Breton Revolutionary Army - Emgann ("Fight")

Emgann ("Fight")

Emgann is believed to provide political support to the ARB. Its affiliation with the latter has been repeatedly denied over the years by Emgrann which considers itself a pacifist group, although it openly support the ARB’s violent methods and goals. It nonetheless publishes the ARB’s messages and articles and substantial evidence has been produced by French authorities that confirms the suspected intimate and complicit relationship between the two groups. Hence, several Emgann members were apprehended in connection with several attacks attributed to the ARB. Created in 1982, Emgann defines itself as part of the independent Breton leftist wing. Pro-independence and anti-capitalist, Emgann advocates for no compromise or contact with the French government and political parties. Its activism came in the wake of the election of François Mitterrand to the French Presidency. In 1981, the newly elected state leader had pardoned members of the FLB who had just been convicted and imprisoned by the State Security Court, in France. Their release provoked the dismantlement of the FLB as many of its newly released members gave up their former violent activism and instead chose to retire or join the Breton Democratic Union (UDB), an autonomist Breton political movement opposed to violence. Emgrann, therefore, picked up the FLB’s mantle and sought to pursue the fight.