Divided Corsicans united on `law of silence'

Everyone liked Pierre Albertini in his home region of Niolu. The stocky young man was not very bright, but he had a good heart. And when in 1984 Albertini and two other militants from the National Front for the Liberation of Corsica (FLNC) broke into Ajaccio prison and shot dead two men suspected of killing the brother of an FLNC leader, Albertini (then 23) became a local hero.

He was sentenced to eight years in prison and came out a changed man. "He went around talking about peace," recalls 86-year-old Grandma Angele, sitting on the veranda of her home in Calacuccia, the "capital" of Niolu with 1,500 residents. "He'd try to break up fights in nightclubs, disputes between neighbours. But my nephews said he wore a bullet-proof vest."

Pierre Albertini joined the breakaway Movement for Self-Determination (MPA) when the FLNC underwent one of its many splits in the early 1990s. Corsican nationalists began killing one another, and Pierre Albertini was gunned down in a Bastia street five years ago today, after killing one of his assailants. "They practically gave him a national funeral," Grandma Angele recalls, pointing out the cortege route through the valley.

The life and death of Pierre Albertini tell a lot about Corsica. "The problem is that the nationalists are our cousins, with whom we live very well," says Angele's grandson Philippe. Angele interrupts him. "But the majority of Corsicans don't want independence," she insists. "The nationalists are our family - they are part of our lives," Philippe answers.

Andree - Philippe's mother and Angele's daughter - steps into the generation gap. "We don't all agree," she admits, "but we never denounce anyone - that's not possible in Corsica because everyone knows everyone else. That's why Yvan Colonna [the suspected killer of the French prefect Claude Erignac] will run free for a long time. It's all trammelled up with family."

When I ask about omerta - the "law of silence" - another cousin answers. "There are many rumours and things left unsaid. But everything is known. The French equate silence with complicity. I disagree. Our reserve is a form of distrust."

In A Corsican Bandit, written in 1882, Guy de Maupassant described Niolu as "the fatherland of Corsican liberty, the inaccessible citadel from which invaders could not chase the mountain people. This wild place is of unimaginable beauty. Not a weed, not a plant: granite, only granite."

In the 20th century, Niolu gave birth to the Simeoni brothers Edmond and Max, the first leaders of the regionalist movement that Paris tried but failed to repress. The regionalists became autonomists, and within the past few years nationalists rose up demanding independence.

To reach Calacuccia, you must travel through the Scala de SantaRegina, a narrow ravine filled with caves and red granite spires. Men break stones with sledgehammers along the road, building walls to break the fall into the river gorge. Pigs and wild boars roam freely. In Calacuccia, beneath the slopes of Monte Cinto, the highest peak in Corsica, I am served peppery sausage and cold wine.

"Our sausage is better because the pigs feed on chestnuts and acorns," Grandma Angele says. The hot air smells of forest fires and jasmine. Goats raised for cheese graze in the centre of the village, and the neighbour's week-old baby donkey generates nearly as much interest as the autonomy plan of the French Prime Minister, Mr Lionel Jospin.

In these pastoral surroundings, the residents of Calacuccia say they hate the stereotype of the violent Corsican so prevalent on the continent. Yet violence keeps coming up in conversation. "You'd have to be deaf," my hosts laugh when I ask whether they have heard explosions.

Down the hill stands a large, square building surrounded by barbed wire, with a French tricolour flying over the front door - the gendarmerie headquarters. It was blown up in the early 1990s - probably by Pierre Albertini and his comrades.

"The gendarmes here are not Corsican; they're from the continent," Andree explains. "They live in the compound with their families and they rarely come out. If there's an accident in the mountains they won't help. We wonder what they're here for."

At least half of Calacuccia's residents work on the mainland in winter. Those of the younger generation who spend the entire year in Corsica are more nationalist than their cousins living among pinzuti - as the French are known, for the pointed hats invading soldiers wore in 1768.

At the home of Pierre, a postal worker, we eat cheese quiches called maugliacciu and bastella while discussing Mr Jospin's autonomy plan. "Until the 1980s, I thought I'd wake up one fine day and we'd be independent. Now I realise it will take time, that it will only happen when the majority want it," Pierre says. He claims past French policies treated the Corsicans as collectively guilty.

"This is the first time Paris has asked us, `What do you want?' We are cautious, but hopeful," he says.