Thousands of people marched through the streets of Paris’s largest suburb on Saturday to denounce racism after the town’s newly elected mayor was subject to disparaging comments on social media and national television shows.
Bally Bagayoko, 52, of the hard-left France Unbowed (LFI) party, was elected mayor of Saint-Denis in the first round of municipal elections on March 15th.
The Frenchman born to Malian parents and brought up in the neighbourhood was almost immediately targeted by racist disinformation and remarks, some aired on one of the country’s most watched news channels.
Demonstrators gathered on the steps of Saint-Denis’s town hall – a town of around 150,000 people with a large immigrant population.
Music bands, trades unions and associations joined the demonstration.
“We come to state firmly and definitively our visceral attachment to the values of the Republic embodied by those who are heirs of immigration,” said Bagayoko.
He attacked what he said were “failing, sometimes even complicit institutions.”
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Also present was LFI leader Jean-Luc Melenchon, who denounced “a sickening wave of racism coming from the political and media elites who, without reservation, without restraint, have displayed their contempt for a part of our people.”
Saint-Denis Mayor Bally Bagayoko delivers a speech during a rally against racism. Photo by Thomas SAMSON / AFP
Government minister absent
Aurore Berge, the government’s minister against discrimination, did not attend the event.
“If there is one minister who should have been there, it is her,” said Bagayoko when asked about her absence. The mayor, however, thanked Berge for reaching out by telephone to express her solidarity.
Prime Minister Sebastien Lecornu this week denounced what he called the “normalisation of evil and racism” following the campaign against Bagayoko.
Bagayoko has filed a legal complaint against the CNews television channel, often described as France’s Fox News, over comments made by one guest on the show.
Paris prosecutors announced on Thursday that they had opened an investigation into possible public insults of a racist nature over some of the remarks broadcast on CNews.
A separate investigation was opened into the racist abuse the mayor received on X following the comments broadcast on CNews.