‘Shield wearing a suit’ in front of the protesters… Saint-Denis mayor becomes icon of student protest

(Seoul = Yonhap News) Reporter Lee Ji-heon = As protests by French high school students demanding improvements in poor educational conditions have continued for about a month, Mayor Bali Bagayoko (53) of Saint-Denis, a city outside Paris, has emerged as the face of the student protests and is at the center of controversy.

According to reports from foreign media such as the New York Times (NYT) and AFP on the 16th (local time), Mayor Bagayoko has become a topic of conversation to the extent that no one from all over France comes to see him since the student protests began.

The scene where he, dressed in a suit, wraps his arms around teenage protesters to prevent physical conflict and shouts "Stop, step back" at the police who are pushing in while holding a shield and baton, went viral on social networking services (SNS) and broadcasting, which was the decisive factor that made him a celebrity.

This scene was created into a 'meme' (popular content online) as it contrasted with the scene in the movie 'Spider-Man' where the main character stops a speeding subway by blocking it with his whole body, and Mayor Bagayoko was later given the nickname 'Northern Spider-Man'. Saint-Denis is a city located on the northern outskirts of Paris.

On the other hand, the conservative camp accuses Mayor Bagayoko of going to the protest site and inciting students, and claims that the progressive camp is encouraging the spread of protests ahead of the presidential election.

Mayor Bagayoko was elected as mayor of Saint-Denis last March as a member of the radical progressive political party, France Unbowed (LFI).

Born as the second of eight children to an African immigrant family from Mali, he grew up in public rental housing on the outskirts of Paris.

Saint-Denis, a satellite city with a population of 150,000, is famous for Saint-Denis Cathedral, where the royal cemetery is located, and France's largest national stadium, but due to its high poverty and crime rates, it is considered one of the epicenters where the student protests began.

According to the French Confederation of Labor (CGT), two-thirds of high schools in the Seine-Saint-Denis region, where Saint-Denis belongs, are unable to fill their teacher quota.

Mayor Bagayoko has been involved in school blockades since the beginning of the protests, supporting the voices of students demanding improved educational conditions and criticizing excessive police suppression.

On the 13th, when large-scale protests took place, they condemned "excessive public power being exercised against young people who simply asked to have their voices heard," and at the rally on the 15th, they also urged President Emmanuel Macron to apologize for the student who was injured during the suppression.

The government and the conservative camp's offensive against Mayor Bagayoko and the LFI to which he belongs is also fierce.

During the protest, Mayor Bagayoko said, “Violence may be justified at some point,” but said, “It is always better to avoid it if it can be avoided.” This statement became the pretext for a concentrated attack.

Paris police chief Patrice Port handed him over to judicial authorities on charges of inciting violence, and hard-line conservative politicians called for Mayor Bagayoko to be fired.

On the other hand, Mayor Bagyoko refuted that his remarks were spread distortedly and without context.

The French government is also pointing to LFI as being behind the intensifying protests.

President Macron said the students were "being exploited by political forces," and Prime Minister Sebastien Lecornu criticized LFI for instrumentalizing the protests for electoral gains.

According to a recent opinion poll, LFI leader Jean-Luc Mélenchon is expected to face Marine Le Pen, the hard-line conservative National Rally (RN) candidate, in next year's presidential runoff.

Some compare Mayor Bagayoko, a Muslim from an immigrant family and progressive, to Mayor Zoran Mamdani, the first Muslim mayor of New York.

“He is our Mamdani,” Maxime Beauchamp, 21, a college student who stayed around Bagyoko Market during recent protests, told the NYT. “He symbolizes the same hope for the people.”