The mayors who imposed burkini bans in Cannes and Villeneuve-Loubet are both in the right-wing Republicans (LR) party, while Vivoni is, like the women’s rights minister, a Socialist.
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For the first time since the ban on burkinis on Cannes beaches, the French police on Wednesday issued warnings to 10 women and fined four of them for violating the ban.
The garment goes against the country’s secular beliefs, government officials have said, and only furthers tension between French citizens who practice Islam and those who do not.
Leucate is located on the Mediterranean coast, 35 kilometers (20 miles) from Perpignan.
Some 90km from Oye-Plage, the resort of Le Touquet also made a decision to banish the Muslim swimwear.
“I do not think women want to walk around on the beach with such a monstrosity in the name of their faith”, she told Flemish daily De Standaard.
France has been under a state of emergency since IS members killed 130 people in Paris in November. As is well known a Burkini is body suit that covers a woman’s body as per Wahhabi Islamic thought.
The ban in Cannes came into force after an alleged supporter of the Islamic State group drove a lorry into crowds of people in Nice, killing 85 people on Bastille Day on 14 July. And Cannes was soon followed by the towns of Villeneuve-Loubet, near Nice, and Sisco in Corsica.
The Corsican town of Sisco on Sunday became the third to introduce a ban after a brawl in a cove between locals and families of North African origin left five people injured.
Witnesses of Saturday’s scuffle said the argument began after tourists were seen taking pictures of Muslim women bathing in a burkini. Investigators are still investigating what happened. The burkini was created by Western Muslim women who wanted to conciliate their faith and desire to dress modestly with recreational activities.
The text of the municipal decree has been used, typically word for word, in bans elsewhere.
The Collective against Islamophobia in France (CCIF) on Tuesday filed a complaint against the bans with the Conseil d’Etat, France’s highest administrative court, which is expected to hand down a ruling in the coming days.
However, Manuel Valls told the La Provence newspaper he was not in favour of a national law along such lines, even as three more towns said they were considering similar moves.
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The French Human Rights League has labelled the ban an “abuse of law” and said politicians needed to calm their “discriminatory fervour and defend the spirit of the republic”.
