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The mayor of a Paris suburb was filmed shielding student protesters from police officers on Tuesday during France’s largest youth demonstrations in decades.
Bally Bagayoko, the La France Insoumise mayor of Saint-Denis, appeared to act as a human shield while repeatedly ordering officers to halt their advance in footage shared widely online.
The mayor of France's Saint-Denis went viral after stepping between riot police and student protesters in Paris, arms out, shouting at officers to stop. He says he was "where a mayor should be — beside our youth." https://t.co/RLBibSXG1j
— Clash Report (@clashreport) October 7, 2026
Bagayoko said he opposed violence but stood beside the protesting students.
"I stand by being on the side of my residents, and high school students are my residents," he said.
France braced on Tuesday for a day of nationwide high-school blockades and trade union-led street protests in support of students demanding that President Emmanuel Macron's cash-strapped government tackle understaffed and dilapidated schools.
Tuesday's demonstrations come after a fortnight of protests which began in Paris's deprived suburbs before spreading across the country. The government responded with riot police, saying the movement had now morphed into urban violence.
Teenage students stood on barricades made of trash cans in front of schools from Lille in the north to Marseille in the south, and from Strasbourg in the east to Nantes in the west. In Paris they held up banners reading "We want to be heard, not teargassed" and "Our future is not optional".
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