Three French Mediterranean towns have banned the burkini, citing security concerns after a summer marred by extremist attacks.
Advertisement
On the French Riviera in Cannes, the ban applies for the whole of August and carries a €38 fine (£32) if women refuse to change or leave the beach.
He also invokes the fight against terrorism so he is basically saying a Muslim woman who wears a burqini is a terrorist.
“Here in France we have a principle of secularism… but this law only talks about Muslim women”, Feiza Ben Mohamed, spokesperson for the Southern Federation of Muslims, told The Local about the burkini ban in Cannes.
France 3 television says the ban was imposed at a special council session on Sunday in Sisco amid tensions over the brawl, in which five people were hurt.
The clashes injured five people, all of whom were discharged from hospital by late Sunday, prosecutors said, adding that no arrests were made.
Mayor Pierre-Ange Vivoni of Sisco, a small village in the north of Corsica, said that burkinis would be banned in the area from tomorrow.
This ban on the burkini means much more than excluding veiled Muslim women from another place in French society.
In France, traditional Muslim dress that covers the face – including both the burqa and the niqab – are illegal in public spaces.
A series of terror attacks by Islamic fundamentalists have left France in a state of heightened tension.
To the Prime Minister, which is expressed in Provence, the burkini “is the translation of a political project of against-company, based in particular on women’s subjugation”.
According to local newspaper Corse-Matin, the demonstrators gathered outside the prefect’s office before heading for a housing estate, where some of those involved in Saturday’s brawl were said to live.
Abdallah Zekri, head of the National Observatory against Islamophobia, told BFM television that some French politicians were using the burkini debate to stigmatise Islam.
The ban comes into force weeks after 85 people were killed and dozens more injured when a lorry deliberately drove into crowds of people in neighbouring Nice.
It broke out after tourists took photographs of a group of women wearing burkinis. “Here we are telling Muslims that no matter what you do even we don’t want you here”. She has previously been criticized for comparing veil-wearing Muslims to “American negroes” who supported slavery.
Advertisement
Lebanese Australians were also attacked on Sydney’s Cronulla Beach when mobs attempted to “reclaim the beach” in 2005.
