The violent Breton independence movement is once again active. That stems from a letter, sent to various media outlets and signed by the British Liberation Front (FLB). In the letter, this extremist group claims six “retaliatory operations”, including the burning of a prefect’s second residence.
The Quimper Prosecutor’s Office has opened an investigation to determine the veracity of the facts and prosecute the possible culprits. The FLB specifies the municipalities in which the attacks –fires and sabotage- took place and the dates. The first of the series took place on May 18, 2022. The last one, on June 16.
“We are the Brittany Liberation Front and we have resumed the fight for the Breton people,” the text begins. “We see that staying in the country has never been so difficult,” the letter continues. The housing crisis is one of the many aspects of the dominance of the French colonial state over our country. In the face of our enemy’s determination, we cannot stand by and we will not see Britain disappear without a fight.”
The FLB assures that its actions were reactivated as of 2017, but it only reports the attacks as of May 2022. “We call on all volunteers to join us, to form commandos and take action,” the brief ends. manifest-. We warn traitors and informers who try to harm the Front”.
It is true that, on the night of the 15th and 16th of last month, a second residence in Trébeurden, in the Côtes-d’Armor department, was destroyed by fire. The house was owned by a prefect. The investigation will clarify whether the claim is plausible or whether it is an opportunistic attribution of a fortuitous event.
At the end of 2021, another statement signed by the FLB claimed responsibility for attacks against some fifteen second homes and against “the beneficiaries of the tourism industry.” This modus operandi is reminiscent of that of the Corsican separatists, who for many years have been destroying holiday homes of the “continental” French.
The Breton terrorist phenomenon is not well known but it wreaked havoc in the second half of the 20th century, with hundreds of attacks. The FLB was born in 1963. On April 19, 2000, it allegedly perpetrated an attack with a package of explosives against a McDonald’s restaurant in Quévert, in which an employee died. No one was detained nor did the FLB declare itself the perpetrator, although the group was suspected because it did claim responsibility for a previous similar action.
The Bretons, a people with Celtic roots, are proud of a history that goes back 7,000 years, long before the birth of France, which annexed the territory in 1532. In addition to fighting for their language, in a precarious situation despite the network of Diwan schools (a total of 4,000 students with total immersion in Breton), the nationalists would like to recover the Loire-Atlantique department, including the city of Nantes, the historic capital of Brittany. The department was separated from Brittany in 1941, during the Vichy regime.