France’s highest administrative court on Friday suspended a controversial ban on the burkini by a French Riviera town after it was challenged by rights groups.
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In a judgment expected to lead to bans being overturned in around 30 towns along the French coast, the State Council ruled the measure was a “serious and clearly illegal violation of fundamental freedoms”.
Declaring that beachside town had no grounds to ban women from wearing full-coverage swimsuits, the court stated that “there is no evidence that there were any risks that public order was disturbed by people’s choice of bathing garment”.
The burkini – and the decisions to ban wearing them on beaches – has become the focus of spirited global debates over women’s rights, assimilation and secularism.
London mayor Sadiq Khan has joined other protesters to condemn the burkini ban in France, saying no one should dictate women what they can and can’t wear.
And much like the recent burkini bans, opinion in the country is divided between those who see the laws as an infringement on religious freedom, and those who view the Islamic dress as inconsistent with France’s rigorously enforced secularism.
In the town of Sisco, mayor Ange-Pierre Vivoni said the ban would remain “for the safety of property and people”.
“By overturning a discriminatory ban that is fuelled by and is fuelling prejudice and intolerance, today’s decision has drawn an important line in the sand”, Amnesty’s Europe director John Dalhuisen said.
“It is a decision that is meant to set legal precedent”, Mr Spinosi said to reporters outside the court after the judgement.
Aheda Zanetti, the woman who developed the burkini, wrote an op-ed in The Guardian arguing that the burkini ban is fundamentally misguided, as she developed the burkini in the first place as a way to extend freedom to swim and be athletic in public to women who choose to be modest. In Egypt, some resorts, elite clubs and restaurants ban veils entirely and the wearing of burkini outfits in swimming pools.
“I don’t think anyone should tell women what they can and can’t wear”.
This comes after shocking photos showed armed police standing around a Muslim woman with a headscarf, and forcing her to remove her top on a beach in Nice this week.
But the mayor of Villeneuve-Loubet, Lionnel Luca, said the ruling will “heighten passions and tensions”.
Former conservative President Nicolas Sarkozy, who is seeking the conservative nomination for the upcoming race, has stated that he wants a law banning the burkini “on the entire territory of the Republic”.
But critics said the bans had been feeding a racist political agenda.
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The State Council heard arguments from the Human Rights League and an anti-Islamophobia group.
