According to official figures, this type of violence has increased by 140% in 20 years.
On the night of September 5 to 6, young students arriving at Corte University were the victims. The main victim is 17 years old. At the beginning of the summer, a series of physical assaults is committed in the streets of Ajaccio. The young people – including minors – will be arrested, then tried on August 29. The main author is 20 years old. He is in a recurrence situation.
In Saint-Florent, a young couple from the village was violently beaten by ten people on August 8. By local young people, including girls. The family was even pressured not to press charges. To date, the investigation, opened by the Bastia prosecutor’s office, is ongoing.
The family, very affected, organized on Wednesday September 2 a conference on the theme of non-violence led by Jean-François Bernardini president of AFC Umani at the open-air cinema of Saint-Florent.
In the respect of barrier gestures, the assistance was numerous and attentive. Indeed, in an island of 350,000 inhabitants, how can we trivialize such gestures, film them? To deny to this point the suffering of the victim, of his family? As for aggressors, what positive impact can this type of “skill” have on their CV?
It is a reflection that family and friends wanted to start. “ In Corsica, people thought they were safe from these phenomena, but they do happen, just as junk food did. It is a junk food of the mind that affects our living together, remarked Jean-François Bernardini. But if violence is there and it questions us, it is also because it is a market, that of weapons, but not only: 1,800 video games were released last year, 1,200 were violent. It is largely fueled by the entertainment industry which knows that after a violent film, the brain is more easily permeable to the commercial. ».
How to deal with it?
« Nonviolence. And non-violence is a fight! The one to be led for tomorrow. To give up is to accept the unacceptable when there is non-assistance to anyone in danger. The people in danger are the victims, but they are also the aggressors. And all of us since the live together and achieved. The biggest lie that has been sold to us in ages is that violence was part of human nature, that nonviolence does not exist. We, the Corsicans, we would even be “carriers of a gene for violence” said some ministers! Neuroscience says the exact opposite: it is violence is a violation of our nature. Non-violence is engraved in our biological equipment. What does exist, however, is the notion of conflict. We are no longer educated to face it. We no longer know how to react, we give in to negative emotions, to violence. Now the question is, “You are angry, but what are you going to do with your anger, and what is it going to do with you?”»
Jean-François Bernardini recalls the content of the various conferences he has given in schools, in France and in various European countries, attentive listening to young people. Then his visits to prisons for ” sow seeds of non-violence », Learn, in accordance with the theories of the American psychologist Marshall Rosenberg, to use non-violent communication, learn to speak like the giraffe with a big heart and not like the aggressive jackal. Then respect the old precept: ” Don’t do to others what you wouldn’t want to be done ». « Non-violence is like everything, it can be learned. But in France, unlike other countries, there is no training in this field, nor university chairs. », He concludes.
In the audience, if the idea of non-violence was unanimous, the reflection also focused on the role of the State which holds the monopoly of legitimate violence. If there are laws to guarantee everyone’s safety. They must be respected. That the pleasure of transgressing them – because it exists – confronts the displeasure of being punished for having done so. It is on this point that the State seems to sin. It was the feeling of many: the investigations are long, the indictments do not always arrive. The convictions either. But this power of coercion of the State, to be effective, it must be applied. The State, by recruiting personnel perhaps, by financial means because it is necessary, must tackle it urgently. In Corsica too, because we are not, whatever may be said, genetically more violent than the others. And that the seeds of non-violence sown by Jean-François can, better than elsewhere, germinate here.
– .
