by emad » Thu Sep 29, 2005 10:52 am
Anti-terror unit swoops to break up Corsican sailors’ strike<br>From Charles Bremner in Paris<br> <br> <br> <br>POLICE commandos staged a spectacular airborne assault on a Mediterranean ferry that had been taken over by striking Corsican seamen yesterday. <br><br>Dominique de Villepin, the French Prime Minister, had ordered the show of force in an attempt to extricate himself from what has turned into his five-month-old administration’s biggest test. Breakfast television broadcast the action as five helicopters hovered above the Pascal Paoli, flagship of the state-owned Corsica- Mediterranean line (SNCM), off the island port of Bastia. <br> <br>Covered by airborne snipers, 50 hooded men from the paramilitary gendarmerie intervention group, the French antiterrorist unit, slid down ropes on to the deck. The mutineers gave up immediately. They were made to kneel while other officers handcuffed their leaders and told them that they faced prosecution for hijacking a vessel. <br><br>There were no passengers on the ferry, which was turned back to Toulon under the command of the gendarmes. <br><br>Violent protests broke out in Bastia and Ajaccio in sympathy with the arrested sailors. The port of Marseilles remained paralysed by the strike. <br><br>The ship had been taken from Marseilles on Tuesday by 40 members of the Union of Corsican Workers. “This is a disproportionate operation by the colonial French police and army against unarmed workers,” Jean-Guy Talamoni, the separatist leader opposed to French rule in Corsica, said. <br><br>Before the assault Alain Moscini, leader of the union and captain of the renegade crew, had twice tried to sail into Bastia and surrender. Naval vessels blocked him. As the helicopters approached, he told radio listeners: “We are not warriors. We are only fathers of families and have lived in dignity.” <br><br>The somewhat farcical storming of the Pascal Paoli, named after Corsica’s 18th-century national hero, brought to a head a conflict that has many elements of the French malaise: strike-happy unions and politicians who fear them, incompetent state enterprises, cronyism and Corsican nationalism. <br><br>The strikers want to stop the Government privatising the SNCM line, which is near bankruptcy despite swallowing almost £1 billion of state subsidies since 1991. Competitors have run rings around the company since it lost its monopoly of Corsica-mainland services in 1996. The Corsican and national seamen’s unions, who are also striking, say that the State has a duty to supply public transport between the mainland and its island region, whatever the cost. <br><br>The heavy-handed tactics against the mutineers increased the public sympathy that France is wont to accord striking public service workers, especially those fighting privatisation. Yesterday motorway workers’ unions called a strike on Tuesday against plans to sell the State’s share in the public-private firms that own France’s toll autoroutes. <br><br>On Tuesday the Government said that the State would retain a share in SNCM, which is to be taken over by Walter Butler, a Franco-American financier and friend of the Prime Minister. Mr Butler’s investment firm is to pay only £23.6 million for the company, after the taxpayer has injected £76 million to cover its debts.<br> <!--EZCODE AUTOLINK START--><a href="http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,13509-1802788,00.html">www.timesonline.co.uk/art...88,00.html</a><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK END--><br> <br> <p></p><i>Edited by: <A HREF=http://p216.ezboard.com/brigorousintuition.showUserPublicProfile?gid=emad@rigorousintuition>emad</A> at: 9/29/05 8:57 am<br></i>
