A left-wing Catholic magazine has compared Mr Jose Bove to Christ. The conservative Le Figaro calls him a Bolshevik. Mr Bove's droopy moustache remind many of the comic strip character Asterix, who fought the Romans in ancient Gaul. An opinion poll published as his trial opened yesterday shows that 65 per cent of French people find e Mr Bove brave, and 56 per cent say he understands their concerns.
Mr Bove and nine fellow members of the Peasants' Confederation are charged with leading an August 12th, 1999, raid on the local McDonald's. If convicted today they could be sentenced to five years in prison and fined Ffr 500,000.
But that is unlikely. Some 30,000 protesters have descended on the south central French town of Millau, more than doubling the population and transforming the farmers' court case into a carnival-like "trial of globalisation". "How can we judge when thousands of people are shouting Bove's name outside?" the prosecutor Alain Durand asked.
Mr Bove rode to the tiny courthouse yesterday in a tractor-pulled hay wagon and threatened to walk out if his right to free speech was not respected. The 16 witnesses include the leader of a Honduran peasant group, antiglobalisation campaigners, trade unionists and the farmer who gave Mr Bove the Roquefort cheese he handed out in demonstrations against the World Trade Organisation in Seattle last November.
With Ffr 6 million in contributions, the support committee for the 10 men has turned Millau into "Seattle on the Tarn" or "Woodstock in Larzac". There was to be a free open-air concert last night. Public discussions are being held on GMOs, the regulation of international financial institutions, agriculture and food safety, culture and globalisation. For lighter fare, there is a peasants' market, barbecues and street theatre. T-shirts bearing the title of Mr Bove's book - The World is not Merchandise - are on sale for Ffr 100.
In the 10 months since they rode their tractors up to a McDonald's building site, broke down the door and proceeded to "dismantle" (their term) the uncompleted restaurant, Mr Bove and his fellow sheep farmers have become French folk heroes. In response to the EU's ban on US hormone-fed beef, Washington had announced 100 per cent duty on some European imports, including the Roquefort cheese the farmers produce.
The local McDonald's was "the perfect target for making a statement," Alain Soulie, one of Mr Bove's co-defendants, said. "For us, McDo symbolises the uniformisation of the world by agro-industrial groups." The 100 protesters removed part of the McDonald's roof, pulled out electrical wires, smashed tiles, poured cement into pipes and spray-painted graffiti .
Mr Bove invented the word malbouffe ("bad eating") to describe junk food. A magistrate made the mistake of imprisoning him for 19 days; he was photographed raising handcuffed fists in a sign of defiance. This spring, President Jacques Chirac chatted with Mr Bove at the Salon de l'Agriculture and Prime Minister Lionel Jospin invited him to dinner in a Paris restaurant. The Communist transport minister organised special trains to ferry Bove supporters to Millau for his trial.
France's highest administrative court banned the "morning-after pill" from schools yesterday, saying it was illegal for school nurses to distribute the contraceptive to young girls without a prescription.
