Malian who saved child to get French citizenship
Macron also offers him a job for his ‘exceptional act of heroism’
The video footage is striking: In a matter of seconds, a young man scales four storeys of a Paris apartment building to rescue a four-year-old dangling from a balcony above the street.
The rescuer’s name is Mamoudou Gassama, an undocumented 22-year-old immigrant from Mali, who is now being feted as a national hero despite having lived in France for less than six months. President Emmanuel Macron welcomed him to the Elyse Palace yesterday and offered him citizenship and a job in the French fire service.
Gassama — christened “Spider-Man”— has emerged as an overnight celebrity after rescuing the child at a moment when life is becoming increasingly difficult for immigrants in France.
Macron, a centrist, has taken a tough line on economic migrants fleeing poverty rather than refugees escaping war or persecution. But Gassama’s “exceptional act of heroism” warranted an “exceptional decision”, he said.
AMalian migrant who scaled a four-storey Paris apartment bloc with his bare hands to save a child was honoured by French President Emmanuel Macron yesterday and offered citizenship.
Two days after his daring Spiderman-style rescue — viewed millions of times online — Mamoudou Gassama was received by Macron at the presidential palace.
“You have become an example because millions of people have seen you. It is only right that the nation be grateful,” Macron told the 22-year-old, adding that his immigration status would be “put in order.”
During the meeting, Macron also proposed that Gassama, who received a medal and certificate for bravery, join the French fire service.
“I was not thinking of anything. I went straight up,” the sporty youth, who wore jeans and a short-sleeved patterned shirt, explained. “Bravo,” Macron replied. The act of heroism, which was the top news item for most French websites and television channels, comes as French lawmakers debate a controversial bill that would speed up the deportation of economic migrants and failed asylum-seekers.
Gassama has been living illegally in France and working in construction after arriving in the country in September last year following a perilous journey from his homeland to Libya then Italy.
Tough line
Macron, a centrist, has taken a tough line on economic migrants fleeing poverty rather than refugees escaping war or persecution. But Gassama’s “exceptional act of heroism” warranted an “exceptional decision”, he said yesterday.
Gassama leaped into action on Saturday evening on seeing a four-year-old child dangling in mid-air from a balcony halfway up an apartment block in the multi-ethnic 18th district of the French capital.
The video shows him pulling himself up from balcony to balcony as a man on the fourth floor tries to hold on to the child by leaning across from a neighbouring balcony.
Firefighters arrived at the scene to find the child, whose parents were not at home, had already been rescued.
A shy figure who was accompanied to the Elysee Palace by his older brother, Gassama said he had acted instinctively.
“I saved the child and then went inside the building and I was shaking,” he told Macron.
Reacting to his awards he said later: “I’m pleased because it’s the first time I’ve received a trophy like that.”
Gassama’s story instantly drew comparisons with that of another Malian migrant who was feted as a hero, and given citizenship, for helping save lives during a January 2015 terror attack.
Lassana Bathily helped hide hostages in the freezer during a terrorist attack on a Jewish supermarket in Paris, in which four people were killed.
Confirming to Gassama that he would be made a French citizen, Macron said: “Even if you did not think about what you were doing it was an act of courage and strength that won the admiration of all.”
But in a warning to other African migrants he said he “can
This is an exceptional act. We’ll obviously be setting all your papers straight and if you wish it, we will start the process of naturalisation so that you can become French. What you have done corresponds with what firefighters do; if this fits your wishes, you could join the firefighters’ corps so that you can do [such acts] on a daily basis.” Emmanuel Macron | French President
not give (papers) to all those who come from Mali or Burkina Faso” — two of the countries from where thousands of migrants set out each year for Europe on a perilous journey across the desert and Mediterranean Sea.
Across the political spectrum his decision to confer citizenship on Gassama met with approval.
Dreams of a better life
A senior member of the antiimmigration National Front, Nicolas Bay, said, however, that while the party supported Gassama receiving French papers all other illegal migrants should be summarily deported. Passersby raised the alarm Saturday on noticing the little boy hanging in mid-air.
“Luckily, there was someone who was physically fit and who had the courage to go and get the child,” a spokesman for the fire service said.
The boy’s father, who had reportedly gone out to the shop, has been taken into custody for leaving the child unattended.
He was to be brought before prosecutors later yesterday.
The boy’s mother was not in Paris at the time of the incident.
The child has been placed in state care.