Saint-Denis mayor describes standing between police and student protesters in Paris

Saint-Denis Mayor Bally Bagayoko said on October 7 that he had asked police not to charge student protesters during a march in Paris the previous day. A widely shared video showed him standing between officers and young demonstrators and shouting ‘stop,’ Reuters reported. His account has drawn attention to police tactics during a movement over school conditions that has spread beyond the Paris suburbs.

Bagayoko told Reuters at his Saint-Denis town hall office that he had been supporting students from the working-class suburb north of Paris. He said officers had decided to charge, although many students had shown no aggressive behaviour toward them. Police later fired tear gas at the group, including him, he said. Those descriptions of the officers’ intentions and the students’ conduct are Bagayoko’s account of the encounter.

The mayor, a member of the France Unbowed party, said the high-school students in the street ‘could be my children’ and that he felt responsible for standing alongside them. A father of four, he presented his intervention as support for young people protesting conditions in their schools.

Why students are protesting school conditions in France

The protests began in the Paris region in September before spreading nationwide, according to Reuters and the Associated Press. Reuters identified overcrowded and unsanitary classrooms, teacher shortages and unequal opportunities among the complaints. AP reported concerns about schools lacking resources, deteriorating facilities and too few staff. Saint-Denis was among the first places to see demonstrations, Reuters reported.

The scale of the October 6 demonstrations showed how far the movement had spread. AP reported that the Interior Ministry estimated 266,000 demonstrators nationwide, including 56,000 in Paris. The Education Ministry said classes were wholly or partly suspended at 891 schools that day, according to AP. Both sets of figures are ministry estimates reported by the news agency.

Competing accounts of the police response

AP reported that small groups clashed with riot police after a largely peaceful Paris march on October 6. Nearly 500 people were detained that day, according to Interior Ministry figures cited by AP. Interior Minister Laurent Nuñez described the police response as proportionate in almost all cases and said some protests had turned into riots requiring intervention.

Bagayoko’s account of the officers’ actions presents a different view of the encounter in which he intervened. Reuters also reported that rights groups and unions had accused police of heavy-handed tactics against minors. Le Monde reported criticism of police tactics and cited about 10 internal police-inspectorate investigations into alleged violence at the time of its October 6 report. The existence of those investigations does not establish their findings.

Arrest figures in the reports refer to different periods. AP’s nearly 500 detentions concern October 6 alone. Le Monde cited more than 5,000 arrests by the time of its October 6 report, while Reuters reported more than 6,000 since the protests began in its October 7 account. The totals should be read with those dates and reporting periods attached.

What the French government has promised

Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu said on October 7 that the government would review students’ demands and present proposals at the end of October, Reuters reported. He gave no details of their content. AP reported that the Education Ministry had opened an online portal where students could describe problems at their schools and the changes they wanted.

The government has already changed course on one education measure. Le Monde reported that it reversed a proposed fee plan for some students without scholarships roughly 12 hours after announcing it on October 1. That reversal did not resolve the wider complaints about staffing, facilities and unequal opportunities described in the protest reporting.

Reuters reported that the government had suggested France Unbowed politicians were behind the protests. Bagayoko rejected that suggestion as insulting to the students. Student-association federation president Suzanne Nijdam told AP that demonstrations would continue until authorities addressed the complaints. For now, the government’s promised proposals remain a future response, rather than an announced settlement.