All three mayors agree the garment – which leaves nothing but a woman’s hands, feet, and face exposed – is “provocative” and “defies French laws on secularism”.
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Local mayors cite multiple reasons for their burkini bans, including the difficulty of rescuing bathers wearing a large amount of clothing.
“Beaches, like all public spaces, must be kept free of religious claims”, he said, though he added that he does not plan on pushing for a countrywide ban on the burkini.
Paris – Riot police were called and a man was injured by a harpoon when a mass brawl broke out on a beach in Corsica, apparently started by a tourist taking a photo of women in “burkinis”. “I want to protect the population, notably my area’s Muslim population because I think that they are the main victims of these extremist provocations”.
Last month, the Corsican Assembly adopted a resolution requesting the State to close places of worship that teach Islamic fundamentalism.
“It will accentuate tension within French society”, Leyla Dakhli, a French-Tunisian professor of Arab history, said.
Tensions grew Sunday, when an impromptu rally was held and almost 200 demonstrators marched on the city’s Lupino district, where many families of North African descent live, according to the BBC. The FLNC – a nationalistic separatist group in Corsica – had also threatened the “radical Islamists” of a “determined response” if attacked.
The National Front seeks to maintain the secular values of French culture and is stridently anti-immigrant in its political platform. Critics say the bans are discriminatory.
“The burkini has a goal”.
The socialist government’s minister for women’s rights, Laurence Rossignol, told French daily Le Parisien: “It is not just the business of those women who wear it, because it is the symbol of a political project that is hostile to diversity and women’s emancipation”.
France remains in a state of emergency following multiple terror attacks, including the lorry massacre in Nice, the murder of a priest in Normandy and the Paris atrocity past year. A few days later, two teenagers killed an elderly priest in northern France.
In the nearby Riviera resort of Villeneuve-Loubet, mayor Lionnel Luca has justified the ban by saying it is unhygienic to swim fully-dressed.
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Tension has grown this summer between local communities and Muslims of North African origin in the south of France, especially following the massacre of 85 people by a lorry driver on the seafront at Nice on 14 July.
