Elsewhere on the same French island off the Mediterranean coast, a young man was shot to death in his car, his stepson wounded beside him. And separatists, who extinguished themselves in a spasm of deadly infighting in the late s, have come back with a vengeance, as they wage a desperate battle to prevent mob-dominated mass tourism from dooming their dreams of self-rule.
Corsican coastal land prices have risen as much as five times in as many years, and the number of tourists also has shot up as a once-exclusive haven for the wealthy and their yachts and private vacation homes became a destination for cruise ships and budget flights.
Corsican mobsters β infamous in mainland France and the United States for their ties to gambling, nightclubs and drugs β saw a killing to be made back home.
Gang warfare over Corsican spoils and the separatist bombing campaign have created a climate of lawlessness, although the combatants have been careful not to turn the violence on the tourists themselves. Shaken by the bombings, and the recent assassinations of a defense lawyer and community leader, the Paris government is making new promises to clean things up on an island where separatist sentiment has simmered ever since France officially took charge in Corsica has emerged as a jewel of French mass tourism only recently: More than 4.
Both the mob violence and the bombings claimed by militant nationalists have the same root, Corsicans say: the land. Three-quarters of the coastline is untouched, the beaches and Mediterranean views achingly empty of a human presence just a minute flight from Paris β as developers were scared off by gangland warfare and separatist militancy.
