France’s top court has ruled that banning burkini swimsuits violates people’s fundamental rights, setting a legal precedent after a swimsuit crackdown that elicited shock and anger in other countries.
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By thus declaring that the burkini ban is against the “fundamental liberties” of French citizens, this ruling, albeit specific to Villeneuve-Loubet, sets the legal precedent for overturning the ban across all the 30 odd municipalities where it has been imposed this summer.
Mayors had cited multiple reasons for the bans, including security after a string of Islamic extremist attacks, risk to public order, and France’s strict rules on secularism in public life.
Images of armed police forcing a woman on a beach in Nice to remove her clothing really rammed home the dark absurdity of the country’s burkini ban.
Since conservatives do not have a majority in parliament and such a bill would have no chance of being adopted, Estrosi suggested that Socialist Prime Minister Manuel Valls, who himself backed the bans, come up with a draft law.
The contentious ban prevented women from enjoying the beach, and caused worldwide uproar earlier this week after images surfaced of a woman being forced to undress in public by police officers, or risk getting cited for not wearing an “outfit respecting good morals and secularism”. Some leftists say the far right is using the issue to encourage racism in France.
The row centres on France’s secular principles, but the debate appears to have been hijacked for political gain. “We are not at war with Islam… the French republic is welcoming (to Muslims), we are protecting them against discrimination”, he said. Women are going to this party in bikinis and burkinis to send a message to France – “we can wear what we like”.
However, he ruled out drafting a national law banning burkinis.
“Here the tension is very, very, very high and I won’t withdraw it”, Ange-Pierre Vivoni said on BFM-TV.
The State Council heard arguments from the Human Rights League and an anti-Islamophobia group (CCIF). But Education Minister Najat Vallaud-Belkacem said on Europe1 radio the same day that she’s opposed to laws that, in her words, “set loose racist talk”.
Former French President Nicolas Sarkozy who said he is to run again in the 2017 general elections, on Friday called for a state-wide ban on burkinis. It is mostly worn by Muslim women and now has been banned in more than thirty French towns. The human rights group’s Europe director, John Dalhuisen, said it had “drawn a line in the sand”.
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Former president Nicolas Sarkozy, who August 22 announced his candidacy for the 2017 presidential elections, called for a national prohibition on burkinis Thursday during his first rally in the south of France, as well as banning Muslim headscarves in all public buildings and workplaces.
