 seconds
:08:53. > :08:57.A Corsicans, by nature, and This is a modern place in the world.
:08:57. > :09:04.It's a nostalgic place. Many Corsicans field the French state is
:09:04. > :09:10.accusing these people of being violent. This man is one of the
:09:10. > :09:17.most celebrated singers. He is an anti-violence campaigner. When I
:09:17. > :09:26.grow up in this kind of place, you learn 200 ways to love and respect
:09:26. > :09:34.and to live together and to care about the trees and the beauty
:09:34. > :09:40.which is like a poison in other places. We have a problem hearing
:09:41. > :09:50.Corsica's. We have more criminality. Big government has a good
:09:51. > :10:00.
:10:00. > :10:06.conscience. It's a problem with the Around 3 million tourists come to
:10:06. > :10:10.Corsica every summer. Many French people have holiday homes here. The
:10:10. > :10:16.rapid rate of construction appears to go unhindered by the French
:10:16. > :10:19.state and some suspect it may be the root of the problem. You can
:10:19. > :10:24.see what people mean when they speak about the encroachment of the
:10:24. > :10:29.coastline. Everywhere you look there's a new holiday homes being
:10:29. > :10:34.built as the developers capitalise on the 25% rise in property prices
:10:35. > :10:41.in the north last year. All too often campaigners here for money
:10:41. > :10:46.involved end up in the pockets of the criminals. One of those
:10:46. > :10:56.campaigning for change is Dominic. He's the president of the Corsican
:10:56. > :10:56.
:10:56. > :11:36.Apology for the loss of subtitles for 67 seconds
:11:37. > :11:41.How has the money tied up in The coast has seen many battles and
:11:41. > :11:47.they lost their fight for independence in the 18th century
:11:47. > :11:51.before the most famous son became the Emperor of France. Attempts to
:11:51. > :11:56.colonise date well before Napoleon. The Spanish, the more was, others
:11:56. > :12:02.who wanted a slice of this rock and the ocean but it's also known with
:12:02. > :12:12.internal struggles as feuds between rival gangs fight for control and
:12:12. > :12:13.
:12:13. > :12:21.the struggles have been the hardest to suppress. Violent Corsican
:12:21. > :12:31.nationalism has been a worry for the French government. In the 1990s,
:12:31. > :12:36.under the banner of the FLNC, they trained in the mountains. They blew
:12:36. > :12:44.up holiday homes and the goal was independence. Things took a turn
:12:44. > :12:52.for the worst. In 1998, top French representatives on this island and
:12:52. > :12:56.they were shot dead. The death right here as he made his way to
:12:56. > :13:01.the theatre sent shock waves through France and Corsica. Nobody
:13:01. > :13:11.ever thought that they would be a target but it made the French
:13:11. > :13:49.
:13:49. > :13:59.government realise that something After his death they splinted with
:13:59. > :14:02.
:14:02. > :14:10.many nationalists jailed. Corsican nationalism itself did not
:14:10. > :14:13.disappear. It feels like we are entering the real nationalist
:14:14. > :14:21.heartland, up here in the mountain's. I keep passing signs
:14:21. > :14:28.which had been initialled with the art or I shall -- outlawed
:14:28. > :14:32.nationalist organisation initials. You see occasionally the signs for
:14:32. > :14:37.French villages have blacked out with the Corsican signs being left
:14:37. > :14:43.behind. A lot of anti-French sentiment here. Travel further, and
:14:43. > :14:47.there is evidence of a different sort of violence. There are all the
:14:47. > :14:52.family feuds and vendettas are still being played out. We arrived
:14:52. > :14:57.days after the most recent attack. This is the scene of the attempted
:14:57. > :15:01.murder the other day. You can still see the markings on that ground,
:15:01. > :15:06.the spray paint used by police and to indicate where the cartridges
:15:06. > :15:10.landed in the shooting. I have counted 27. The target of this
:15:10. > :15:15.attack was the father of a man who died in a triple murder last year.
:15:15. > :15:19.The place has become notorious for violence. In going to see if I can
:15:19. > :15:29.speak to anyone who has seen or heard anything. What is it all
:15:29. > :15:34.
:15:34. > :15:44.about? What is the violence all Next stop, the bakery. Didn't hear
:15:44. > :15:57.
:15:57. > :16:07.What is it all about? What is going on? This is not the first kind of
:16:07. > :16:10.
:16:10. > :16:15.The attempted assassination took place just a few metres down there,
:16:15. > :16:25.not far from this bar. I'm just going to go in here and ask anyone
:16:25. > :16:30.
:16:30. > :16:34.if they saw anything. People were I have just come out of the bar and
:16:35. > :16:38.a woman who runs it says that she was here on the day of the attack,
:16:38. > :16:42.the attempted assassination. She said that it is complicated and she
:16:43. > :16:51.does not want to talk or go on camera. She says that it is a big
:16:51. > :16:57.mess and she does not trust the police to resolve things. In
:16:57. > :17:02.Corsica, the gun plays an important role. The weapon is part of a daily
:17:02. > :17:07.pursuit, albeit a recreational one such as that this gun club. We're
:17:07. > :17:12.talking big numbers. There are 30,000 registered weapons - one for
:17:12. > :17:22.every ten people. It is believed that there are thousands of illegal
:17:22. > :17:54.
:17:54. > :17:58.You think that people like you can make a difference? Can tackle a
:17:58. > :18:08.problem somehow or of these few Corsicans who were ruining the
:18:08. > :18:31.
:18:31. > :18:34.Finding proof of who is doing what is hard here. The criminals, the
:18:34. > :18:39.assassins, disappear as quickly as the waves. Sometimes the money
:18:39. > :18:47.comes from racketeering, are demanding cash for return for
:18:47. > :18:50.someone's safety or silence. That is where we are right now. It is
:18:50. > :18:55.something that Dominique the end she wanted to stop. While the mayor
:18:55. > :19:05.of Villanova, he mapped out an area where holiday homes could not be
:19:05. > :19:38.
:19:39. > :19:43.But many mayors around Corsica did not want to stop the building on
:19:43. > :19:53.the land, on the coastal land, because they know that that is how
:19:53. > :20:29.
:20:29. > :20:35.Corsicans have grown tired of the crime wave and the melancholy which
:20:35. > :20:40.it brings. Jean-Francois Bernardini uses his music to appeal to an end
:20:40. > :20:49.for the assassinations. He says that people deserve greater
:20:49. > :20:55.protection from the state. We ask them to protect the citizen from
:20:55. > :20:59.criminality. Are they really protected? All of the criminals and
:20:59. > :21:05.the world say that criminality is going up more and more so people
:21:05. > :21:10.are protected politically. More and more criminality will linger. I
:21:10. > :21:18.think that in Corsica or, we can ask as a citizen of course the car
:21:18. > :21:20.whether they are really protected from criminality. I do not think so.
:21:20. > :21:27.The high murder rate and the accusations against the French
:21:27. > :21:33.authorities mean extra work for their current representatives. He
:21:33. > :21:42.has started to receive death threats. Mostly these murders again
:21:43. > :21:47.went killings, connected with organised crime. Those murders I
:21:47. > :21:53.unanimously rejected by the population. Is one of the problems
:21:53. > :22:02.that for a long time, there was failure and a lack of will on the
:22:02. > :22:11.part of the French state to tackle this kind of crime? It is true that
:22:11. > :22:21.in 1980, 1990, the priority was the fight against terrorist acts which
:22:21. > :22:29.were developed by nationalists who claimed independence. The mafia
:22:29. > :22:32.developed in the shadow of terrorism. Today, it is a priority.
:22:33. > :22:42.One of the characteristics of the strategy is a better co-ordination
:22:43. > :22:43.
:22:43. > :22:46.between the forces of the police and other specialised forces in
:22:46. > :22:56.controlling and are investigating. Better meaning that before it was
:22:56. > :22:56.
:22:56. > :22:59.not good enough? Not good enough. The murders a few months ago of
:23:00. > :23:03.Antoine Sollacaro and Jacques Nasser was a turning point. The
:23:03. > :23:13.murder of such well-known public figures made many Corsicans demand
:23:13. > :23:32.
:23:32. > :23:38.And can you, in your time here, put an end to the culture of impunity?
:23:39. > :23:45.The fact that these assassins are getting away? It needs time.
:23:45. > :23:55.long? Ten years. Ten years. And how many more deaths will take place in
:23:55. > :24:04.ten years? We're here to avoid crimes. Murders. But some of them
:24:04. > :24:13.are also linked to what is called vendetta. It is very difficult to
:24:13. > :24:18.avoid this kind of crime. Four months after her father's death,
:24:18. > :24:28.Anna-Maria Sollacaro wants answers. Can his killers have left Corsica's
:24:28. > :24:49.
:24:49. > :24:59.She looks to the future, hoping for Adjusters. Not only for her but for
:24:59. > :25:25.
:25:25. > :25:31.the victims of Corsica's violent The coastline of course there is
:25:31. > :25:35.what attracts people to the island, to have holidays and make money. It